The new newsletter went out without a hitch. Modifying the "FROM" address to use postmaster@list.project2061mail.org seems to have solved a number of our problems. We were caught by a few SpamAssassin filters … some of which I've tried to address (see below). Some of the triggers didn't seem to have any relevance to the message we sent out, so I'll just have to wait and see how the next one goes. Still getting the usual number of bounces, etc. I sometimes wonder if some of the messages are getting lost in the ether as some of the bounces seem like they should have been addressed months or years ago. I'll need to investigate this at some point, perhaps I can send a few hundred test messages to my mail server and check the results.
SA Filters Triggered and resolution (if any):
BODY: Words dis|guised with a pipe sym|bol
(Don't know how this one was triggered … unless within the base64 text)
BODY: Claims you can be removed from the list
BODY: I wonder how many emails they sent in error
BODY: {5}Letter - punctuation - {4}Letter
(Probably from URLs in the body … should be more intelligent)
BODY: To be removed from list
(Not many good ways to word this, and most are probably filtered)
BODY: HTML has unbalanced "body" tags
(Was unable to verify this as a problem)
BODY: HTML included in message
BODY: HTML comment has 3 consecutive 8-bit chars
(Was unable to verify this as a problem … I don't think we even had HTML comments)
BODY: HTML has excess "a" close tags
(Was unable to verify this as a problem)
BODY: Message only has text/html MIME parts
(Not even close to being accurate)
URI: URL of page called "remove"
(Changed URL to http://www.project2061.org/listpref)
URI: URL of CGI script has unsubscribe or remove
(See previous comment)
Spam tool pattern in MIME boundary
(Modified the MIME boundary)
One of the sysadmins also suggested we add a preface to the subject of our newsletters to better indicate their source, something like "[Project 2061 Newsletter]" or something like that. Me likee, but perhaps we can come up with something shorter. I used "[Project 2061 Update]" on our last mass mailing but it still feels a bit long.
I have a feeling we'll need to consider using SPF, Domain Keys, Caller ID for E-mail, or some combination of these soon. Drafts have been written and are getting a lot of press lately, which means more people will be paying attention. Sadly, most people prefer to require compliance rather than use header-addition. Bad sysadmin!
