Replies to me getting bounced

dplusr · ‎10-10-2016

I've had a number of replies get bounced, to the same message that I sent out. I've checked and it was entirely innocuous and routine. I need to be able to receive responses reliably, so it's a concern that this could happen.

As a Scout leader, I manage my Troop using a system unrelated to Plusnet. I send bulk messages (several a week often) to the whole Troop using that system, so they come from a non-Plusnet address, but Reply-to my Plusnet address.

Several parents responded to a message last week, and their messages (to my Plusnet address) were bounced 552 Spam Message Rejected. Since the common element was my message that they probably quoted, I can only conclude that Plusnet misidentified my own text (which had, obviously, already passed the spam filters of the parents' systems on its way to them).

I've got the headers returned to one parent by Plusnet, but they don't help much beyond giving the above 552 code. There are no other obvious things of interest in them.

There are no obvious words that could be misidentified, nothing relating to sales and so on, and only one link (in my signature). It's very hard to think of a more boring outgoing message.

What can I do to prevent a repetition?

Townman · ‎22-08-2007

What is of significant interest is the SPAM signature from the headers.

Investigation of the cause also needs sender, subject and time for the tech guys.

@bobpullen - what is the most proficient way of having this examined please?

@dplusr wrote:

... I can only conclude that Plusnet misidentified my own text (which had, obviously, already passed the spam filters of the parents' systems on its way to them).

That somewhat presumes that the parent's inbound services...

Have spam filters
Have them enabled
Are fit for purpose

Not all spam filtering services are as searching as others, however Plusnet's third party spam filtering service learns from the community ... if someone somewhere has marked email associated with your email service as being spam (rather than unsubscribing) it is possible that you are encountering false positive detection.

Do the parents encountering this issue have anything in common (e.g. all Gmail or Outlook.com users)?

In another browser tab, login into the Plusnet user portal BEFORE clicking the fault & ticket links

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