Instant e-mail Notification?

[robbc]

Robb,
Neither Spamcop or ORDB are showing Chief as a Spam source and they are not filtering Chief email.

I think the email notification problem is tied to this forum loosing the thread subscriptions. Threads I was subscribe to last week, including those subscribed to on Saturday are no longer listed in my Control Panel as being subscribed today. If the threads I'm subscribe to today fall off when I look tomorrow, that will be confirmation that the source of the problem is the forum software not the email system.

That would indicate two seperate problems! Their email server is still misconfigured. I emailed a thread to myself and my logs indicate:

from ftp.chiefarchitect.com (localhost.localdomain [127.0.0.1]) by localhost.localdomain (8.13.1/8.13.1)
(from apache@localhost) by ftp.chiefarchitect.com (8.13.1/8.13.1/Submit) id k6OKOb3R000686; Mon, 24 Jul 2006 13:24:37 -0700

The error is 'apache@localhost' and 'localhost.localdomain'. Their server hostname, as far as their email server is concerned, is probably set to something like 'localhost.localdomain'. This also causes a warning on the recipient server's that the inital connection has a forged HELO component which contributes to the message being detected as SPAM.

Depending the scoring the receiving server uses (or if it denies all misconfigured senders) some people will receive messages from CA's web server and others will not. If complex scoring (SpamAssassin for example) is being used then this misconfiguration may cause messages to border on being detcted as SPAM based on the contents, local ISP bayes filters, etc. That is why some people get the mail sometimes.

As you mentioned SpamBot, etc., do NOT filter mail. They simply manage databases of domains that are supected of spamming or could be used for spamming purposes (others monitor for email server misconfigurations). Quite often these sites also assign a score instead of a boolean. Email recipient servers (ISP usually, unless you host your own email server) can then use the databases maintained by these sites to determin if the message should be considered SPAM or not. In most cases the databases are used to adjust a score that is locally calculated.

If CA does not fix the domain problem they will eventually appear on other lists that report sites that do not conform to various email standards. And that would be BAD since their SPAM score would go up cuasing more servers to reject their messages.

PS: Some forum software (and email lists) will autoamtically unsubscribe users if the recipient's server rejects too many emails (where too many can be as low as 1). This could also contribute to a user from being unsubscribed. The only way to know is to examine your server's mail logs and see if it is rejecting mail from CA.