Several people recently have had the emails, that they sent, fall victim to spam filters somewhere before getting to their recipients.

In one case of which I know, the email was sent to a mailing list. Many mailing list programs have filtering routines that are designed to block unwanted messages — not just blocking unsolicited commercial emails, but also blocking emails that appear to be help requests to the mailing list administrators.

Mailman, one of the more popular mailing list programs, does this kind of filtering so that all the list members don’t get the messages that appear aimed at the list owner. In particular, the filter is usually triggered by one- or two-word Subject lines in the email, especially if they have words like Help, Information, Info, Lists, Options, Remove, Unsubscribe and such.

So, what’s the fix? Don’t use a one- or two-word Subject line. Take the time to write a meaningful Subject.

Continue reading Emails and Spam Filters

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