Lost/delayed email messages

[charles_net]

Hi

All day today, it seems like spamcop is dropping or delaying my emails.

Anybody else seeing this?

I use a catchall email address on my server to forward all emails to my spamcop.net email address which then forwards it back to an unpublished email address. This normally works great but since last night, I noticed I wasn't getting certain emails I normally get.

This morning, I started sending emails from my Yahoo account to my catchall email address and directly to my spamcop email address but its been 12 hours and they've not made it. I had friends send emails from their hotmail and yahoo accounts to my 'public' or catchall email addresses plus my spamcop email address and again, nothing (so far). I know for certain that one email sent from an AOL address is more than 12 hours late, another two sent from accessline.com are over 5 hours late, and all sent from hotmail/yahoo address are MIA.

However, I have gotten several emails notifications from Fedex and UPS so its clear that some email is getting through spamcop's servers. And I've not changed anything with my email configurations.

This has happened before with spamcop but today I've not seen anybody reporting in the forum nor any news notifications.

I was wondering if anybody else is finding their emails are stuck/lost/delayed?

[Wazoo]

Yesterday, it was three people complaining about the web-mail page. Today, newsgroup traffic has two people complaining about the reporting page. And as you say, yours is the only existing complaint I've seen talking about e-mail delivery. I've not been able to connect any dots along the line of a common waypoint on the net, as the addresses of those concerned are all over the place.

What do the headers of one that made the trip look like? Any detail there to indicate where the delay is occuring?

[charles_net]

Yesterday, it was three people complaining about the web-mail page.  Today, newsgroup traffic has two people complaining about the reporting page.  And as you say, yours is the only existing complaint I've seen talking about e-mail delivery.  I've not been able to connect any dots along the line of a common waypoint on the net, as the addresses of those concerned are all over the place.

What do the headers of one that made the trip look like?  Any detail there to indicate where the delay is occuring?

20720[/snapback]

Hi

I've looked at the headers of those that I've gotten and it seems those that I get are not delayed.

I just sent another test email from one of my servers to my normal public email which routes through spamcop (copying my yahoo address) and it was received at both in less than 30 seconds. However, when I sent a test message from yahoo, it did not make it (I waited about 10 minutes while drafting this message) but it did make it to another cc email address in about 30 seconds so I'm sure yahoo is sending it.

I guess I should restate the problem and indicate I'm missing emails instead of having them delayed.

It appears that none of the emails that I'm aware of from yahoo, hotmail, aol, accessline.com have made it through spamcop today, yet I know one aol was sent, about 10 yahoos were sent, 2 accessline.com were sent and 1 hotmail.com was sent.

Note: I've checked my held mail folder constantly today and none of the test messages were held.

Any other things I should try?

[Wazoo]

Send your account data to JT at support <at> spamcop.net ... enough to both prove your ownership and allow him to go through his logs. Additional details like specific timeframes (say the headers of the one you say you CC:'d that would show bot the CC: address and time handled at Yahoo ... something to help him pinpoint a section of log to wade through ....

[charles_net]

Send your account data to JT at support <at> spamcop.net ... enough to both prove your ownership and allow him to go through his logs.  Additional details like specific timeframes (say the headers of the one you say you CC:'d that would show bot the CC: address and time handled at Yahoo ... something to help him pinpoint a section of log to wade through ....

20722[/snapback]

Thanks

I tried some more tests this morning after putting my personal yahoo address on my personal white list and they are still not making it through.

I'll send copies of emails (with headers) that CC:'d myself on.

[StevenUnderwood]

Well I have not been getting my regular email since Sunday afternoon, but none of it is spamcop as I have been doing testing continuously.

My problem is that netforward's (poboxes.com address) servers have been off-line since then. All tests directly to spamcop have been working for me, however.

What domain do you use for your spamcop email account? There were problems with a couple of them a week or two back.

[paulz526]

Well I have not been getting my regular email since Sunday afternoon, but none of it is spamcop as I have been doing testing continuously.

My problem is that netforward's (poboxes.com address) servers have been off-line since then.  All tests directly to spamcop have been working for me, however.

What domain do you use for your spamcop email account?  There were problems with a couple of them a week or two back.

20725[/snapback]

I too, have not received any email since Sunday. I sent myself two test messages and neither one has been forwarded. I have ordered several items on line and the emails that the companies have sent me have not been forwarded through Spamcop. Something is wrong.

[StevenUnderwood]

To repeat, any mail sent directly to my spamcop.net address IS getting through and has been tested about every hour I have been awake. My problem is with a different vendor.

[charles_net]

Well I have not been getting my regular email since Sunday afternoon, but none of it is spamcop as I have been doing testing continuously.

My problem is that netforward's (poboxes.com address) servers have been off-line since then.  All tests directly to spamcop have been working for me, however.

What domain do you use for your spamcop email account?  There were problems with a couple of them a week or two back.

20725[/snapback]

Hi

I'm not sure what you mean by 'use for your spamcop email account'

I forward mail to xxxxxx[at]spamcop.net where xxxxxxx is my user name.

I then have spamcop forward mail back to unpublished[at]myemailservername.com where myemailservername.com is hosted by a web service company. I have two domains I use and both fail when forwarding messages via spamcop.net.

I'm able to send mail via the web interface from xxxxxx[at]spamcop.net to unpublished[at]myemailservername.com so I know my email server is working.

15 minutes ago, I sent some voice mails (attached wav files) from www.accessline.com to a coworker at his email address at aol.com and to my public email address. He got his in less than 30 seconds and I've still not gotten them. This makes 4 emails from accessline.com that I've not gotten since 2pm yesterday.

I'm pretty certain that as of Sunday, there are now several different sources of email (yahoo, hotmail, accessline.com, aol.com) are now being blocked (not held).

Thanks

[Wazoo]

Thanks

I tried some more tests this morning after putting my personal yahoo address on my personal white list and they are still not making it through. 

I'll send copies of emails (with headers) that CC:'d myself on.

20724[/snapback]

I really didin'tand don't suggest sending copies of the entire e-mails. As I thought I'd suggested / explained, the 'critical' details are the date/time stamps and servers involved (and possibly a few other specific items) ... looking for specific data to grep the log files with.

[charles_net]

I really didin'tand don't suggest sending copies of the entire e-mails.  As I thought I'd suggested / explained, the 'critical' details are the date/time stamps and servers involved (and possibly a few other specific items) ... looking for specific data to grep the log files with.

20734[/snapback]

Sorry if I my post wasn't clear.

I've sent two headers with email bodies containing short test messages to JT at support<at>spamcop.net. These were headers from the CC:'d address as the emails sent via Spamcop.net are not making it.

Below is one header with certain information x'd out because this is a public forum. The original headers were sent unmodified to support<at>spamcop.net.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Return-Path: <xxxxx[at]yahoo.com> Tue Nov 30 08:02:07 2004

Received: from web61001.mail.yahoo.com [216.155.196.90] by ml1.webecs.com with

SMTP;

Tue, 30 Nov 2004 08:02:07 -0500

Received: (qmail 13221 invoked by uid 60001); 30 Nov 2004 13:02:06 -0000

Comment: DomainKeys? See http://antispam.yahoo.com/domainkeys

DomainKey-Signature: a=rsa-sha1; q=dns; c=nofws;

s=s1024; d=yahoo.com;

b=YYt/HzgM6+R+2f9naLh/wgqLBCU0p0zSRBCoZ5EfGOsN3Lk/hBBrsSyIYTeXPDo8Ns/vKLctkTKL3L1j9pt1hAhIWm5SweABTmwZuYmRkHs8iaUMaindODvYNMGnAAXDXVRdKshTiGffjEfF+7cPts9Wx378+YN0SnaTZ0apJNs=

;

Message-ID: <20041130130206.13219.qmail[at]web61001.mail.yahoo.com>

Received: from [24.44.212.124] by web61001.mail.yahoo.com via HTTP; Tue, 30 Nov

2004 05:02:06 PST

Date: Tue, 30 Nov 2004 05:02:06 -0800 (PST)

From: xxxxxx xxxxxx <xxxxx[at]yahoo.com>

Subject: Fwd: Your order has shipped

To: xxxxx[at]spamcop.net

Cc: mail[at]xxxxxx.com

MIME-Version: 1.0

Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="0-1442515860-1101819726=:12295"

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

FYI - webecs.com hosts my email service which got the cc'd email from yahoo that didn't make it through spamcop.net

Once I hear back from JT, I'll update.

Thanks

[charles_net]

Hi all

Its been about 6 hours and I've not heard from JT (support<at>spamcop.net)

Is there a way to confirm somebody is working on this?

I can't afford to have all emails from hotmail, aol, yahoo, accessline.com plus others I'm unaware of be blocked by spamcop.

Could somebody contact JT and have the appropriate party update me on what is going on? I'll have to switch to another spam filter method if I can't resolve this.

Thanks

[charles_net]

Hi

I've now discovered that email from intuit merchant processing service are not passing through spamcop. Looks like I'll have to disable spamcop and find another filtering service. Any pointers on good alternatives?

Thanks

P.S. no word from JT

[DavidT]

Looks like I'll have to disable spamcop and find another filtering service.  Any pointers on good alternatives? P.S. no word from JT

JT usually takes a lot longer than six hours to respond...I suspect you'll hear from him soon, however. I find this to be an excellent filtering service, but with occasional glitches and slow tech support.

DT

[Wazoo]

I've now discovered that email from intuit merchant processing service are not passing through spamcop.

Though O don't have any specific data on this, but this statement just doesn't seem right. To my knowledge, there is no bouncing of any e-mail arriving at a SpamCop account holder's e-mail account. Are you sure it's not something as silly as intuit's server filtering/dropping output based on the spamcop address (or even as dumb as the word "spam" being seen in your outgoing e-mail from there?

Looks like I'll have to disable spamcop and find another filtering service.  Any pointers on good alternatives?

Thanks

I don't think that there really is anything else out there that does the same thing. There are other e-mail providers that do offer filtering, but in reality, that turns out to actually mean blocking, as setting up the various apps to actually do a Tag and pass it on appears to be too difficult for a lot of folks.

P.S. no word from JT

I'd send a note to him, but I like to have facts and a suggested solution in hand when I notify him. I can't say he does all this alone (the CES service, of which the SpamCop users are but just a part of that overall business) ... but he's the only one that answers the mail, and like any other admin, that InBox is swamped by folks writing in about all kinds of stuff, not all concerning his side of the SpamCop network ...

Wearing the Systems Analyst hat for a bit and trying to sort out sstuff to see if I can point to the right direction ... here's where I'd suggest you start;

I then have spamcop forward mail back to unpublished[at]myemailservername.com where myemailservername.com is hosted by a web service company. I have two domains I use and both fail when forwarding messages via spamcop.net.

I'd say, kill the Forwarding process for now. In theory, this should allow the stuff to stay on the SpamCop server upon receipt. You may also want to go through your entire set of filters, blocklists, etc, to prevent any possible interaction with the e-mail (sources) you seem to have pointed to thus far.

If the e-mail in questions starts showing up on the SpamCop server, then there'd be something going on with the handling and processing of the Forwarding stuff that's going to have to be looked at. If you find that it's still not arriving, I'll just say that I'd really be surprized at that. But, that's also happened a bit too often lately <g>

[charles_net]

Though O don't have any specific data on this, but this statement just doesn't seem right.  To my knowledge, there is no bouncing of any e-mail arriving at a SpamCop account holder's e-mail account.  Are you sure it's not something as silly as intuit's server filtering/dropping output based on the spamcop address (or even as dumb as the word "spam" being seen in your outgoing e-mail from there?

I don't think that there really is anything else out there that does the same thing.  There are other e-mail providers that do offer filtering, but in reality, that turns out to actually mean blocking, as setting up the various apps to actually do a Tag and pass it on appears to be too difficult for a lot of folks.

I'd send a note to him, but I like to have facts and a suggested solution in hand when I notify him.  I can't say he does all this alone (the CES service, of which the SpamCop users are but just a part of that overall business) ... but he's the only one that answers the mail, and like any other admin, that InBox is swamped by folks writing in about all kinds of stuff, not all concerning his side of the SpamCop network ...

Wearing the Systems Analyst hat for a bit and trying to sort out sstuff to see if I can point to the right direction ... here's where I'd suggest you start;

I'd say, kill the Forwarding process for now.  In theory, this should allow the stuff to stay on the SpamCop server upon receipt.  You may also want to go through your entire set of filters, blocklists, etc, to prevent any possible interaction with the e-mail (sources) you seem to have pointed to thus far. 

If the e-mail in questions starts showing up on the SpamCop server, then there'd be something going on with the handling and processing of the Forwarding stuff that's going to have to be looked at.  If you find that it's still not arriving, I'll just say that I'd really be surprized at that.  But, that's also happened a bit too often lately <g>

20778[/snapback]

Hi

I disabled forwarding all my email to my spamcop email adddress and got my normal volume of email today.

I used Spamcop to clean my email by forwarding all email sent to all of my email address (e.g. webmaster[at]mydomain1.com, sales[at]mydomain1.com, webmaster[at]mydomain2.com, sales mydomain2.com) to my spamcop email address which then forwarded them back to one unplublished email address (e.g. hidden[at]mydomain1.com).

This worked fine for the last two years.

Starting Sunday, all emails sent from several different email addresses at yahoo.com, hotmail.com, accessline.com, etc. were not bounced by spamcop nor were they sent to my held mail folder. They just disappeared. Like they never were sent. A co-worker who has sent me email every day for the last year from aol.com could also not send email to me via spamcop. The emails were not bounced and they were not held. They just never arrived.

I've forwarded header information as requested to JT but so far no response.

I'm using the spam filter that comes with smartermail - http://www.smartertools.com/Products/Smart...il/Default.aspx

So far today, its let a few slip through but this is much preferable to that last few days. It has some nice features that let you decide what to do with low, medium and high probablity spam email. I have it prepend a warning on the subject line for medium proability spam and move high proability spam to a junk email folder. This ensures email won't vanish (I hope:)

If JT doesn't respond, then I'll probably let my spamcop subscription lapse.

It was good while it lasted but can't run a business with a service that 'black holes' valid/whitelisted emails.

Thanks for responding to my posts.

[charles_net]

Hi all

JT responded last night with proof that spamcop was NOT 'black holeing' valid emails. It appears the problem was with a new spam filter on my server which considered some email forwarded to the spamcop server for filtering as spam itself.

My web hosting company upgraded all their mail server software which added spam filters. The default action of the filter was to delete medium and high probably spam email. This resulted in lost email messages from certain domains like yahoo, hotmail, aol, etc.

I need to send a note to my web hosting company that they should change the default state from delete the email to change the subject line or move to a junk email folder. Probably several other customers are having the same issue with 'lost' email.

Thanks to all who helped and thanks to JT for pointing me in the right direction.

P.S. without spamcop, 20 spam emails made it into my inbox last night.

I'm glad this is resolved - thanks to all who helped.

[apeikoff]

FWIW, I lost a few e-mails that were sent to me late Monday morning/early Monday afternoon. Maybe my ISP did the same thing as yours -- or maybe it's the same ISP?

I don't seem to be having the trouble now, however, so maybe some adjustments were made?

[DavidT]

My web hosting company upgraded all their mail server software which added spam filters.

Please identify the hosting company for our benefit...we will probably want to avoid them like the plague!

DT

[Wazoo]

I'd also like to know the specifics. There is a FAQ entry here on this very subject, so are there more ISPs to be added to the existing list? The catch is that your story suggests that the Title of the FAQ and placement needs to change .. currently Titled "E-Mail spam submittals blocked by your ISP?" under the SpamCop Parsing and Reporting Service.

And of course, under the SpamCop Mail Service section, can you explain what was not covered in the FAQ entry "Why can't I receive any email?" .. or what needs to be expanded, changed, ..????

Further noting that I had meant to suggest that Forwarding "from" SpamCOp be turned off so you could see that the e-mail was coming "in" .. I read your response as that you turned off all Forwarding "to" SpamCop which I'm not sure would have helped "prove" anything ...????

[charles_net]

I'd also like to know the specifics.  There is a FAQ entry here on this very subject, so are there more ISPs to be added to the existing list?  The catch is that your story suggests that the Title of the FAQ and placement needs to change  .. currently Titled "E-Mail spam submittals blocked by your ISP?" under the SpamCop Parsing and Reporting Service.

And of course, under the SpamCop Mail Service section, can you explain what was not covered in the FAQ entry "Why can't I receive any email?" .. or what needs to be expanded, changed, ..????

Further noting that I had meant to suggest that Forwarding "from" SpamCOp be turned off so you could see that the e-mail was coming "in" .. I read your response as that you turned off all Forwarding "to" SpamCop which I'm not sure would have helped "prove" anything ...????

20827[/snapback]

Hi

First I'd like to avoid mentioning my web hosting company as they have been very responsive and supportive. I think this issue was the result of some wrong ASSUMPTIONS by myself and perhaps others.

Second - The specifics of this issue revolve around my web hosting company upgrading the mail software so that it included spam filtering. I didn't pay much attention to this upgrade when it happened on 10/26/04. I also made some ASSUMPTIONS about default the spam filtering. The software package is from smartertools.com and its called smartermail. According to the product description, it has "Bayesian Filtering - Use advanced statistics to analyze your email for spam. With your help, Bayesian Filtering learns what spam is and can adapt to the ever changing spam situation on the web. Combine Bayesian Filtering with other advanced anti-spam measures (spam lists, revers DNS, verify sender, etc.) to protect yourself to an even greater extent."

I must admit that when the mail software was updated, I was informed that I could change the current spam settings. Since this upgrade happened on 10/26/04 and I didn't see an immediate drop off in email volume, I ASSUMED that the spam filters were disabled. (I didn't need this new filtering as all my email was forwarded through the spamcop server!). It wasn't until this weekend that I realized something must be wrong as I couldn't get messages from co-workers.

Third, as for the FAQs, there is one titled "SpamCop forwards mail to destination address " Perhaps one should be added titled "SpamCop Forwarded E-Mails to destination address and destination has its own spam filters" I would propose that those who use SpamCop to forward mail to a destination address ensure the destination's address spam filter is set up to hold all suspect mail.

Forth, as for turning off forwarding, by doing this I was forced to start playing with the only spam filter I had and immediately configured it to either send with modified subject line or hold all suspect email. Its default state was ON (instead of off like Yahoo's) and configured to deleted suspect mail.

I hope I've answered all the questions.

Bottom line - a service upgrade (new spam filtering) actually resulted in a service interuption. The road to h... is paved with good intentions.

Thanks

[DavidT]

First I'd like to avoid mentioning my web hosting company...

OK...but I hope it's OK if I do it....from information earlier in this topic, it would appear that they're WebECS of Ohio. They only offer Windows-based hosting...and no contact phone numbers, except for an emergency status recording number. However, we'll take your word that they're a good host.

They don't yet seem to have any information on their site about their "smartermail" tool, although you can go to smartertools.com to read about it.

DT