Summary #
All mail coming into WebMailPRO users (and customers that have our SpamTrakker product) is scanned and either allowed or denied based on if the system thinks it’s spam, if it has a virus, or if the content of the message is allowed. This article will help you troubleshoot incoming mail being blocked for spam.
More Information #
If you (the WebMailPRO user or mail recipient behind SpamTrakker) are getting told by someone that their email is not making it through to you, the sender should be getting an error message from their mail system stating exactly why the mail was denied. Sometimes the sending mail server will hide the important parts of the reason from the user, but this is rare. In either case, this failure report, also called a “Non Delivery Notification” (NDN), “Non Delivery Report” (NDR), or simply a “bounce message”, is always useful, even if the information in it may not contain the exact report from the spam scan.
The most common type of block message has to to with mail server blacklists, also called RBLs. These blacklists contain lists of servers that are known to be sending spam, or known to have sent spam in the past. If a sending mail server is on one of these lists, the mail will be rejected and the sender will be notified what list they are on. Additionally, the bounce message will contain a link to a webpage with the reason for why it was blocked, as well as how to request an unblock. The network administrator or mail administrator for the sending server should verify that they are no longer sending spam, then go to the webpage and follow the directions to get unlisted. Additionally, there is a fantastic tool at https://multirbl.valli.org/lookup/ that allows you to lookup a mail server’s IP address on many blacklists at once. If the server is listed on one blacklist, odds are good they are on several.
The other type of rejection notice WebMailPRO or SpamTrakker gives is “permanent failure imposed by local policy”. This could mean that the message is to an invalid recipient, the message was scanned and determined to be spam, or the contents of the message is not allowed due to language. In this case, the best solution is to first verify that the sender is sending to a valid email address. After that, have the sender forward the bounce message to support@k12usa.com and k12usa@gmail.com and we can look into the issue.
