Thursday, May 8, 2003
The Most Irritating Spam Blocking System Ever Created
Posted by Jason Dunn in "UPDATE" @ 09:30 AM
Ok, I just have to come out and say this: those of you using spam blocking solutions that require me to authenticate email messages coming from the Pocket PC Thoughts server are just killing me. :| PLEASE, for the love of all things holy, everyone add the pocketpcthoughts.com domain to a white list or a list of trusted senders.
I cannot possibly spend the time necessary to authenticate, sign up, click on boxes, send carrier pigeons, or do whatever else each of these services require email senders to do. I appreciate your desire to be spam-free, I really do. These services work fine for small amounts of email going from person to person, but they wreak havoc with any sort of automated system (especially forum software). So, John using Mailsnare, you never got your forum registration message today, and I can't even add myself to your list of trusted senders because the email messages Mailsnare sends back have no instructions on how to do so, just a single line of text saying that I'm "not trusted". :roll:
And the person using the planetnerd.net domain? You've set your email account to spam@planetnerd, yet you have your account set to watch threads. So every single time our forum software sends you an update about a thread your watching, your server bounces the message, and it comes back to me. :| We've hacked up phpBB to completely hide email addresses - no one but admins can access it, ever. It would be a great help to the admin team here if everyone could verify the email address they have in their profile (click on Preferences in the upper right corner under the banner ad). Remember we use this email address for picking contest winners too, so it's important that it be valid.
This frustration also extends to those of you using auto-responders. Here's what happens: many of you turn on auto-responders before leaving your office for whatever reason, but you're still watching certain threads on the site. When that thread is updated, our server sends out an update email to the account you have on file. Your email server then politely sends an email response back to my server informing it that you're out of town, sick, or otherwise away, and that message gets forwarded to my email Inbox. Sometimes it happens multiple times because some email servers aren't smart enough to avoid a mail loops. People, people, people - these are email messages I really don't need to see. :wink: If possible, please add pocketpcthoughts.com to an ignore list for auto responders.
I adore and treasure our readers, but stuff like this taints the otherwise fun experience that is Pocket PC Thoughts. :mrgreen: I also don't mean to embarrass anyone, or to point fingers, but one of the limitations of phpBB is that I can't look up users based on their email address, so it's very hard to get in touch with certain users based on the limited amount of information that I have.
I cannot possibly spend the time necessary to authenticate, sign up, click on boxes, send carrier pigeons, or do whatever else each of these services require email senders to do. I appreciate your desire to be spam-free, I really do. These services work fine for small amounts of email going from person to person, but they wreak havoc with any sort of automated system (especially forum software). So, John using Mailsnare, you never got your forum registration message today, and I can't even add myself to your list of trusted senders because the email messages Mailsnare sends back have no instructions on how to do so, just a single line of text saying that I'm "not trusted". :roll:
And the person using the planetnerd.net domain? You've set your email account to spam@planetnerd, yet you have your account set to watch threads. So every single time our forum software sends you an update about a thread your watching, your server bounces the message, and it comes back to me. :| We've hacked up phpBB to completely hide email addresses - no one but admins can access it, ever. It would be a great help to the admin team here if everyone could verify the email address they have in their profile (click on Preferences in the upper right corner under the banner ad). Remember we use this email address for picking contest winners too, so it's important that it be valid.
This frustration also extends to those of you using auto-responders. Here's what happens: many of you turn on auto-responders before leaving your office for whatever reason, but you're still watching certain threads on the site. When that thread is updated, our server sends out an update email to the account you have on file. Your email server then politely sends an email response back to my server informing it that you're out of town, sick, or otherwise away, and that message gets forwarded to my email Inbox. Sometimes it happens multiple times because some email servers aren't smart enough to avoid a mail loops. People, people, people - these are email messages I really don't need to see. :wink: If possible, please add pocketpcthoughts.com to an ignore list for auto responders.
I adore and treasure our readers, but stuff like this taints the otherwise fun experience that is Pocket PC Thoughts. :mrgreen: I also don't mean to embarrass anyone, or to point fingers, but one of the limitations of phpBB is that I can't look up users based on their email address, so it's very hard to get in touch with certain users based on the limited amount of information that I have.
