My emails diverted to spam folders of friends and colleagues

[bruncher]

Is there a simple answer to how this happens? Some of my emails have been diverted to spam folders of colleagues and friends, which is causing me a lot of grief.

Is there a simple way to investigate, a process of elimination I can follow to sort it out? I actually pay for the service, from mail.com (part of 1&1) and I probably should have left years ago.

[UncleEbenezer]

There are many different spam filters, and ways of deploying them. An answer for one may be wholly irrelevant to another.

One thing to look out for is whether the spam filter reports on the 'spam score' of each message it processes. For example, spamassassin inserts its own message header with a breakdown of how spammy the message looks, and where the threshold is set. If you can dig up some such headers from those who are rejecting you, they'll tell you what's wrong in some detail.

Otherwise, just avoid looking like a spammer.

[Itsallaguess]

Is there a simple answer to how this happens? Some of my emails have been diverted to spam folders of colleagues and friends, which is causing me a lot of grief.

Is there a simple way to investigate, a process of elimination I can follow to sort it out? I actually pay for the service, from mail.com (part of 1&1) and I probably should have left years ago.

Most email providers have a 'whitelist' system, where your colleagues that are being affected by this issue can often highlight your email address as a 'known-good' address, and will usually thus avoid the Spam folder from that point, and your emails should behave as you'd expect them to.

You've not said which provider your friends are using, but this is something I'd look into. We could help here if you let us know which email provider they are with?

Cheers,

Itsallaguess

[Nocton]

First of all, as users your friends and colleagues should always look in their spam/junk folders as there is no telling what may end up there in my experience. You can study an email for clues and be none the wiser. If they are using a fully-featured email program like Thunderbird then they can direct what happens to messages categorised as spam/junk - they don't need to go to ths spam/junk folder.
Secondly, ask anyone who has had this problem with your emails to add your address to their address book and check that their spam settings allow all emails from addresses in the address book to not be marked as spam (that is usually the default option). The problem is at least as much with your friends and colleagues as with you.

[Infrasonic]

Some of the webmail services like Outlook.com have a tiered spam detection system.

So you can whitelist an email by clicking not spam / trust content from this sender and it will go to your inbox, but if it's from a organisation that regularly sends out marketing emails it may well end up getting spam foldered the next time anyway. I've had this happen a lot.

If you are in regular contact with people and getting spam diverted, that may be the issue. The other end may think they have fully whitelisted you when in reality it's only partial.

Putting contacts into the address book to fully whitelist them is the only way round this issue really, especially if the other end are running an 'exclusive' inbox. (Address book only).

You could add something to that effect as part of your email signature if it is a regular issue.

[GoSeigen]

Is there a simple answer to how this happens? Some of my emails have been diverted to spam folders of colleagues and friends, which is causing me a lot of grief.

Is there a simple way to investigate, a process of elimination I can follow to sort it out? I actually pay for the service, from mail.com (part of 1&1) and I probably should have left years ago.

bruncher, who is your email host? I ask because my mother has recently had a superficially similar issue with one of her friends using btinternet.com. She has corresponded with her for years, then out of the blue one of her messages bounced because it "looked like SPAM". After that her own ISP reported issues relaying to that address, presumably because she'd been blocked by the recipient's servers.

Does this look similar to what you're experiencing? Basically I'm wondering if certain ISPs have recently installed new SPAM-combatting software on their servers which is proving a bit too zealous in its efforts!

GS

[bruncher]

I have been using mail.com (owned by 1&1) premium service for maybe 20 years.

If my emails were being bounced back to me I would at least be aware, but it's the not-knowing that is intolerable. I don't want to follow up every email with a phone call to confirm receipt.

So I think I will finally switch - mail.com email is quite primitive e.g. you cannot compose an email in a separate window, you can only have one window at a time. The support is poor.

I could just get Gmail like everyone else, but I object to being monitored. I have bought some domain names and hosting, and the next step is which mail client to use - on laptop and Android phone. Any recommendations would be much appreciated.

[Infrasonic]

You'll need an email client that can do delivery and read receipts (and the other end to not block them) if you want to confirm you haven't been banished to the spam folder repeatedly.

My domain provider has just been offering me a free month of MS Exchange 2019 use, so that might be an option for you if you could get a similar deal to try it out and see what the benefits are for your situation.

I used to use Outlook desktop PIM years ago which did receipts, but I just use the W10 Mail app now which won't do d/r receipts afaik.
No doubt the paid for Office 365 or Google G-suite options would have a receipts option, I've not used either though.
Thunderbird is another popular free desktop email client, but others with more detailed knowledge of it should comment there on its strengths and weaknesses.

On Android I use the free Outlook and Gmail apps. (I use both for redundancy, sometimes there are sync/alerts issues and important emails can be missed, although it's not happened for quite a while as the updates have fixed the bugs over the years).
Again no d/r receipts afaik.

[bruncher]

Does a delivery receipt differentiate between safe delivery to an inbox and safe delivery to a spam folder?

[Infrasonic]

Does a delivery receipt differentiate between safe delivery to an inbox and safe delivery to a spam folder?

I don't know for sure, it would seem daft if it showed delivered to a spam folder rather than exclusively to an inbox, but maybe do some research there to be on the safe side.
Apparently some SMS (text) delivery receipts don't guarantee that the mobile handset at the other end has received it, only that the network has, which seems a bit chocolate teapot...

[JohnB]

Gmail are getting worse and worse at labelling as false positive spam, they don't even do the obvious whitelisting of addresses in your address book, or validating large organisations like Barclaycard.

I went to the extreme of changing my email of 20 years to get one where the spam volumes were low enough to mean I could check the spam filter easily. Sadly I'm trapped in the Gmail system for ease of use across devices.

None of which really helps if you are the sender, other than encouraging your recipients to complain to their providers. No provider will advertise details of their filter, as that would just allow spammers to circumvent it.

[JohnB]

Delivery receipts that did distinguish between spam and inbox would allow spammers to probe the filters, so I can see why providers would hide this information. And you could be offended to discover your nephew filters all your postings about your garden to spam too!

[Infrasonic]

I use WhatsApp with a couple of people for business things where we never bother to email each other any more.

End to end encrypted, deliver and read receipts (well two ticks that go from grey to blue) and you can see when the other person has been or is online.
I use the web facility the most, the phone app when out and about. Easy to set up groups as well and add or drop people as required and do attachments.
There's a back up to Google Drive option as well, which it appears to do every day at around 2.30am. It reinstalled my whole WA history when I had to factory reset my phone.
https://web.whatsapp.com/

[Infrasonic]

Gmail are getting worse and worse at labelling as false positive spam, they don't even do the obvious whitelisting of addresses in your address book, or validating large organisations like Barclaycard.

I went to the extreme of changing my email of 20 years to get one where the spam volumes were low enough to mean I could check the spam filter easily. Sadly I'm trapped in the Gmail system for ease of use across devices.

None of which really helps if you are the sender, other than encouraging your recipients to complain to their providers. No provider will advertise details of their filter, as that would just allow spammers to circumvent it.

Basic headers from Google+ email message to my main Gmail account.
Subject: Your personal Google+ account is going away on April 2, 2019
SPF: PASS with IP ********* Learn more
DKIM: 'PASS' with domain plus.google.com Learn more
DMARC: 'PASS' Learn more

Unlike say free Outlook.com it doesn't appear the free Gmail labels DMARC messages with 'from trusted sender' (maybe it does with the paid for G-Suite option?)

With the banks and other commercial organisations they only send a certain % via DMARC, probably to stay ISO/GDPR compliant where absolutely necessary.
If you look at the full message source headers you'll see different SMTP server addresses from the same company dependant on whether it is DMARC or not. So there has been a conscious decision there from the send end, probably financial...

[bruncher]

Has anyone tried eM Client ?

[ReformedCharacter]

Has anyone tried eM Client ?

I was asked to help a friend who uses eM Client because it had stopped working. The problem was that MS had changed some details of their email handling and it took no more than an upgrade to the latest version to make it work again. My impression was that it was rather complicated unless you really want chat, calendaring, tasks etc. as well as email.

RC

[Infrasonic]

On the receipts front, first hit from a Google search, definitely not an endorsement, I'd research via decent respected review sites first.
https://www.getnotify.com/

Sending an email is probably the easiest form of communication nowadays. But when you send an email, usually you don't know whether or not your email has been delivered successfully and read by the recipient. GetNotify.com is a Free Email Tracking service which notifies you when the email you send gets read. We send you an email read notification as soon as the the recipient of your sent email opens and reads your email

[UncleEbenezer]

Does a delivery receipt differentiate between safe delivery to an inbox and safe delivery to a spam folder?

Delivery receipts aren't really used on the 'net at large. IME only scammers ever request them. Modern users want privacy and security, not handing out sensitive information to every automated bot probing for suckers. You can request it, but the best you can hope for is that your recipient's email client notifies them of the request and prompts them whether to respond. And then that the recipient doesn't immediately bin it unopened as soon as it prompts them.

If they still have a place anywhere today, it's on an intranet. But I've not encountered it anywhere I've worked.

(bear in mind, email standards go back to the early 1980s, long before security and privacy were ever issues, but when many users had intermittent or less-than-reliable connections).

[Slarti]

On the receipts front, first hit from a Google search, definitely not an endorsement, I'd research via decent respected review sites first.
https://www.getnotify.com/

Sending an email is probably the easiest form of communication nowadays. But when you send an email, usually you don't know whether or not your email has been delivered successfully and read by the recipient. GetNotify.com is a Free Email Tracking service which notifies you when the email you send gets read. We send you an email read notification as soon as the the recipient of your sent email opens and reads your email

Thanks for that, just added getnotify.com to my email blacklists

Slarti

[Infrasonic]

On the receipts front, first hit from a Google search, definitely not an endorsement, I'd research via decent respected review sites first.
https://www.getnotify.com/

Sending an email is probably the easiest form of communication nowadays. But when you send an email, usually you don't know whether or not your email has been delivered successfully and read by the recipient. GetNotify.com is a Free Email Tracking service which notifies you when the email you send gets read. We send you an email read notification as soon as the the recipient of your sent email opens and reads your email

Thanks for that, just added getnotify.com to my email blacklists

Slarti

Yeah its respect for the recipients privacy is somewhere close to zero...