Freeserve/Wanadoo/Orange email servers blacklisted in spam databases
Feb '07 Update: I've posted details of a way around this without changing email address. It's a little fiddly, but should work...
---
I've been trying to trace a problem with emails not reaching one of my clients. Emails from the same sender would sometimes get through fine, but often bounce back after a few days. I eventually managed to get a look at one of the bounced emails, which was very helpful.
It turns out that Freeserve have managed to get some of their email servers blacklisted in spam databases. Any ISPs that operate even basic spam filtering check all incoming email against the SpamCop or SORBS databases, to see whether the originating server is registered as a spammer. If so, the email is rejected and a few days later the sender will receive an undelivered mail report.
Fyi, Freeserve = Wanadoo = Orange, but I'm going to use Freeserve because I keep mistyping 'wanadoo'...
I did a little digging around, and unsurprisingly many people are having problems with this. It's flared up in recent days, but there are reports of problems with the servers - I looked up 193.252.22.157 - as far back as January of this year. This isn't the fault of the spam databases, nor is it difficult to get yourself removed from them. Freeserve seem to be entirely to blame.
This is a particularly annoying problem, as it must affect anybody with a Freeserve / Wanadoo / Orange account. It's unreasonable to ask every ISP/email host in the world to make an exception / disable their spam filters because of this, although that's what I've had to do in my client's case.
According to the SpamCop information page, the Freeserve servers are commiting the cardinal sin of bouncing back external emails, which afaik is quite an easy thing to fix! Freeserve presumably have a number of email servers of which only some are blacklisted, explaining why emails sometimes get through and sometimes don't. There doesn't seem to be any way of specifying which server you want to use, however.
I always used to like Freeserve, but given the long-running nature and severity of this problem, I can only recommend that nobody create a new Freeserve/Wanadoo/Orange account, and anybody on their system move to a different ISP.
BCC Emails
Update 2 minutes later: Ignore me, I misunderstood it 
Lifehacker says:
Email expert Itzy Sabo discusses the pitfall of blind carbon-copying (BCC) recipients on a message: the hidden addressee can reply to all the “non-blind” recipients and blow his or her cover.
That can't be true, can it? I've checked the raw files of BCC emails before and I'm sure they don't contain any other email addresses. Not from any email client I've ever used, anyway.
Stupid Spammers
Without the closing '%', this just doesn't work at all. It did bypass the spam filter, mind.
Configuring Outlook to always reply in plain text
For Googlers, since I had terrible trouble finding this. Information originally from here.
How to set Outlook to always reply in plain text, regardless of the original email format:
In Outlook, click Tools -> Options
In the Preferences panel, click "E-mail Options"
Tick the boxes for "Read all standard mail in plain text" and "Read all digitally signed mail in plain text"
Click OK
The above instructions work for Outlook 2003 - the link has instructions for other versions. It requires that emails are always read in plain text, but it's the only method I can find that doesn't macros, weird HTML stripping programs or reconfiguration for every email.
I looked at that options panel at last twice while trying to figure it out, not sure how I missed it!
Hello!
Hey, thanks for coming! I'm Andrew, and this is where my headthinks come to breed. They often meander around humanism and photography, but they're flighty and you can't trust them, so anything is possible.
Do feel free to email me - I get lonely:
Your hair looks swish, by the way - have you done something new?
Recent Comments
- Andrew: Just added a link to Cristina Odone interpreting the sexuality/pleasure question as a direct query on Catholic doctrine (I...
on Flawed Theos survey claims Catholic values are common in the UK. - Andrew: You’d almost be tempted to think it’s deliberately opaque so as to give the impression of depth. Not that the...
on Flawed Theos survey claims Catholic values are common in the UK. - Andrew: Also, the full encyclical really is a massively dull, rambling stream of nonsense. It’s like the poetry of a...
on Flawed Theos survey claims Catholic values are common in the UK. - Andrew: Well, this saves me a job. I was moments away from writing about 90% of this post on my own blog.
on Flawed Theos survey claims Catholic values are common in the UK. - vicky: going up this weekend having done all the welsh peaks except 4 snowdon, cant wait
on Climbing Snowdon.
