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Help, is my email address defind as spam?


moreofless

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I sent a personal email to a very important email address. She replied that my message was routed to her "junk" or "spam" folder. I have not had anyone tell me this before but is there some ways I can test this? I am in the process of searching for a job. It would not be good if my messages are being sent to "spam" folders.

This is very important...any help would be greatly appreciated.

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I sent a personal email to a very important email address. She replied that my message was routed to her "junk" or "spam" folder. I have not had anyone tell me this before but is there some ways I can test this? I am in the process of searching for a job. It would not be good if my messages are being sent to "spam" folders.

This is very important...any help would be greatly appreciated.

Welcome. But with the greatest of respect, what brings you here? What evidence do you have of SpamCop's involvement? You have given us nothing to go on, really, so help will be extremely limited.

To answer the question in your title, NO, no email address is EVER defined as spam. spam is defined by content and consent and this and other listing services list only server addresses, not email addresses. There are numerous 'read this before posting' pointers to this all over this forum.

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Any e-mail address might be blocked (and perhaps silently dropped) or diverted to a spam/junk folder as a false positive at any time - you can never rely absolutely on "deliverability" - but if you're talking a Yahoo account, there seem to be some special problems at the moment. See:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/inte...l-spamming.html

(BT uses Yahoo for its e-mail services) but it is not confined to BT, "ordinary" (and apparently innocent) Yahoo accounts are presently being treated as spamsources too. Gmail and Hotmail (and their various incarnations) seem to be particularly hard on Yahoo at the moment, flashing scam alert flags on perfectly innocent mail (Gmail) or demanding confirmation before viewing (Hotmail). That is not surprising - competitors will not be backward in taking advantage of Yahoo's stumble but, to be fair, this does not seem to be arbitrary, not all Yahoo accounts are treated that way, presumably/perhaps only those in regions where there have been compromises or hacks on accounts. I don't know what other networks/services might be doing. The full story is yet to emerge.

You should, of course, change your mail account password straight away (whether Yahoo or not) and run malware and anti-virus scans on your computer (different scanners find different things), just to set your mind at ease on that score. If you are a Yahoo user, the help pages accessed through your account may provide useful information. Other services will have similar.

It could be tricky to test whether or not "your address" is on any lists since those mostly work on IP address (server), NOT username[at]domain, and services like Yahoo have a great many addresses and proxies and those will all have different results. SenderBase lists some 4,100 addresses with a history of sending mail for yahoo.com -

http://www.senderbase.org/senderbase_queries/detaildomain?search_string=yahoo.com.

- that shows some Yahoo servers are presently on the SpamCop block list.

A service allowing single-entry lookup of a large number of public DNS Block Lists is

http://multirbl.valli.org/dnsbl-lookup/

- one IP address at a time (and some of those are no doubt listed on the other block lists). I'm guessing there's no simple way to tell, before the event, exactly which servers will come in to play for mail from any individual account - there may be a particular bank of servers handing a particular region and balancing the load between them (but I don't know for sure, there are other ways to do it).

In addition to the factor of the DNSBLs, some networks use reputation scores (including SenderBase/IronPort filtering) instead of DNSBLs. Also Yahoo, Hotmail, Gmail etc. apparently use private lists and methods, perhaps in conjunction with commercial and/or public lists for premium accounts.

One thing you can do easily is Google your e-mail address and see where (if anywhere) it is referenced on the internet.

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Welcome. But with the greatest of respect, what brings you here? What evidence do you have of SpamCop's involvement? You have given us nothing to go on, really, so help will be extremely limited.

To answer the question in your title, NO, no email address is EVER defined as spam. spam is defined by content and consent and this and other listing services list only server addresses, not email addresses. There are numerous 'read this before posting' pointers to this all over this forum.

I apologize for implying Spamcop was some how involved. I do use Spamcop to report spam. I came here because I was hoping someone might take a minute and help me with my situation.

I sent an email to a consulting company about a possible job opportunity. The consultant replied back with some information about the situation and noted my email was sent to her "junk" folder. Obviously it would not be a good situation if this is happening all the time.

I was just looking for some advise concerning how I could test if my email messages are getting through. The consultant suggested my email may have been routed to her junk folder because I do not have a last name attached to my Yahoo email account.

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Moved to lounge. All the suggestions I can think of offhand in my previous post 84243[/snapback]

Lack of last name in account name should not affect filtering. Many/most corporate e-mail addresses in SOME parts of the world are in the form firstname.lastname[at]businessname.tld but not aware of any filtering technique that penalises deviations. That would be risky (and not all that easy to implement).

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I apologize for implying Spamcop was some how involved. I do use Spamcop to report spam. I came here because I was hoping someone might take a minute and help me with my situation.

I sent an email to a consulting company about a possible job opportunity. The consultant replied back with some information about the situation and noted my email was sent to her "junk" folder. Obviously it would not be a good situation if this is happening all the time.

I was just looking for some advise concerning how I could test if my email messages are getting through. The consultant suggested my email may have been routed to her junk folder because I do not have a last name attached to my Yahoo email account.

Well, if you can get a copy of the mail that ended up in the junk folder WITH ALL ITS HEADERS, there may be clue there as to why it was considered suspect. There may be a header such as 'X-spam-disposition' with a message like 'IP xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx appears on |<someblocklist>', or it may refer to some bayesian scoring system being used by the recipient 'spam score = 9' or such-like.

If you could get the recipient to send you back the blocked message WITH ALL HEADERS INTACT, you might get a clue as to what went wrong.

Avoiding it the future is a different matter :(

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I sent an email to a consulting company about a possible job opportunity. The consultant replied back with some information about the situation and noted my email was sent to her "junk" folder. Obviously it would not be a good situation if this is happening all the time.

I was just looking for some advise concerning how I could test if my email messages are getting through. The consultant suggested my email may have been routed to her junk folder because I do not have a last name attached to my Yahoo email account.

All email sent to Hotmail (as instance) that is not "whitelisted" goes to a "junk" folder

Gmail use a methodology (keyword score) as well as a IP blacklist to sort email again one can whitelist!

Some companies like mine use a filter by Ironport/Cisco to advise of suspicious email for release or trash once released no more troubles.

Companies are very paranoid about spam our state Government looks at your email domain name and bounces email that don't match (requires many phone call's to get you OK'ed)

Why it's important to get a reliable email provider.

Check your Email IP reputation at Senderscore this is SpamCop's email reputation score

Gmail seem good but are spyware, they electronically read email (to and from) collect information (also gathered by their cookies) and pass it on to their advertisers.

Might seem OK till you suddenly find your personal details splashed over internet by Google

Luckily I never gave them my real name so one now needs a "boiler plate" text for your false name age and birth-date for internet use.

Google though have worked out where I live (show a photo of home) and my birth-date from travel agents? I send to Gmail my "rubbish" email I send to Gmail brochures & such plus web browsing devices also feed Google like your Smart phone, Tablet, PC

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Hi, moreofless,

...Sorry to hear of your problem.

<snip>

I was just looking for some advise concerning how I could test if my email messages are getting through.

<snip>

...Sorry, no, I don't believe that is possible because different e-mail providers will make the decision based on their own rules. The best you can do is what others here have suggested but there's no sure way of discovering what you wish to know, at least without asking (and getting a truthful answer) from the e-mail providers of everyone you wish to contact.

...My expectation would be that if your e-mails are getting routed to the "spam" folder of one consultant, there's a very good chance they will also be routed to the "spam" folders of others. Bottom line: it's probably not a good idea to rely on Yahoo!Mail. In fact, it really isn't that good an idea to rely on e-mail at all, since, as Steve (Farelf) noted in his first reply, "you can never rely absolutely on 'deliverability'."

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The Yahoo issues BT are investigating are not confined to BT. The ISP I use half a world away also uses Yahoo, and in recent months issues with Yahoo have resulted in several thousand grumpy customers who have been forced to change their email password. The sad thing is that the problems are nothing new, but that's probably a discussion in itself.

I concur with an earlier suggestion: see if you can see a copy of one of your junked messages, to see if the headers provide some sort of clue.

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