At 5:23 PM -0400 10/7/2008, Dan wrote:
>At 5:17 PM -0600 10/5/2008, Stephen Conrad wrote:
>>The email is from: Beliefnet, Chicken Soup for the Soul
>
>Ok.  I like soup, so I just signed up for their daily newsletter 
>using this GMail account.  We'll see what happens.

I have now received two emails from beliefnet, so far.

*Both* emails were flagged as spam by *both* GMail and Eudora.  I did 
the "not spam" thing in Gmail, and told Eudora to accept things from 
beliefnet.com.  We'll see what happens with future deliveries.

Upon inspection of the emails, I can see why GMail *really* wants to 
flag them as Spam....

1.  The confirmation email is NOT really a confirmation.  At that 
point, you're signed-up - period.  There is NO actual confirmation 
link in the email.  By not requiring an actual confirmation response, 
Beliefnet is a haven for people that want to sign up their friends to 
have them flooded with unsolicited emails!

2.  The newsletter (Chicken Soup for the Soul) is written in poorly 
formed HTML.  That's why Eudora nailed it - it contains some 
intentionally malformed tags (a spammer trick to try to get past spam 
filters!).

3.  The newsletter's signal-to-noise ratio is VERY poor.  Signal: a 
single headline and one partial paragraph (2 1/2 sentences) with a 
come-on / read-more link to view the rest of the article.  Noise: 
*SEVEN* ads!

4.  They're hosted by DataPipe.  A bit of Googling ... that hosting 
company smells legit.  But when I search my spam "archive" (four 
years worth of spam), I find over 1000 spams that originated from 
their IP block, most from this year alone.  So they either are a 
spammer or they leave their smtp servers open so spammers can use 
them.

As to training GMail to accept these messages,,, we'll see.  To be 
honest, kudos to GMail for *just* flagging that newsletter as spam. 
Amazing that their initial server-based filters don't just bitbucket 
them.

FWIW,
- Dan.
-- 
- Psychoceramic Emeritus; South Jersey, USA, Earth

--~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~
You received this message because you are subscribed Low End Mac's G3-5 List, a 
group for those using G3, G4, and G5 desktop Macs - with a particular focus on 
Power Macs.
The list FAQ is at http://lowendmac.com/lists/g-list.shtml and our netiquette 
guide is at http://www.lowendmac.com/lists/netiquette.shtml
To post to this group, send email to [email protected]
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
For more options, visit this group at 
http://groups.google.com/group/g3-5-list?hl=en
Low End Mac RSS feed at feed://lowendmac.com/feed.xml
-~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---

Reply via email to