Mail – The way They do it, the way We do it…

We used to do e-mail filtering the way Yahoo does it, get a spam on an IP address, block that address, although even then we didn’t leave a block in more than a week after the issue had been addressed.

Presently, we are not on any public blacklists, but Yahoo, ATT/SBC Global, which I have been told contracts with Yahoo for e-mail services (and MX servers for ATT/SBC global do point to servers in Yahoo’s domain) are still blocking us.  We also have about half a dozen pieces of mail in queue that Comcast is refusing.  Other than that, save for some servers that are temporarily down, everything else is going through.

I have gone through the removal procedures with these companies and followed them to the letter.  You can all see what that’s worth.  They’re too big to careOr possibly it is their business strategy to try to disrupt e-mail from smaller providers in order to gain a perceived advantage, they’re too big to block.  Well, no doubt the spammers see it as an advantage.

Our customers motivated me to change and modernize the way we do spam filtering, and it has resulted in both a significant reduction in spam and a reduction in lost/blocked legitimate e-mail.

Now instead of blocking a server wholesale, the way Yahoo and Comcast do, we look at each e-mail and score it based on over 100 different checks.  Then if the score exceeds a user defined value (that’s right, YOU can decide the spam threshold), we put it in a spam folder instead of your INBOX so you can still review the mail if you wish.

The only time we reject mail outright is if it contains a virus, and then we send notice to the sending party detailing which virus so they can clean their machine, or if the sending server is misconfigured in a way that makes it appear to be a forgery or unidentifiable (inconsistent DNS, EHLO).

Of course, Yahoo has the advantage of being free.  It’s hard to compete with free, even when there is a huge difference in service quality.  And that folks, is becoming a real frustration in running this business.

So I ask you, if you can’t reach people because of Yahoo’s unreasonable spam filtering policies, then I challenge you to bring them here.  Here, you won’t have your mail arbitrarily blocked.  You will get human help with technical issues.  You won’t have your mail mined to direct advertising at you or for any other purposes.  You can connect securely via SSL, and we transmit your e-mail to other sites securely via SSL IF their servers support it.