Network/Procedures/Maintain a listserv

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This is more of an FYI than a howto or anything. Basically, it turns out that mail providers are becoming more and more paranoid as mail gets less and less usable due to spam. As a result, ML256 has had some trouble actually delivering mail to people who are members of its lists. I'll try to summarize possible problems and solutions here.

  • We get onto spam blacklists.
    • For the shop, this can be checked here: http://bgp.he.net/ip/24.96.165.230#_rbl
    • This could happen for several reasons.
      • Mail spoofed as from the shop.
      • Someone's machine at the shop actually sends spam (because it has malware or some other reason).
      • Someone does something vaguely spammy and some service has an overly quick trigger finger.
    • Possible solutions:
      • Heavily restrict the machines that can send mail from the shop.
      • Make it so random shop Internet traffic leaves on a different Internet address.
      • SPF records. This is implemented by the shop right now.
      • DKIM. I believe this is finished implementation, but more testing is needed.
      • DMARC. We're not here yet.
  • People click that we are spam and then their mail provider starts to believe it.
    • Possible solutions:
      • List-Unsubscribe header. This may actually redirect the "Report spam" button in Gmail to an automatic unsubscribe process! This would be ideal.
  • Other resources.