Overenthusiastic Spam blocking

[#1]

I've just tried to respond to a message I received from Gloucestershire Police, which itself was tagged as Spam, only to find my response blocked by PlusNet.
Why?
Once I deleted the original text it went as normal.

[#2]

Text of email:
This message comes to you from the Gloucestershire Constabulary. Our telephone number for non-emergencies is 101 and calls cost 15p each. Visit the Constabulary website at www.gloucestershire.police.uk ;                                                     This is a watchword message sent on Thursday 12th June 2014
Neighbourhood & Home Watch Week is an annual campaign that takes place during the week of the summer solstice. In 2014 it will run from 14-22 June.
This year the theme for the week will be 'Fraud & Cybercrime'.
For more information visit the Ourwatch or Cyberstreetwise websites.
http://www.ourwatch.org.uk/about_us/projects_campaigns/neighbourhood_home_watch_week/
www.cyberstreetwise.com
End of message


************************************************************************************
This email, together with any files or attachments transmitted with it, is intended solely for the addressee.  If you are not the intended recipient, please delete the email and notify the originator immediately.  Please note that any unauthorised copying, disclosure or other processing of this information may be unlawful.  Unless otherwise stated, any opinions expressed in this email are those of the originator and not necessarily of Gloucestershire Constabulary.  Although the sender has taken steps to protect the material sent, there is no guarantee that the communication will be virus-free.  Gloucestershire Constabulary reserves the right to monitor all email activity and content in accordance with current legislation.
***********************************************************************************

[#3]

It seems logical that a message tagged as spam on receipt is likely to be rated similarly if sent on, so blocked by the outbound filter.
Have you reported the original message as 'not spam' via the link in webmail?

[#4]

i] depends I suppose whether the sender or the message is the trigger
ii] yes

[#5]

If it was the sender's mail transfer agent that was suspect I'd have expected Plusnet's Cloudmark appliances to reject the message at source rather than accept and tag as spam. However that is just a guess.

[#6]

The problem is with the domain www.cyberstreetwise.com

[3vXdu_uoAAAA Message contains spam URL reported by Cloudmark Global Threat Network

I've submitted the URL as legit to prevent it happening again.
If Discard Obvious Spam was enabled, I've a suspicion that this email wouldn't have made it to your inbox. Even so, it's a tad odd that it's rejected on the outbound but not the inbound. It may be that it wasn't considered 'bad' at the time it hit your inbox.

[#7]

Thank you

[#8]

I am also not impressed by the overenthusiastic spam blocking, I have recently not been receiving emails from my brother. I narrowed it down to when he uses his business email (he's self employed). What I found was even more amazing was that I couldn't send any emails which contained his domain name, even just the domain in the body would cause it to fail, frankly this is ridiculous. I've checked to see if his domain is black listed and it isn't, so why are you blocking it?
This is the error I get, although the code changes.

Quote

"An error occurred while sending mail. The mail server responded: HwKw1o0021ARkfo01wKxlh message rejected due to spam or virus. If you believe this is in error please login to your portal or contact your ISP support team.. Please check the message and try again."

I've also opened a ticket regarding this issue, but decided to post on here as my brother wanted to make his voice heard, so here's what he has to say:

Quote

As you will see from Ticket No./Question ID: 87537261, I have recently discovered that PlusNet are silently blocking ALL inbound emails that contain my domain name and that outbound emails produce a send error if they contain my domain name. Whilst I appreciate the need to block genuine spam, such a sledgehammer approach is totally out of order.  You have to appreciate that the owners and users of domain names and email addresses that have been spoofed are just as much victims of spam as the recipients and that such blanket blocking negatively affects us and could have serious financial consequences for those of us whose domains represent businesses. Furthermore, such blanket blocking stops people receiving warnings not to go to a particular website or open emails from a particular sender, which actually makes the Internet LESS safe! My ire isn’t just about my brother not getting my emails; it’s not even about just my domain being blocked.  No, I’m incensed that potentially thousands of domain names, many of which may be small businesses like mine, are being unnecessary blocked in this way! Please replace this appalling approach with a much more targeted method.  As a long-time user of the Cloudmark Desktop anti-spam service, I can thoroughly recommend it as a highly targeted approach which produces extremely few false positives due to the fact that real people decide what is and isn’t spam.  They do provide services for ISPs and email service providers, although your website implies you use Cloudmark, I can’t believe they they are using this approach. I was further incensed when I phoned PlusNet to be told that as I was not a PlusNet customer there was nothing they could do and that my brother would have to sort it out!  Again, this is incredibly wrong!  This issue no doubt affects a great many people who are not PlusNet customers and, since it is nothing to do with a specific PlusNet account, we should be able to resolve it with you directly.

[#9]

Well I got a reply to my support ticket today, unfortunately they didn't read my question, so I got a reply asking for information that's already there!

[#10]

Quote from: Ronski

I am also not impressed by the overenthusiastic spam blocking, I have recently not been receiving emails from my brother. I narrowed it down to when he uses his business email (he's self employed). What I found was even more amazing was that I couldn't send any emails which contained his domain name, even just the domain in the body would cause it to fail, frankly this is ridiculous. I've checked to see if his domain is black listed and it isn't, so why are you blocking it?

Because it's falling foul of this.

Quote from: Ronski

I've also opened a ticket regarding this issue, but decided to post on here as my brother wanted to make his voice heard, so here's what he has to say: As you will see from Ticket No./Question ID: 87537261, I have recently discovered that PlusNet are silently blocking ALL inbound emails that contain my domain name and that outbound emails produce a send error if they contain my domain name.

Inbound should have resulted in a 5xx rejection at the SMTP level AIUI.

Quote from: Ronski

Whilst I appreciate the need to block genuine spam, such a sledgehammer approach is totally out of order.  You have to appreciate that the owners and users of domain names and email addresses that have been spoofed are just as much victims of spam as the recipients and that such blanket blocking negatively affects us and could have serious financial consequences for those of us whose domains represent businesses.

The alternative would be a *much* higher volume of spam hitting customers' mailboxes. The option does exist to disable the filtering however that won't help for the outbound issues and the inbound implications will be no doubt be obvious to you.

Quote from: Ronski

Please replace this appalling approach with a much more targeted method.  As a long-time user of the Cloudmark Desktop anti-spam service, I can thoroughly recommend it as a highly targeted approach which produces extremely few false positives due to the fact that real people decide what is and isn’t spam.  They do provide services for ISPs and email service providers, although your website implies you use Cloudmark, I can’t believe they they are using this approach.

Cloudmark's desktop products are an entirely different solution and whilst they may work well for individual users/organisations, they're not suitable for us.

Quote from: Ronski

I was further incensed when I phoned PlusNet to be told that as I was not a PlusNet customer there was nothing they could do and that my brother would have to sort it out!  Again, this is incredibly wrong!  This issue no doubt affects a great many people who are not PlusNet customers and, since it is nothing to do with a specific PlusNet account, we should be able to resolve it with you directly.

Your ticket was handled very badly, and for that I apologise. I shall try and pass some feedback onto the support analysts involved.

[#11]

Thanks for the apology and reply Bob.