Attention gmail, yahoo, and other email service users

[WebSlave]

I've been getting a number of emails lately from members who apparently have forgotten their password and the password recovery routine on this site no longer works for them because they are not getting the email notices to reset their passwords. Unfortunately the problem appears to be on gmail and/or yahoo's end in the way those services determine what is legitimate traffic and what is spam. Also, apparently the individual users can somewhat control how their email inbox handles such traffic, since some gmail and yahoo mail users are not having a problem, and others are. So I presume there are user settings available that determine if not what is spam and what is not, then what to DO with such emails that are presumed to be spam.

Apparently high volume message board systems like this are often treated as spam sources by these free email services simply because of the quantity of traffic coming from them from thread update notices, pm notices, etc. There is also likely a problem caused indirectly by these free email services in that many members will sign up using an email address created solely to sign up and then abandoned. Those email addresses will eventually expire, and then any emails sent from this site to said email addresses will bounce back, likely flagging gmail and yahoo as being probably sourced from spam generators. I just got done trying to figure out how to contact gmail customer service about this and just flat out gave up. They don't WANT to help, apparently, because if there is a method to contact them online about such issues, darn if I could find it. So this puts the burden on YOU to be able to keep an email channel open between yourself and this site.

So here's the problem. If you are using gmail, yahoo, and any other email service that has very strict spam definitions, and you set up your email folder to automatically delete anything THEY believe to be spam, you will not receive any emails from this site, nor myself if you contact me through this site. Lost your password? Unfortunately, there is nothing I can do about it because although I will get YOUR email, you will not get my reply about fixing that problem. Subscribed to threads here to be notified about replies to it? Too bad, but you won't get those notices. Signed up to be a sponsor of a forum here? Unfortunately, you are not going to get my email requesting the info I need to set it up for you.

There is NOTHING I can do about what those services are doing to emails issued by this site or myself through this site. Their attitude is apparently that they are offering a free service, so if you don't like the fact that they are filtering out YOUR email, tough on you. Maybe you can mitigate this problem a bit by checking your spam settings to at least dump potential spam into a separate folder that you can review now and again. But if you have it set to auto-delete, well, again, there is nothing I can do for you when you find you need to contact me via email. Any and all email replies will go into the dumpster that YOU set up.

If you find that you cannot make adjustments to your email settings in order to effect receipt of emails from this site, then my suggestion to you is to find a different email provider. If you are not getting emails from this site, what other emails are being blocked that you are oblivious to?

Sorry about this, but the internet seems to be getting more and more user hostile. Online entities appear to be basically shutting off online support, and pretty much not even wanting to hear about problems with their services. So if you use such services, you are pretty much on your own.

So please check you spam settings now if you use such services. You may want to specifically whitelist [email protected] to try to ensure that you get email notices from this site. So yeah, do this NOW. Once you are locked out because you have forgotten your password, you will have no way to be able to directly contact me about it. Or, more accurately, you WILL be able to contact me, but I will have no way to contact YOU via a reply to help you.

So, a word to the wise.....

 

[Ed Clark]

No problems here using yahoo.

 

[lovin2act]

I'm on gmail and always get emails from here no problem. I always check my spam folder everyday too just to make sure nothing slips through in there, and if I find something I want to be notified of I simply mark it not spam and I am good to go there out.

 

[WebSlave]

Yeah, I suspect the majority of the problem may be because some members just set the way spam is handled in their mail reader too strictly. I'm presuming that gmail and the like have optional settings about what to do with spam. Of course, once someone does that, they have virtually cut off communication with this site, and there is not any way to alert them that they need to make a change in order to resume communications. They've basically painted themselves into a corner.

So, I'm sure a lot of people are grumbling about me not answering their emails. Honestly any more when I see an email from gmail, yahoo, etc. I first send a very brief reply just to see if they even receive it. No sense wasting my time with a long involved answer if they aren't going to get it any way.

I asked my programmer about this problem and he said it is common to all sites that have fairly high traffic. What happens in a lot of cases is that people will sign up on a site, frequent it for a bit, generating notification emails for each and every thread they participate in or are interested in, and then when their interest wanes, instead of coming back to the site to cancel the subscription notifications, will simply start marking such emails as SPAM in order to stop receiving them. So the email services then start taking note of those spam claims and then classify the site as being a spam generator because of the thoughtless actions of those former members. Not much that can be done about it from the forum site's end, unfortunately. Maybe if the spam blocking algorithms of those email sites had a bit more intelligence about them they could see what was actually going on. But honestly, they probably really don't give a damn either way.

Seriously, if it wouldn't be akin to cutting off your nose to spite your face, the best thing to do would be to just block those email providers completely. But certainly that just is not feasible to do, unfortunately.

Of course, the irony to this is that nearly all the SPAM we all get comes THROUGH those very same email providers.