Anti-spam Messages   Feb. 21, 2003

"Please be aware, your email was rejected by our Email Server as your IP
address is held on an RBL SPAM database."

If you receive anti-spam messages similar to this one every time you post by email to the LaserTank group's website on Yahoo, the problem may be the same as what happened to us. One of the members of the group who receives email updates was on an email server that probably was upgraded with new automatic anti-spam software.

By looking at the message's full header information, you may find a server name with something like:

...
Return-Path:  <NMXEXSPP0_MBM-EXCHANGE@some-server's-name.com>
Subject: Message was rejected Please Help Me with Level 2
To: "'Your Name'" <[email protected]>
...

"Please be aware , your email was rejected by our Email Server as your IP
address is held on an RBL SPAM database."
...

I sent the following email to a member of the LaserTank group who happened to be on that server:
"Donald and I have both recently received anti-spam messages that we have tracked down as probably coming from your email server. Could you perhaps confirm whether or not this could be caused by newly installed anti-spam software on your server?

I suspect that your LaserTank group setting is set for you to receive messages from the group by email, but Yahoo is putting advertisements in many of the outgoing forwarded email messages posted to the group. So, if your server continues to flag and reject messages that have ads (as it appears to have done for Donald and I) and banishes IP addresses and keeps on sending back warnings, your server will soon no longer let through any messages at all from anybody in the group and you will have to read the messages on the web site instead. ... If you are still following the group, check the site to see if you're missing messages.

Thanks very much."

In this case, the member requested to receive messages at an alternate email address. Donald changed this member's email address as requested, and a day or two later, there were no more anti-spam messages. I have never had this happen outside of the group, but with the amount of spamming these days, it may happen more often to the group as a results of Yahoo's ads. If you become aware of such software being installed on your email server, you can avoid this situation ahead of time by changing to an alternate email address as this member did, or switch your preference to reading the web site instead.

-Steve