Back when NinerNet started in this business in 1996, we had to do everything for our clients, and I do mean everything. I’m not going to list “everything” because you’ll stop reading, but one example is creating an email account. This was because control panels hadn’t been invented yet.
Now we have control panels, but because it seems that email “just works”, people don’t take the time to look at their control panels to determine why things “just work”. Let’s leave aside the mail service providers that “just don’t work”, as illustrated in our last post.
One thing that isn’t quite 100% automated yet, because humans are still needed, is reading the minds of email senders. Incoming spam is pretty close to 100% automated thanks to programs like SpamAssassin and blacklists. Handling incoming email is close to 100% automated because the onus is on the senders to do something to ensure that their messages are not seen as spam. It’s not a big secret that, for example, this subject indicates that the message it contains is probably spam: “GET RISH QUICK!!! MILIONS WHILE YOU SLEEP!!!!!” So guess what? You don’t receive messages with that subject because they’re caught and deleted by spam filters. (Yes, those spelling mistakes are intentional.) If you use a bulk mail service provider to send mass emails to your clients, as you should if you do send them, they try to educate you on what markers will trigger spam filters, and they also usually provide some sort of testing platform that will analyse your message to determine whether or not it might be caught by a spam filter.
But two things blow me away:
- When clients send emails to themselves, and
- When those emails are marked as spam so they never arrive.
Now, it does occur to me that maybe their using our system to test their email to see if it will be considered spam. But really, the examples we’ve seen are definitely not that! Most of the time they’re sending themselves a file that is attached. Why?! They obviously already have the file, so why are they sending it to themselves?!
The problem is that we don’t know if the client knows why they didn’t receive the message they sent themselves. Have they assumed that NinerNet “lost” it? I sure hope not, because we know exactly where it is and why it wasn’t delivered. And if the client logs into their control panel and looks at their “quarantined” messages, they’ll know as well!
Here’s an example of a message that a client has been sending themselves continually for about a week now:
Self-spam.
Here’s the plain-text view:
Content type: Spam Internal reference code for the message is 01478-17/tLRgpsMsQL9j First upstream SMTP client IP address: [160.242.61.xxx]:37436 Received trace: ESMTPSA://[160.242.61.xxx]:37436 Return-Path: <xxxx@xxxxxxhydraulics.com> From: wade <xxxx@xxxxxxhydraulics.com> The message has been quarantined as: tLRgpsMsQL9j The message WAS NOT relayed to: <xxxx@xxxxxxhydraulics.com>: 250 2.7.0 ok, discarded, id=01478-17 - spam Spam scanner report: Spam detection software, running on the system "nc036.ninernet.net", has identified this incoming email as spam. The original message has been attached to this so you can view it or label similar future email. If you have any questions, see the administrator of that system for details. Content preview: [...] Content analysis details: (4.3 points, 5.0 required) pts rule name description ---- ---------------------- -------------------------------------------------- -1.0 ALL_TRUSTED Passed through trusted hosts only via SMTP -1.9 BAYES_00 BODY: Bayes spam probability is 0 to 1% [score: 0.0000] 0.1 MIME_HTML_MOSTLY BODY: Multipart message mostly text/html MIME 0.0 HTML_MESSAGE BODY: HTML included in message 1.7 HTML_IMAGE_ONLY_08 BODY: HTML: images with 400-800 bytes of words 0.8 MPART_ALT_DIFF BODY: HTML and text parts are different 0.5 MISSING_MID Missing Message-Id: header 1.8 MISSING_SUBJECT Missing Subject: header 2.3 EMPTY_MESSAGE Message appears to have no textual parts 0.0 TO_NO_BRKTS_HTML_IMG To: lacks brackets and HTML and one image
Let’s analyse each of these points on which the email message was scored for spam. Let me say first of all that negative scores are good, so we won’t waste our time with those. I’m also going to focus on only the scores above 1:
1.7 HTML_IMAGE_ONLY_08 BODY: HTML: images with 400-800 bytes of words
* If your message is just an image it probably won’t get through. You need to add text so that the spam filter believes you’re explaining/describing the image.
1.8 MISSING_SUBJECT Missing Subject: header
* Use a freaking subject! If you’re really just sending a message to yourself, mash some keys in the subject line! It doesn’t matter what they are.
2.3 EMPTY_MESSAGE Message appears to have no textual parts
* Again, if only you yourself are going to see the message, mash some random keys in the body of your message.
Messages with a spam score over 3.5 are considered spam, and this message consistently receives the above score of 4.3. If this person would just do one of the things above — mash some keys in either the subject or body (or both!) — he/she would get his or her message. And yet, I get a copy of this spam report every time he/she tries. It’s frustrating, for me and (I assume) for the sender that never receives a copy of their message!
Of course, in line with the subject of this post, the sender can also log into the control panel, navigate to their quarantine, mark the message they sent to themself and “release” it.
