Preventing incorrect classifcation as spam.

Published by: smith 2010-03-19

What steps should a systems administrator take to prevent his or her company's e-mail from being filtered as spam/UCE/bulk-mail. I want a general list of pitfalls to avoid that will increase the likelyhood that your e-mail will be filtered into a spam folder by Yahoo, Google, Hotmail and the like. Included in that list, I want to know if there is an increased danger in this scenario: the domain name of the server sending the e-mail is different than the e-mail of the "from" address. Example: the header says, "Recieved: From company_A.com" and also says "From: user.name@company_B.com".

The Wrong Idea of a University | Standpoint.Online::
Jun 14, 2008 according to a prescribed set of degree classification criteria, . you are a human visitor and to prevent automated spam submissions.
http://www.standpointmag.co.uk/critique-juneHOME

Thanks kindageeky. That is good information. Also, just FYI, I posted this question because I coudln't find a good search phrase for this topic. I have now found that searching for the words "avoiding spam filter" is a good way to start.

Approaches addressing spam::
File Format: Microsoft Word - View as HTMLA second dimension for classification is if they rely on prevention or on detection tactics and providing them with suggestions on how to prevent spam .
http://www.internetconferences.net/past/hawaii2004_2.docHOME

Kompass Business Search - Company directory - Products&Services ::
The search is made in the Kompass classification system (over 53000 . The problem is probably due to a program preventing popups from appearing.
http://www.kompass.ca/en/about/index_faq.htmlHOME

There is definitely an increased risk of your email being treated as spam if you are using a from domain address that does not match the domain registration's IP range. As far as I know, SenderID / Sender Policy Framework is in the process of being adopted by GMail, Hotmail, and AOL ... don't know what Yahoo is actually doing in this area. SPF is a superset of SenderID and basically uses DNS data for the From domain to validate if a particular IP is authorized to send mail from it ... details here http://www.openspf.org/faq.html Some senders have said in the recent past that they plan to block non-SPF validated email, but at the very least it is being used in spam scoring (determining the probability that an email is spam), as Gmail, hotmail, and AOL all have spf validation headers in received mail. Another thing you can do to protect yourself is to pay to be bonded as a non-spammer ... I think this is a little expensive, and there are some liabilities you assume if you undertake this, so have your legal team look into this before signing up (http://www.bondedsender.com/). Finally, you can monitor spam blacklists, there are a few tools out there to do this, but off hand I can't remember the name of the one I've used. Hope this helps, Kindageeky

By the way, there are some hoops you can jump through to SPF validation even if you have FROM addresses foreign from your own. As I don't want to help spammers out there by posting this technique publicly, shoot me a gmail at my username less the "-ga" if you'd like details.