Wanadoo lost emails & Gmail

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Alan Knighting
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Joined: Mon Oct 18, 2004 7:26 am
Location: Monflanquin, Lot-et-Garonne, France

Post by Alan Knighting »

Albert,

Changing ISP and using a different e-mail address may well be an option for many people but I don't think is for me, at any rate not a practical one.

After 5 years of having and publicising my Wanadoo e-mail address on everything I produce, e-mails, letterhead, brochures, listing sites and word-of-mouth there are literally thousands of people in possession of my Wanadoo e-mail address. It is simply not possible to inform all those people of a change, I don't even know who half of them are.

By the way, I think that the warnings about not publishing an e-mail address otherwise one will be inundated with spam messages are grossly over-exagerated. After being completely open about my e-mail address for 5 years I get very few spam messages, perhaps half a dozen a week at most. Similarly with viruses; I have had one and only one since Christmas 2004. Also similarly with spyware; apart from the file sharing side of P2P, which is seen as spyware, I have received none.

I am not talking about what got through and affected my PC and I am talking about individual attacks, successful or not.

Yes, I have a firewall, I use anti-spam, I use anti-virus, I use anti-spyware but, not only do they protect me, they also report any instances of attempted attacks.

Based on my recent experience as a private user and based on over 25 years previously working in IT for business purposes I have formed an opinion about all of this. It makes good business sense for the producers of anti-anything to over-exagerate the problems - that way they can increase sales. It enables the scare-mongers to appear authoritative - that way they can establish some sort of superiority over ordinary mortals. The problems exist but not to the extent that some people would have us believe and, with the correct protection software it is quire possible to protect against the problems.

Alan
wilko
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Joined: Mon Mar 21, 2005 11:30 pm
Location: Provence 84
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NTL World

Post by wilko »

I have recently discovered that we have just lost 14 nights rental because of the NTL problem. I received the enquiry and replied promptly, heard nothing and some 8 days later I was informed that the mail could not be delivered. In the intervening period the prospective clients had made other arrangements. Thank you NTL!
Being wholly computer illiterate I have read the 6 pages above and feel that if I open a Hotmail account and reply to any NTL inquiry with that it should solve this problem, correct?
Thanks for any help and thanks for the previous 6 pages of comments
regds Wilko
www.maspomona.com
Paul G
Posts: 37
Joined: Thu Sep 29, 2005 12:39 pm
Location: Chatenet, Charente Maritime
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Lost Emails

Post by Paul G »

There is certainly a fine line between having junk email [spam but usually harmless] filtered out and losing email that is important to your business.

The problem not only lies with your service provider [AOL, Wanadoo etc] who provide this add on service but also with your own anti spam software that tends to come with Anti Virus software like Norton.

We have recently changed the way we deliver the enquiries our site generates to our customers in order to help improve the situation however it will not solve it altogether. It is very important that everyone checks the Anti Spam folder [the place where junk email is sent] for two reasons. Firstly to see if there is email there that you want and secondly if it really is junk it is taking up server space and should be deleted.

Almost all Anti Spam software can be taught to accept certain email addresses. So if you find an email that you should have received tell the Anti Spam software that the email address should be accepted in the future otherwise it will happen again.

I have reprinted below the email we sent our clients which further explains the problem.

Best wishes Paul

-----------------

We have recently become aware of a problem in delivering enquiries to clients who use AOL for their email. Other service providers may also be affected.

In keeping with other services providers, AOL are trying to cut down on the amount of Spam email sent over their servers.

The approach they have taken involves Spam filters and certain rules that the email must pass or not before it is delivered or not. One rule introduced checks to see if the "from" email address domain name is the same as the server domain name that sent the email.

In the case of our enquiries emails this is not so, as we put the email address of the customer making the enquiry in the "from" field. This helped you, our clients, as it meant that you could simply hit reply and your reply would go direct to the enquirers email address.

We have now removed this. Future enquiries will now come from an email address of NoReply@ holidaygites.co.uk. As this address has the same domain name as the server that sends it, it should pass the AOL Spam rules.

The down side is that you should not "reply" to the enquiry email. You should extract the enquirers email address from the enquiry and use that [if that is how the enquirer wishes to be contacted] in order to compose your reply.

The above has been difficult to write in order that it should make sense. If you do not understand this change please email me.

If you have Spam control software on your PC such as Norton Internet Security you should ensure that NoReply@ holidaygites.co.uk is in your "allowed list".

We are sorry for the inconvenience caused to everyone for this small change, but it is beyond our control.
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Alan Knighting
Posts: 4120
Joined: Mon Oct 18, 2004 7:26 am
Location: Monflanquin, Lot-et-Garonne, France

Post by Alan Knighting »

This has nothing to do with Bookings but I don't know where else to put it. Perhaps Paolo will put it in the right place.

To the subjects of spam and scam I think we should add spoof.

A friend telephoned me yesterday seeking help. Her e-mail host is Wanadoo.fr and she had received an e-mail purporting to come from Wanadoo accusing her of using her e-mail address for spamming people across the globe and telling her that her account would be closed if she did not respond. The e-mail included click-on response links which were supposedly to Wanadoo but didn’t look like Wanadoo Web addresses so she didn’t click on them. The e-mail did not contain any contact telephone numbers.

She uses MS Outlook so she replied to the e-mail by clicking on “Reply�, compiling a reply and sending it. Within seconds she got a reply from Wanadoo “bouncing� her message on the basis that there was no such e-mail address at Wanadoo.

I gave her Wanadoo’s enquiries telephone number and when she used it she was told that Wanadoo had not sent her any such e-mail and it was confirmed that the Wanadoo e-mail address she had been given did not exist.

Would I be correct in concluding that someone is spoofing or inventing Wanadoo e-mail addresses for the purposes of scam?

Alan
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Hylton Thompson
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Location: Nerja
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Post by Hylton Thompson »

Alan Knighting wrote:
Would I be correct in concluding that someone is spoofing or inventing Wanadoo e-mail addresses for the purposes of scam?

Alan
I am sure you are correct Alan. I get a lot of spoof emails to my Wanadoo Spain account.

I have only 3 letters before the "@wanadoo.es" in my address and one day recently I received emails addressed to 11 different sets of 3 letters.

None of them were correct but they all got through the Wanadoo routing system and ended up in my spam filter!

Best wishes,

Hylton Thompson
Paul G
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Joined: Thu Sep 29, 2005 12:39 pm
Location: Chatenet, Charente Maritime
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Spam and Scams

Post by Paul G »

It is perfectly correct that you should ALWAYS avoid emails that ask you to confirm by reply, ie clicking on a link enclosed in the email.

In fact all that the scammer is trying to acheive is to confirm that your email address is a live one.

You will never receive genuine emails from your service provider or other organisations like banks or Ebay that will ask you to reply like this.

Having read and said a lot about spam and scam email it is on the decline thankfully.

Paul.
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