Newsletter/notification e-mails not received / way to submit whitelist requests?

[#1]

Hello,

I've been a PlusNet e-mail user for many years (approx. 15), though at the moment I have no active (paid for) services. I receive my e-mails via POP/IMAP on my PC & mobile respectively.

In the last year, I've noticed an increased number of automated e-mails which have dried up. These are e-mails such as newsletters from companies I follow, or forum notification e-mails. I receive no notification of the e-mail being stopped but I know they are being sent out. They just don't arrive.

My frustration grows, but I'd prefer not to switch to another cloud mail provider as my Plusnet account gives me lots of flexibility.

So, on to my questions:

1. Is there a way to submit a request to Plusnet to whitelist certain senders, to help e-mails from some organisations through the spam filters? This would have to be carefully vetted to prevent abuse, of course.
2. Is there anything I can do to prevent e-mails being withheld from me, such as adding senders' addresses to my contacts via Webmail? I've known some providers to allow mail through if the sender is in your contacts. The Plusnet server has no sight of my contacts on my local PC mailbox, but it could see my Webmail contacts. I think I tried it long ago but it made no difference.

Here are a couple of examples of types of e-mails I've stopped receiving:

• Newsletters from chaoscards.co.uk (for card & board game news & competitions). I used to receive them for a long time, then about a year ago they stopped. I have had several discussions with their support team to no avail, so we assumed it was my e-mail provider. I have even re-joined the newsletter using different prefixes on my e-mail address (before the @ sign), but no e-mails ever arrive. Signing up with a non-Plusnet account of my wife worked just fine...
  For the record: I receive e-mails related to orders I've placed, as well as direct e-mails with staff, but nothing sent out as a newsletter.
• Newsletters from Eagle Dynamics regarding their flight simulator DCS World. In the last few months, these have stopped arriving. I also failed to receive a private-message notification from their forums in October, which I only just discovered today. The company behind this simulator are Russian, which probably increases the chances of getting blocked as spam.

There could be others I'm missing but it's hard to say. I don't receive too many newsletters, but, sadly, the ones I want to receive are the ones I can't receive.

I am well aware of GDPR and the fact that many organisations have asked users to re-confirm newsletter subscriptions, but this issue has existed since before 25th May last year and - where notified - I have confirmed my subscriptions promptly.

Any ideas or input from support would be much appreciated. I hope the time hasn't come to jump on the <insert-cloud-provider-name-here> e-mail bandwagon.

Thanks,

Martyn

Moderator's note by Mike (Mav): Post released from Spam Filter.

[#2]

Hi @MartynF, I'm sorry that some of the mail isn't coming through.

If you log into your account portal online, there is an option to manage your mail. Within this is a 'spam' option and from there, there's a whitelist where you are able to add address to (needs to be the full email address or domain address).

Let us know how you get on with this.

[#3]

White listing doesn't appear to have any effect if you have discard obvious spam option ticked and the spam filters detect the messages as obvious spam.

[#4]

Hi Lauren,

Thanks for your reply and the details of the spam filter options on the account management.

For starters, I will say that it's been many years since I logged in to the e-mail management side of my account, to set up a second mailbox and aliases. Good to know that are some options for this feature.

I have checked the spam filter options. For reference they are currently set as follows:

Should spam filtering be enabled?

-Yes

Discard obvious spam

-On

Would you like messages identified as spam to be tagged?

- Add [-SPAM-] to the subject line

How would you like us to deal with messages identified as spam?

- Move to inbox

(Note, this was a change I made on Thursday evening, instead of 'move to the spam folder')

Aggressiveness of spam filter

- 1 (lowest)

Anti-virus filtering

-On

Whitelist:

-Added "chaoscards.co.uk" on Thursday evening

A newsletter from Chaos Cards was sent out on Friday but it did not reach me, as usual. Perhaps it was too soon for changes to take effect so we can wait until next week before concluding whether it has worked or not. Based on Maranello's post above, it is perhaps overridden by the "obvious spam" filter.

My wife has forwarded me the e-mail from her non-Plusnet account and that has come through fine, but obviously the header information and server route for the e-mail is completely different, even if the content is the same.

I may also try turning off the spam filter completely for a while. In theory that should reveal all...

To date, I have nothing in my inbox that has been tagged as spam recently, and no e-mails whatsoever in my webmail's junk mail folder. My local junk folder in Thunderbird is also empty; I'm not sure if it synchronises with the server's junk folder, as I've never seen any e-mails in it!

I have received the other 'missing' newsletter today (from a different company), which can only be from resubscribing to their e-mail. I never unsubscribed so can't understand why it stopped at all, unless I never received a GDPR-related opt-in. I certainly didn't miss it myself because I don't receive a high volume of e-mail (i.e. nothing goes unnoticed).

Hopefully we'll get to the bottom of this but it may take some time...

Regards,

Martyn

[#5]

Hi @MartynF,

I'm glad to see that you've been able to locate these settings and make some changes already. If you have any further queries whilst carrying out your own testing then please don't hesitate to get back in touch with us and we'll be happy to offer assistance.

[#6]

Hello,

Several weeks have passed since I last posted, and there has been no change at all. I still don't receive these newsletters, despite the inclusion on the whitelist of the sender's domain.

Just now, I have disabled the "discard obvious spam" option following Maranello's comments above, so we will see if that makes any difference.

I also tried to subscribe again to the same newsletter using a new address, test@<username>.plus.com which will come to the same inbox. This is to work around any anomalies that may exist at the company's mailing list with my main address.

I'll report back again in a few weeks...

Meanwhile, I'll get to work on updating my SMTP settings following the recent PlusNet e-mail. I wasn't sure whether to take action or not, until I checked the forums here and saw clarification about the new SPF record, and the PlusNet SMTP being opened up to free accounts. It has never worked for me before so I send using VM's SMTP as they are my ISP. Some kind of indication of a deadline for these changes would have been nice too. I don't know when "soon" is!

Martyn

[#7]

Thanks for the updates and please do keep us posted. 

Cheers for the feedback on the email relating to SPF records. I've passed on some feedback regarding the fact that we've not communicated a date, I'll post back here as soon as I've found out more. 

[#8]

Thanks Adam.

Another small update: As well as turning off the "obvious spam filter", I also tried subscribing with test@<username>.plus.com as mentioned above. This is the 3rd address I've signed up with (all for the same PN account). A short time later, I started receiving their e-mails. This is interesting, since I tried this approach before around a year ago and it didn't work.

So I'm not sure which part 'fixed' it. I haven't received any e-mails on either my primary address or the other test e-mail address I tried last year, both of which are already subscribed to the newsletter (I can't re-enter them on the website, says I'm already subscribed). So it suggests the "obvious spam filter" is not the reason, but something to do with the new e-mail.

I'll switch the "obvious spam filter" back on and see if the e-mails dry up again on my 'test' account.

It's certainly a puzzle!

Martyn

[#9]

@MartynF,

I've just been having a look at the settings in the email component our side. I've made a small change which is to apply the spam settings that you changed earlier to copy them across the email addresses. I've also refreshed the mail component too to see if this makes any difference. 

I'm just wondering (and it's probably a very silly question) if you've tried unsubscribing from the lists, maybe from an older email, and once the unsub completes try resubscribing again from the address you want to receive the mail?

[#10]

Thanks for the update on this earlier in the week, Joe. I'm still getting a single message on my test address, but no other changes to report.

Like you, I thought about trying to unsubscribe from my primary address using a link in a previous newsletter, but sadly I don't appear to have kept any. Unless I went to an old PC backup, but that would be a lot of effort to recover an e-mail, due to how they are stored - not as simple as a single file.

I will get back in touch with the company to see if they can do something at their end again.

At least I am receiving their newsletter now, it's just the occasional member-only messages & offers that I won't see. I get order confirmations, just not the various marketing messages.