Email issues

Hey everyone,
I'm starting the blog up so that there's a place for you to check if you can't get hold of me for one reason or another. If the server goes down, or I'm going out of town, or whatever, I will always post that here so that you can be in the know.

Sorry once again for the email problems over the past few days. They had us back up and running late Friday night. It was caused by a huge spamming/spoofing issue which I explain in the previous post. Because of this, we have installed something called an SPF record on the server -- we'll see if this cuts down on the spoofing issue. The problem with it, however, is that it has been known to cause rejections of REAL emails -- so please let me know if you find that some of your email is being rejected.

I was tempted to be really upset with GoDaddy on Thursday (and I know a lot of you were as well) but some real life/non-work issues last week made me put this in perspective. Yes, we all love email and yes it was an inconvenience, especially to those who use their domain email for business (like I do) but when you look at the big life picture, this three day inconvenience was pretty minor.

That all said, as I have asked each of you before, PLEASE get an alternate email address which can be used when my server has issues. I would really appreciate knowing that you're not left out to dry email-wise when your domain email isn't working. And please let me know what it is so I can add it to my client email list.

I am almost always reachable, as most of you know....

madeira@xuni.com (please use this unless you can't reach me)
madeirajames@mac.com (only comes to my computer, not BlackBerry)
madeira@vzw.blackberry.net (only comes to my BlackBerry, not computer)

Last, some of you have mentioned that I should change servers to one which "never" has email problems. The problem is, there aren't any servers which don't have occasional problems. Even mac.com was down for several days this summer. It's just the way it goes in the wonderful world of the internet. I pay thousands of dollars yearly to not just rent the server but to get elevated support for it -- that's about the best I can do. That said, anyone who would like to move their website to a different server where you'll have the control rather than me is absolutely welcome to do so -- just let me know.

Thanks for your patience -- you guys are the best!
maddee

Email spoofing: the basics

Occasionally, you will see email failure or other types of rejection notices in your inbox -- usually quite a few of them at a time. It will look like you've sent an email to a bunch of people -- some of whom you know and some you don't -- and that the email has bounced back to you. This is called email spoofing.

It's not normally a big deal even though it looks like it (though it recently happened in such a huge way that it caused a server-wide email slow-down). This spoofing happens to me pretty much every day with all my various hundreds of email addys (I have "webmaven@" for each of your domains). It happens on every server on a regular basis. Emails are being sent by a spammer using your email address (anyone can do this - you, for example, can put whatever you want in the "reply to" field) to people you don't know and often aren't real addys so you're getting the "bouncebacks." It'll last a week or two and then you won't see it again till it happens again - months or years down the road. I've talked to godaddy and other servers for that matter and you just have to wait it out. The definition on wikipedia is here.

Sorry about it - but it normally is harmless besides the deleting you have to do.

Apols though!

Here is how I deal with the spoofing in my email... and this may or may not work with your email program. But I have everything not sent to an address in my address book get sent to a SPAM folder (within my email program), and that SPAM folder is set up with folders which group things according to the "from." So when I get 90 messages from MAILER-DAEMON they're just accordianned into this folder and thus the spam folder doesn't look all that confusing and long. I always look through the folder several times a day -- and I have it listed by "from" rather than date -- and so it takes less than one minute per time to scroll down and move the stuff I want to my inbox and do a delete of what I don't want.