I AGREE 100% i am so outraged that they would stop my mail. This is my business and my income depends on it. TOTALLY UNBELIEVABLE. (and heck, there is generally only ONE recipient in my outgoing mail, so what in the world determines it's SPAM for crying out loud)
I am so mad and the only answer from what i hear from Verizon is to stop using them entirely.
Hmmm ... blocking out yours and your recipient's email (and any private message content), can you maybe give us a sense of the exact "spam" error message -- actual message headers useful too -- you're getting back from Verizon's server? Curious as to if Verizon (or the remote end) is bouncing the message or if it's saying something which you're interpreting as a SPAM rejection based on "content" which is actually some more rudimentary that we can tweak a mail configuration setting to fix.
I have many clients who use Verizon's outbound mail servers and use their own domain names (as well as Verizon's domain name) to send messages and they've all been working just fine -- except for one Comcast "blip" and that turned out to be Comcast's fault and they quickly found the issue and corrected it.
It'll help if you can give us some more detail.
I too have been having problems with my email returned as SPAM--3 times in two days. I called tech support and they said that they had instituted a new policy to locate and eliminate SPAM and I should use something else (like gmail, hotmail, etc.) if I thought it was too aggressive. The SPAM email in question contained the word "Sweepstakes" in the subject line and the email contained two lines, including a link. It was sent to one person. I know she likes to enter sweepstakes and it was a cute one for her kids. That was it. According to the Tech, "Sweepstakes" is one of many words that they view as constituting Spam. It is really ridiculous.
Here's my problem with Verizon's new policy. It is so aggressive that, according to the Tech I spoke to, it only takes one word, like "Sweepstakes" to set it off. The fact that it was only to one person and I have no history of sending Spam doesn't even enter into the equation. This is just the beginning and according to him, they have no intention of changing it. When you forward the offending email to the address provided in your Spam notice from Verizon, he says that they look at it and determine if it is Spam or not. If they determine it was not Spam they will allow it to go through. However, he said they were very backed up and it could take quite a long time and you won't get a reply from them letting you know thier determination. Really? What about if my email is timely? This is truly a mess. My hope is that they refine it so that it has more sensitivity in the scanning process, but the question is how to get Verizon to change it.
I think Verizon is trying to do the right thing, but has gone way overboard and is now risking losing customers if this doesn't get corrected pretty quickly. People want to get what they are paying for and generally resent getting personal emails returned by overzealous Spam detection. Anyone know the best way to get the message to them? I generally like Verizon and would hate to switch, but I'm going to be forced to consider that if I keep getting my email returned.
I just tried what you said bounced as spam .... a very brief message with the subject of "Sweepstakes" and two short lines of text "Hey check this out ..." and a link to website. It went thru without any issues.
What verizon mail interface / experience are you using? My verizon account is set for the "Yahoo" experience (as opposed to the Verizon--used to MSN? or AOL versions).
Again it would help to see the exact message which came back (blotting out the email addresses but leaving the rest intact) in order to perhaps figure out what might be going on.
It was pretty much what I said--just a line of text like: "I saw this ade thought you might want to check it out. It is so cute." and the link to the sweepstakes. Pretty simple message with no threat. Only line in subject was Sweepstakes. I use Outlook and have set the port as instructed by Verizon.
@dkw197 wrote:It was pretty much what I said--just a line of text like: "I saw this ade thought you might want to check it out. It is so cute." and the link to the sweepstakes. Pretty simple message with no threat. Only line in subject was Sweepstakes. I use Outlook and have set the port as instructed by Verizon.
Don't know that it will help any, but I just sent an email with "Sweepstakes" in the Subject and a copy of your text from above and a link in the body and it went through just fine. I use Windows Live Mail and a standard Verizon email account.
I have had FiOS internet for 5 years + and I experienced my first ever spam rejection a few weeks ago. It was a simple email to one person, who I have sent many emails to before. It contained a simple subject, two short text paragraphs, my standard signature block, and an attachment, a PDF of a Word 2007 document (formatted text only, no graphics) that I created using Word's built-in PDF publishing feature. After experimenting I found that it was the attachment that the spam filter did not like; when I re-created the PDF attachment by just printing to a PDF printer using PDFCreator instead of using the built-in Word PDF feature, all was well (and I made no changes to the actual document). Strange.....
Maybe Verizon is using different spam tools in different areas of the country? Or it takes into account your IP address range? Or? Or? Or? But it does appear the tool they are using is over aggressive.
__________________________________
Justin
Verizon FiOS TV, Internet, and phone
QIP6416-P1, IMG 1.7.1, Build 09.97
Keller, TX 76248
Same with me. I've had FIOS for a number of years (as soon as it became available to my area) and have never had a SPAM notice. I've sent many messages that contained sweepstakes information to my friend and also email with PDF files like you sent and have never been flagged. Now--3 flags in one week. The tech did tell me that you can change the level of Spam filtering or delete it altogether, but I don't know how to do that from my settings. Have you heard anything along those lines? Other than using gmail, yahoo, etc. is there any way to address this with Verizon? I agree with you--it is way too aggresive if it's stopping so many regular emails from their customers with no profile for spamming. How can we get Verizon's attention about this so they will address it? The tech said that it was their new policy, but I think Verizon may try to be responsive if so many customers are complaining about it.
The level of filtering would be an "inbound" thing, not an outbound one. I just looked in the MyAccount settings and there's nothing there -- but then I have the "Yahoo" experience from Verizon and not their default mail (I also don't use Verizon for my regular mail using instead my own domain name hosted by GoogleApps).
Evidently Verizon has three "mail" experiences included in their Internet offering ... their basic Webmail, Yahoo!, and AOL. All three send/receive mail with the familiar @verizon.net format email address -- but each has a different front-end interface and from the looks of it uses each respective platform's mail engine to sending / receiving mail.
That may be why some are experiencing the issues and some aren't. If Verizon's mail platform is using a different engine for Spam than Yahoo!, you would experience different results.
While I'm not going to suggest to everyone that they go out and switch their mail experience (selectable on the Verizon Central My Account page), for some it might be worth checking out. I did note that it appears that not all flavors are available in all areas that Verizon serves -- not sure how that all works behind the scenes. My only caution here is that you choose carefully because once you select an experience, it doesn't appear that you can come back to the Verizon-only experience -- hmmm. Changing experiences for mail also changes the POP/SMTP settings you need to use if you're using a full mail client instead of a web interface -- so make sure you read and understand those as well before you make a selection.
That makes sense and thanks for the help, but I sure would like to know how to relax the Verizon Spam controls using Outlook. It's really frustrating.
I've just started having outgoing email issues with Verizon in the last few weeks. I am a Union Local officer, and I send email out every week to our membership in mass mailings. My emails are very important issues that my membership needs to know about, mostly alerts from my international affiliation. Now, everytime I try to send out an email to another union official, or a forward that involves union alert information (that Verizon already accepted through the filters when they sent the emails to me) it is rejected and they claim that it has been detected as spam. I can't afford to have these emails not getting through. I wish I had a clear answer to this!
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