Live data from Hacker News

Test the Spammyness of your Emails

mail-tester.com

21–30 of 39 posts

Re: Test the Spammyness of your Emails

#22

So... it's a reinforcement learning tool for spammers?

I've used it (amongst other email testing tools) for quite some time now to validate the thousands of emails we send each week for BoomboxFM[1]. And none of those emails are "spam". Email is the delivery system for our product, and trust me, it sucks trying to figure out why people who 100% want your emails don't always get them straight to their inbox. Particularly with Gmail.

[1] http://www.boombox.fm/

Re: Test the Spammyness of your Emails

#23
That revealed a configuration problem in my server. The hostname was set to some an old domain name (which I no longer own or control). Who checks their hostname? Not me obviously. This probably explains why some email was being filtered to spam by gmail. Fixed, and I'm now getting 9/10.

Re: Test the Spammyness of your Emails

#24
This is cool. I like how simple it is. Also, I just learned about SPF records from this. I didn't realize there was a DNS related[0] mechanism of preventing spam. Kinda neat.

As an alternative to this, if you'd like a little finer grained information about it spam filters from specific companies, Litmus (I'm not affiliated) has a really cool spam-test[1] that actually tests it against all major spam filters (Google, Yahoo, etc) instead of testing it against spam lists like this does.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sender_Policy_Framework

[1] https://litmus.com/spam-filter-tests

Re: Test the Spammyness of your Emails

#25

So... it's a reinforcement learning tool for spammers?

I've used it (amongst other email testing tools) for quite some time now to validate the thousands of emails we send each week for BoomboxFM[1]. And none of those emails are "spam". Email is the delivery system for our product, and trust me, it sucks trying to figure out why people who 100% want your emails don't always get them straight to their inbox. Particularly with Gmail. [1] http://www.boombox.fm/

I know all about the nuisance of BigCorp dumping my (non-commercial, mind you) email into the spam folder for obscure reasons, but whatever company you're trying to push, you miss the point. A web service to say "this is what most spam filters will do to your email" is just a training signal for spammers. That is, unless they are smart enough to implement an amazing meta-spam filter.

Re: Test the Spammyness of your Emails

#26

This is cool. I like how simple it is. Also, I just learned about SPF records from this. I didn't realize there was a DNS related[0] mechanism of preventing spam. Kinda neat. As an alternative to this, if you'd like a little finer grained information about it spam filters from specific companies, Litmus (I'm not affiliated) has a really cool spam-test[1] that actually tests it against all major spam filters (Google,…

DKIM is better (SPF doesn't prevent, for example, Amazon SES impersonating you and sending out unauthorized email on your behalf)

Re: Test the Spammyness of your Emails

#29
post #5

I don't get it. What am I suppose to do ?

View the front page. It will show you an email address which looks something like "web-ONhx3B@mail-tester.com" which is unique to you. Send an email to that address then click the "Check your score" button. It will rate the email which it received from you and point out any configuration problems.

Thanks for the help. I finally succeeded. I'm missing spf and dkim. Not easy to define.
Post reply on HN