Emails going to Junk Mail

[mikelong]

So I transfered my website to a new hosting company and since the transfer, my emails are now going to people's junk mail folders. I contacted my hosting company and they said I should contact all (Yahoo, google, msn, aol) to make sure that they don't do this. Does anyone have these guys email address' and what whould i need to provide them with?

[REW Fergus]

If Yahoo, Google, MSN, and AOL are all filtering your e-mails, there's probably a good reason. I would guess that your current provider is doing something strange and needs to fix its mail server configuration. Another possibility is that you are inadvertently spamming people without realizing your behaviour is going to be identified as a problem.

In any event, I don't feel I can ethically provide information on how to avoid spam filtering. I like filtering. It makes my life better. But I can tell you with confidence that these other providers are not going to do anything other than tell you to deal with your provider.

[mikelong]

could it be my ip address or is it only to do with the mail configurations from the server?

[REW Anthony]

You might also want to check if your server company and/or ip address you moved to has been blacklisted or that server had previously been an open relay for spammers. My guess is that your hosting company had other clients use their servers for spamming and thus they got blacklisted and your ip address C-Block in the process. You can request to be given a new dedicated ip address or ask the various blacklist databases to be unblacklisted.

Here are a few resources for you to check if you blacklisted or have an openrelay running:

• http://www.mxtoolbox.com/blacklists.aspx
• http://www.ordb.org/
• http://dsbl.org/main
• http://www.abuse.net/relay.html
• http://www.spamcop.net/bl.shtml

[REW Fergus]

could it be my ip address or is it only to do with the mail configurations from the server?

Unless you're running a server on your IP, your IP shouldn't be relevant to spam filters. It's the IP of the server that is a potential problem. Anthony's suggestion is a good thing to try.

[alixixi]

we just launched our social networking type website each user send invitation to their friends if they want to, there is no spamming ever - though the emails to gmail and hotmail go to the junk mail - we are serving the mailsender from our own ubunutu linux server and we don't have a reverse DNS set up, might that the source of our problems?

[REW Anthony]

You must have a valid domain name on your linux box and not a made up one. In other words you must purchase a proper domain name for your box and have your DNS server and proper MX records fully working.

[Westin]

You must have a valid domain name on your linux box and not a made up one. In other words you must purchase a proper domain name for your box and have your DNS server and proper MX records fully working.

Just to expand on this post... You can run your own your mail server from where ever you want. You can also use your existing Domain Name as well. What needs to happen is first make sure your domain name's "Reverse DNS Lookup" is setup correctly. You can check this through http://www.dnsstuff.com/ under the Reverse DNS lookup section at the bottom of the page.

Next make sure Ubuntu is setup to handle the email for this domain name. I've never set up a mail server on Ubuntu but it looks like http://flurdy.com/docs/postfix/#conf_dns seems to be a pretty good step-by-step howto.

Once the server is completly configured for your Domain Name you need to have your Host or DNS provider (this could be you) and change the MX records to point to your mail servers IP.

I can't stree enough about the REVERSE DNS setup. With out reverse DNS almost all email providers will automaticly block your email.

So long story short... Yes it's probibly the Reverse DNS that's killing you.