Ravenstar's Email FAQ's

Non Delivery of emails to Virgin Customers

I'm going to start this post with a disclaimer. While I am a Virgin Superuser - I do not work for Virgin Media. All opinions posted here are my own, however I will clearly delineate between my opinions and the facts where appropriate.

While users have been deluged with Spam it has been clear from day one that some mail has not been getting through to the end users. That senders are now having to post on these boards detailing their problems is proof of that.

This post aims to educate Virgin Email users as to one of the major causes of non-delivery, and help get genuine mail flowing into their email folders again.

Fact: Virgin Default Email Settings
Virgin made a choice when setting up the new email system to set the default rules for mails that are deemed to be spam to be rejected by their email system.

While I sincerely believe that this was done with the best of intentions in mind, it was a flawed choice for the following reasons.

• It put 100% faith in the spam filters to be working correctly from day one.
• It does not allow the training of spam filters to understand false positives.
• Most importantly it means that customers DO NOT have sight of any misclassified mails.

This choice has led to frustration from customers who are not receiving their mails, and for legitimate senders who are getting their mail bounced back with the message "5.5.4 Spam Content Found."

The Immediate Fix

While Virgin may or may not be able to force a blanket change from their end, and I am trying to get an answer on this. Users SHOULD be able to do something to get mail flowing back to them.

1. Log into webmail - preferably from a desktop PC
2. Click the cog in the top right of the screen then click settings
   
3. Click Spam settings and then change the radio button to Move message to Spam folder
   
4. BEFORE closing settings change the category on the left to any other category. If you fail to do this the SETTING WILL NOT BE CHANGED. I spent half an hour yesterday trying to figure out how to get the change to stick on a new dummy account I created.

Why Move to Spam Folder?

One of the things we need to be able to do is to train the Spam filters. This is the ONLY setting that will allow us as users to be able to do this. Mail in the Spam Folder can be marked Not Spam by clicking the thumbs up icon. While it sometimes takes multiple markings to actually get the spam filters to pick up the change. The majority of my genuine blueyonder mail does come to my inbox (there are still a few notable holdouts such as some of the Twitter info mails ).

I've changed the setting but my mail is still being bounced!

If after changing the settings, you find that the mail is still not getting to you. Try and get the sender to send you a copy of the bounce message to verify the reason the mail is being bounced and start a new thread. This solution will ONLY deal with bounces with the "5.5.4 Spam content found message."

If the sender is getting this message and you've changed the settings then Virgin will need to look at your account, as some users report that although the settings were changed, and have provided screenshots to demonstrate this, the new settings haven't always taken effect.

Closing comments.

Virgin do bounce incoming mails for a number of other reasons. Two notable ones are

• Senders IP is in the RBL - that is blacklisted, in that instance it's up to the sending mail provider to find out why their mail server is in the RBL
• SPF Check failed - This is a contentious one. SPF is used to verify that the sender sent mail through a server that is authorized to send for that domain. Unfortunately, it is broken for example if you have your own domain and then forward the mails on to another email provider.

In those instances, the fix detailed above will not stop the mail being bounced - which is why if the mail is still not getting through after doing the above, Virgin need a copy of the bounce message from the sender.

This post will be locked - any queries about this should be made in a new thread.

Ravenstar68