Emails Sent From Oscommerce Setup Are Seen As Spam

[richvalsky]

I can send emails from my osCommerce site, but some people receive it and some do not.

 

It works for certain email address,like yahoo.com.. But others, like mac.com, do not receive the emails. Somewhere along the way, the email is marked as spam and thrown away, I think it is due to invalid headers in the email.

 

I think its a problem with the message header, the message-id appers to be wrong. Here is what the message-id looks like in the email header for a bad email:

Message-ID: <BF05A21BCA8C404BB09A6B697FD12FE6.MAI@home>

 

Here is what it looks like for a good email:

Message-ID: <[email protected]>

 

Has anybody else seen this? Has anybody fixed it?

 

Any ideas on how to set the message-id? Maybe I need to configure something different in the server?

 

There appears to be two old posts about this, but they never seemed to reach a resolution and none of their ideas work:

http://www.oscommerce.com/forums/index.php?sho...email&st=20

http://www.oscommerce.com/forums/index.php?sho...email&st=20

 

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

[germ]

I had a similar mail problem with websites I was programming (in PERL) for a few years ago.

 

As it turned out, the problem was a setting to do with the email headers on the server, not in my (PERL) code.

 

I'm just assuming the same may be true for you.

:o

 

And, I wish I could tell you what they changed on the server, but I wasn't privy to that info.

 

All I know is it worked OK after they "monkeyed" with something on the server...

:blush:

[radders]

As a partial workaround you could install a contribution such as Print Order Receipt to allow the user to print their confirmation from checkout_success rather than expecting an email that never arrives.

[bkellum]

I can send emails from my osCommerce site, but some people receive it and some do not.

 

It works for certain email address,like yahoo.com.. But others, like mac.com, do not receive the emails. Somewhere along the way, the email is marked as spam and thrown away, I think it is due to invalid headers in the email.

In an attempt to combat getting put on a blacklist, there is a standard out there commonly called "sender ID". Essentially, you add an "SPF" record to your DNS zone which specifies all of the IP addresses that legitimate mail would come from for your domain. If the recipient's server is checking for the SPF record, they'll know whether or not it's a fake based on the source IP. And if it's a fake, they'll just discard it without generating a non-delivery report. But not everyone is checking, so it's only as good as the number of people that implement it.

 

You can go here to see if your ISP is using SPF for your domain:

 

http://www.microsoft.com/mscorp/safety/content/technologies/senderid/wizard/

 

As you can see, the link goes to a Microsoft.com site. There are several helpful items listed that you can do to work with your ISP to protect your domain email from getting on a blacklist.

 

I have done the above for several shops and have corrected the email sent and regarded as spam issue. Shop owners immediately started getting responses from AOL customers getting the shops newsletter for the first time.

 

Hope this was helpful,

 

Bill Kellum

Sounds Good Productions

[germ]

I just remembered what it was they changed on the server....

:D

 

They had to add "Reverse DNS Lookups" to the email header.

:thumbsup:

[Guest]

In an attempt to combat getting put on a blacklist, there is a standard out there commonly called "sender ID". Essentially, you add an "SPF" record to your DNS zone which specifies all of the IP addresses that legitimate mail would come from for your domain. If the recipient's server is checking for the SPF record, they'll know whether or not it's a fake based on the source IP.

isn't that another failed attempt by them to monopolize the email? Lets see the other side:

 

http://www.fixingemail.org/2006/06/research_determ.html

[bkellum]

isn't that another failed attempt by them to monopolize the email? Lets see the other side:

 

http://www.fixingemail.org/2006/06/research_determ.html

 

Mark, that article seems to be as biased as Microsoft. It is also outdated. This article sums it up well (and is not from Microsoft):

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sender_ID

 

I wouldn't call what MS is doing with the SenderID as them trying to monopolize the email industry but rather an attempt at trying to get this spam thing under control. At least they are making an attempt. Besides, I wouldn't put MS to blame for spam just as much as the telephone company is not responsible for telemarketers and yet they are trying to come up with a unified solution.

 

MS pledge to the Open Source Community regarding Sender ID:

http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2...SenderIDPR.mspx

 

http://www.microsoft.com/interop/osp/default.mspx

 

 

I really do not care where the solution comes from as long as it's a real solution. Time will tell if MS's senderID really works, and I don't think a 60 day trial (per the article) is a true test.

 

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070...pping-spam.html

 

What this means for osCommerce shop owners is that I have found the senderID a temporary semi-permanent solution to keeping your shop emails from getting tagged as spam. If the industry picks up MS's solution (gaining support), it may turn out to be a permanent one. If not...

[Guest]

Mark, that article seems to be as biased as Microsoft. It is also outdated. This article sums it up well (and is not from Microsoft):

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sender_ID

 

I wouldn't call what MS is doing with the SenderID as them trying to monopolize the email industry but rather an attempt at trying to get this spam thing under control. At least they are making an attempt. Besides, I wouldn't put MS to blame for spam just as much as the telephone company is not responsible for telemarketers and yet they are trying to come up with a unified solution.

 

MS pledge to the Open Source Community regarding Sender ID:

http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2...SenderIDPR.mspx

 

http://www.microsoft.com/interop/osp/default.mspx

I really do not care where the solution comes from as long as it's a real solution. Time will tell if MS's senderID really works, and I don't think a 60 day trial (per the article) is a true test.

 

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070...pping-spam.html

 

What this means for osCommerce shop owners is that I have found the senderID a temporary semi-permanent solution to keeping your shop emails from getting tagged as spam. If the industry picks up MS's solution (gaining support), it may turn out to be a permanent one. If not...

 

What is old? You should take into account what is official right?

 

4405 SMTP Service Extension for Indicating the Responsible Submitter

of an E-Mail Message. E. Allman, H. Katz. April 2006. (Format:

TXT=29429 bytes) (Status: EXPERIMENTAL)

 

4406 Sender ID: Authenticating E-Mail. J. Lyon, M. Wong. April 2006.

(Format: TXT=40428 bytes) (Status: EXPERIMENTAL)

 

4407 Purported Responsible Address in E-Mail Messages. J. Lyon. April

2006. (Format: TXT=14387 bytes) (Status: EXPERIMENTAL)

 

4408 Sender Policy Framework (SPF) for Authorizing Use of Domains in

E-Mail, Version 1. M. Wong, W. Schlitt. April 2006. (Format:

TXT=105009 bytes) (Status: EXPERIMENTAL)

All of these rfc documents are with experimental status

http://www.ietf.org/iesg/1rfc_index.txt

 

So...unless there is an update there I ain't going for it.

And you can check their latest white paper on April 2007.

[richvalsky]

Thanks for all your help. I'm testing them now so I will let you know if they work.

 

One comment, I agree this is not a problem caused by osCommerce. It seems to be something with php and/or the server that is not setting the headers of the email correctly. But this is a problem that other people may run into to.

[radders]

I asked my webhost about adding an SPF record and they said that it isn't used much, so they had chosen not to implement it. Shame, as it sounded a like good idea.

[bkellum]

I asked my webhost about adding an SPF record and they said that it isn't used much, so they had chosen not to implement it. Shame, as it sounded a like good idea.

Hello David, who is your host? Sounds like a host who is refusing to use SPF only because Microsoft had a hand in developing it. They should be able to offer this to you none the less.

 

Do a search on Google for Sender ID or SPF and you will find a large amount of support for this method.