possible spam filtering of download emails

[mark stevens]

We've had a number of occurances where receipt emails containing digital download links have failed to arrive in customers' inboxes.

Checks with our hosting provider seem to prove that the mails are being sent. One theory is that the lengthy string of random characters in the link are being trapped by spam filters at the reveiving ISPs. If that's the case has anoyne any thoughts on how to solve this please?

thanks
Mark

[BeerHunter]

I'm not sure how you could get around this other than stating somewhere that your clients should be aware that this could happen.

The problem is that SPAM filtering is controlled by the receiving domain and you have no control over how sensitive they have configured it to be. You may even be dealing with a client that has setup his or her own SPAM filters which could be an even bigger problem with false positives.

[PA.com]

How interesting, I have just found a very similar thing for the first time today. I am finding that my customers in the UK are able to download files fine from their receipt emails; a section appears at the bottom of the email saying 'click on this link to download'...etc
However, a customer from the United States ordered a download file today, and while the email did actually arrive, the section that normally includes the links had simply disappeared. I simulated exactly the same order myself and the email came through fine to me, links and all.
Interestingly though, the text from Actinic saying 'one or more of your items is available for download now...etc.' was also missing from this customer's receipt email. This I found slightly confusing as I didn't see how this text could have been affected by spam filtering.
Any further suggestions would be welcomed.

Thanks, Paul

[BeerHunter]

The included links could be filtered out by the clients e-mail program. I know some e-mail programs will strip this out since it could contain links to compromised site. Its a security thing. So yes, the potential is there for a few problems.

SPAM filters - falsely detecting as SPAM
E-mail client - not allowing links imbedded in messages
Anti-virus/Phishing - false positives made by client anti-virus
Corporate Anti-virus/SPAM filter - The possibility exists that the message might not even make it to the desktop.

In my case (as a client) all my filtered mail ends up in "quarantine" which I check for false positives. If I see a message that was falsely detected as SPAM, I can move the message to a "whitelist" and it will not be blocked again but this is only my setup and others may have a different configuration.

For those of you that send out "Account Details" you may also be sending mail that ends up getting filtered out so it is not just a digital download problem, it is an e-mail problem and this problem exists outside of Actinic.

[Mike Hughes]

There are some simple steps you can take to avoid the problem though.

1. Run your email text through a spam filter checker. Spam filtering on content is usually fairly crude and you need to make sure you avoid certain trigger words or phrases (like 'free' , 'click here to unsubscribe', 'sales', etc and of course all the 'viagra', 'pron' variations etc).

There's an online checker here http://www.lyris.com/contentchecker/ you can use.

2. Don't use 'sales@domain.com' as your email address. Microsoft used that a few years ago in outlook as a filter for spam and would redirect or delete any emails coming from a 'sales@' email address. It drove me mad for a while as I was sure I saw emails come in on stuff I'd bought only for them to disappear as soon as they arrived in my inbox.

Mike

[PA.com]

Thanks very much Lonnie and Mike, that's all really useful information to know regarding filtering and SPAM etc.
My email address does happen to be sales@..... so I shall look into the possibility of altering this if I find the problem escalating. Would never have occured to me that this could be a problem, but it does make sense now I think about it.

Cheers,

Paul

[mark stevens]

thanks everyone, I guess there's no easy answer to the issue. Thans for the pointers.


Mark