Forum notifications ???

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freman
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Re: Forum notifications ???

Post by freman »

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But if I mark as Spam an email, what is responsible to send to the provider that have sent the email, this "spam notification".
I do not know this for a fact but I don't think the way user shuffles around his emails at home is sent back. That is just client side software trying to imitate your habits and get there before you. I really don't like software trying to think for me because it will be wrong a fair bit of the time and some emails can be vitally important. I don't want to find out a week later I missed an important meeting or a job because it fell foul of mentally challenged algo, whose author thinks he knows what I want to do.

If you look at the full list of headers of an email you will see lots of stuff created by the receiving server ( not the user's email client, or the webmail front-end ). Relays may stick their 2c in there too.

eg.

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X-VR-SPAMSTATE OK
X-VR-SPAMSCORE 0
X-VR-SPAMCLAUSE gggruggvucftvghtrhhoucdtuddrgedvfedrfeefiedgudeifecutefuodetggdotefrodftvfcurfhrohhfihhlvgemucfqggfjpdevjffgvefmvefgnecuuegrihhlohhuthemucehtddtnecunecujfgurhepuffvhfhrshggkffftgfgrfgioffqjfesthekjhdtredtjeenucfhrhhomhepoehfohhruhhmsehfrhgvvggtrggufhhorhhumhdrohhrgheqnecuggftrfgrthhtvghrnhepfefggeeuudekgeetkefftdetveejjeeileevvdffffehledvheelvefgtdefhfdtnecuffhomhgrihhnpehfrhgvvggtrggufigvsgdrohhrghenucfkphepvddujedrjedtrddukenvghtpedvudejrdejtddrudekfedrudelhedpmhgrihhlfhhrohhmpehfohhruhhmsehfrhgvvggtrggufhhorhhumhdrohhrghdpnhgspghrtghpthhtohepuddprhgtphhtthhopehfrhgvmhgrnhesphhimhgvnhhtshdrtghomhdpshhpfhepphgrshhspdgukhhimhepphgrshhspdhgvghokffrpefhtfdpoffvtefjohhsthepvhhrfeeh
That was from my latest forum notification, so it looks to be getting a clear report card for now.

It is the receiving server which will be configured to check if the account exists, forward bounce or ignore as a function of that and put spam tags into headers and maybe mess with the subject field by inserting something like [SPAM ***] in front of it.

Gmail is a particular PITA for just dumping anything it sees as spam-like according to it's not so intelligent AI.

If I find a useful vid, or newpaper article, I often clip the URL to someone with a couple of words like : "worth a look" or whatever because I can't be bother to write a book about it. Just look.

Gmail finds just a URL or URL plus one phrase to be spam and the recipent never gets to even know I tried to send him something. I don't get to know some jackass AI decided to breach its duty to deliver because it does even bounce it. I just find out next time I speak to the intended recipient and ask what they thought of it !

I try to avoid communicating with lambdas on gmail but if I have to I copy/paste a few random lines from a news article to give Google some spurious data to analyse and store in my profile as a subject of common interest with my lambda friend.

Bottom line, I don't think it is user's spam classification actions so much as AI heuristics.

Sending out batches of dozens of identical emails to widely different addresses and maybe doing so several times in the space of a few minutes maybe part of the trigger problem . Consider this thread:
https://forum.freecadweb.org/viewtopic. ... 74#p627974

Now running to 111 pages it must have a huge number of people getting a notification. One of them replies a couple of minutes later and you have another batch of ostensibly identical and minimalistic content emails with a couple of URL links. I could imagine that would fit a whole load of heuristic checkboxes.

Maybe @yorik would like to consider whether that is not at least part of the problem and possibly avoid it undoing his hard work fixing this in the last couple of days.

I hope the suggestions help avoid a recurrence.
Last edited by freman on Sun Sep 25, 2022 8:31 am, edited 1 time in total.
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thomas-neemann
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Re: Forum notifications ???

Post by thomas-neemann »

freman wrote: Fri Sep 23, 2022 10:21 pm ....
yes, Email is pure chaos. unfortunately it is very widespread and no real alternative has yet emerged. In my opinion, it will not improve in the future, but rather get worse. one could defuse the problem by using the forum email only for new registrations. after that you can work over here
Bildschirmfoto_2022-09-24_07-52-28.png
Bildschirmfoto_2022-09-24_07-52-28.png (30.13 KiB) Viewed 685 times
Last edited by thomas-neemann on Sat Sep 24, 2022 5:53 am, edited 1 time in total.
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freman
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Re: Forum notifications ???

Post by freman »

after that you can work over here
I am not going to login every day just to see whether someone has replied to something I once posted, or someone PM'd me. I have other priorities.

Some consideration to what is triggering spam sniffing algos could be helpful. I detailed that above.
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yorik
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Re: Forum notifications ???

Post by yorik »

freman wrote: Fri Sep 23, 2022 10:21 pm Maybe @yorik would like to consider whether that is not at least part of the problem and possibly avoid it undoing his hard work fixing this in the last couple of days.
I don't know what to do here, really... What would be the purpose of a notification email if it didn't contain at least a couple of links (one to the discussion, one to unsubscribe, etc...). Besides, these are all automatic mails generated by phpbb, the only thing phpbb lets you change is the signature... Unless there is some plugin I'm not aware of, there is little we can do there too
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freman
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Re: Forum notifications ???

Post by freman »

I'm just trying to suggest what possible causes of triggering spam alerts might be, if some of that makes sense or can be verified in some way.

I don't think the average message will be the issue, there are tons of forums operating like this, many using phpBB.

One thing that can easily be changed is the long , catch-all threads like the one I highlighted.

We could avoid having eternal threads which accumulate ever-increasing subscriber lists. Maybe after 30 (?) pages of comments they break to a "part 2" thread with a new subject line and the original gets locked.

Unless it can be determined who created the spam alert and got you on what blacklist, it's a bit of a guessing game but that is one circumstance I can imagine could trigger several spam detection heuristics and I guess there's a weighted algo somewhere and if you hit several criteria you get quietly blacklisted.

Sites like reddit must be generating huge volumes but are probably also on a white list with the same spam filter companies.
Unless you know why you got hit, it is hard to know what remedial action to take.

Anyway, whatever you did seems to have fixed it. So thanks. Hopefully it will not trigger again any time soon.
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thomas-neemann
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Re: Forum notifications ???

Post by thomas-neemann »

yorik wrote: Mon Sep 26, 2022 9:15 am ...
in my opinion it would be enough to get a mail without a link that a notification exists.
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freman
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Re: Forum notifications ???

Post by freman »

If that was the problem , every forum runnig phpBB would be getting blacklisted.
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thomas-neemann
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Re: Forum notifications ???

Post by thomas-neemann »

freman wrote: Mon Sep 26, 2022 10:21 am If that was the problem , every forum runnig phpBB would be getting blacklisted.
who knows what just happened. there are general references to spam. it will probably be more difficult than better in the future
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yorik
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Re: Forum notifications ???

Post by yorik »

Indeed it's a wild guess what has caused the problem, I believe there were several issues at play too.
Let's see how it goes now, there are further, better solutions we can adopt if this doesn't work, such as subscribing to some mass-mailing platform.
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