Problem sending e-mail - subject line includes ***SPAM***

[Carol]

When I attempt to send an e-mail using Outlook Express, when using stationery
the recipient receives the e-mail message, however, the subject is preceeded
by ***SPAM***.
I have been researching the problem on the internet and I believe it has
something to do with spam scoring and when I am using one of Outlook
Expresses built in stationeries the score is too high. When I send the
message with no stationery the ***SPAM*** is not included on the subject
line.
Is anyone else experiencing this issue?

 

[Brian Tillman]

When I attempt to send an e-mail using Outlook Express, when using
stationery the recipient receives the e-mail message, however, the
subject is preceeded by ***SPAM***.
I have been researching the problem on the internet and I believe it
has something to do with spam scoring and when I am using one of
Outlook Expresses built in stationeries the score is too high. When I
send the message with no stationery the ***SPAM*** is not included on
the subject line.
Is anyone else experiencing this issue?

First, this newsgroup is for Office Outlook questions. Outlook Express is
an entirely different program despite the sharing of the word "Outlook".
Ask Outlook Express questions in microsoft.public.outlookexpress.general.

Second, people have a diverse choice in antispam software and many ISPs
implement server-side antispam scanning so it's nearly impossible to say why
your particular messages are being tagged. Perhaops if you were able to
examine the complete message, headers and all, from the recipient's end, you
might get an idea of what the antispam scanner is catching, but the real
answer is, if including stationery produces the unwanted effect, then don't
use it. Stationery adds nothing of value to your message and only makes it
unnecessarily large.

 

[VanguardLH]

When I attempt to send an e-mail using Outlook Express, when using stationery
the recipient receives the e-mail message, however, the subject is preceeded
by ***SPAM***.
I have been researching the problem on the internet and I believe it has
something to do with spam scoring and when I am using one of Outlook
Expresses built in stationeries the score is too high. When I send the
message with no stationery the ***SPAM*** is not included on the subject
line.
Is anyone else experiencing this issue?

Outlook EXPRESS
Not an Outlook issue, the topic of this newsgroup.

"***SPAM*** added to Subject"
Not an Outlook issue. Outlook doesn't add that to the Subject. Read up
on whatever anti-spam software they are using, or have them check with
their e-mail provider to see if and why they add that string to suspect
e-mails.

Hmm, so you're using a template to send e-mails. I suspect what you
failed to mention is that you send LOTS of e-mails using the same
template to recipients at the same domain. That means all your bulk
mailings using the same template look nearly identical to each other.
The receiving domain sees dozens or hundreds of e-mails that look nearly
the same and which are sent to different recipients at their domain.
Yep, that certainly qualifies it as spam: bulk mailings with [nearly
the] same content hitting many recipients at the same domain.

The domain may not even bother to maintain their own list and hash of
e-mails to see which ones being received to multiple recipients look
nearly the same (i.e., spam of similar content sent to multiple
recipients). They may be using DCC to keep track of that. A fuzzy
algorithm is used to thumbprint an e-mail and a record is sent to a DCC
server. Other users of that DCC server that receive e-mails that match
up on the thumbprint see that the message was sent to multiple
recipients. For example, the P2P plugin for SpamPal will use DCC to
determine if the same or similar e-mail was received by multiple
recipients (all participating in the DCC reporting). The default in the
P2P plugin is 50, so if the DCC server reports a thumbprint match on a
received e-mail and shows that more than 50 recipients got that same
e-mail then it is probably spam. More than one copy of the e-mail went
to more than just one recipient. See http://www.rhyolite.com/dcc/.

The short is: don't use templates when bulk mailing. Unless the content
of your e-mail far exceeds the template content, the multiple copies of
your e-mail, even with a little modification, like adding their name in
an intro line, will all look the same or so similar as to be considered
the same and that will trigger an anti-spam filter looking for multiple
copies of the same e-mail that targets multiple recipients.