Forum email problems

[Phil Harvey]

I've been having more than the usual amount of people with problems receiving forum activation emails ever since the forum was moved to the new server.  I think the reason may have been that the spam filters of some hosts reject the mails because they have reply-to address of "noreply.exiftool.org" that is different from the sender address of "dh_us6f3d@tower.dreamhost.com".

In an attempt to solve this, I have changed the reply-to address of forum emails to "dh_us6f3d@tower.dreamhost.com", but note that I am unable to receive emails at that address since my dreamhost account does not include email.

- Phil

[StarGeek]

Google is a problem when it comes to emails from here.  I have notifications set for a lot of stuff here and GMail was dumping everything into spam.

[Alan Clifford]

Don't chase this one.  You'll never solve the problem.

[Phil Harvey]

@StarGeek: It's not only gmail.  This is a breakdown of the accounts still awaiting activation from the last 2 months:

9 hotmail.com
6 outlook.com
5 gmail.com
1 live.com
1 yahoo.com
6 other hosts
2 obvious typos in the email address

However, there were about 200 successful registrations in the same 2 months, so this problem isn't affecting everyone.

- Phil

[obetz]

I've been having more than the usual amount of people with problems receiving forum activation emails ever since the forum was moved to the new server.  I think the reason may have been that the spam filters of some hosts reject the mails because they have reply-to address of "noreply.exiftool.org" that is different from the sender address of "dh_us6f3d@tower.dreamhost.com".

can't the forum software be set to send with a cleaner address?

Oliver

[Phil Harvey]

You'll have to be more specific about what you mean by "send".

I can put any address I want in the "reply-to" field of the outgoing mail, but the problem is that spam filters seem to veto mails where the address doesn't match the mail origin.

- Phil

[obetz]

the envelope address needs to be "better".

This means to avoid the builtin mail send function of your hoster's environment and use a specific mail account whatever@exiftool.org instead.

I don't know how this forum software works, but basically there should be an option to sent the mail via SMTP using the mail server of exiftool.org of, using the credentials of whatever@exiftool.org

Oliver

[StarGeek]

I will also mention that in the case of GMail, for me it has been marking as spam emails from major sites such as StackExchange and Reddit.  It's been very weird that such sites would have this problem.

[Phil Harvey]

The mail is sent using the PHP mail function, which uses the system sendmail function I believe.  I don't know any more, and I don't want to waste too much time on this, but I'll look into it more if I get really bored sometime.

- Phil

[obetz]

The mail is sent using the PHP mail function, which uses the system sendmail function I believe.

that's the problem. dh_us6f3d@tower.dreamhost.com isn't that trustful these days (I remember when it was no problem).

I don't know any more, and I don't want to waste too much time on this, but I'll look into it more if I get really bored sometime.

https://wiki.simplemachines.org/smf/SMF2.0:Mail

Mail type - This allows you to select either the default PHP mail program or your mail server. Fill in the details of your outgoing mail server if you did not select PHP.
SMTP server - If SMTP was selected for the mail type, fill in your SMTP server.
SMTP port - If SMTP was selected for the mail type, fill in your SMTP port.
SMTP username - If SMTP was selected for the mail type, fill in your SMTP username.
SMTP password - If SMTP was selected for the mail type, fill in your SMTP password and enter again below that to confirm. ! Note: SMTP details are provided by your host.

As I wrote: I suggest to use a specific SMTP account for SMF mails.

[Alan Clifford]

I will also mention that in the case of GMail, for me it has been marking as spam emails from major sites such as StackExchange and Reddit.  It's been very weird that such sites would have this problem.

That's the wrong way round.  The problems will be gmail's not the other sites.

[Phil Harvey]

As I wrote: I suggest to use a specific SMTP account for SMF mails.

Ah.  I see.  So I could use my gmail account and not use dreamhost at all.  Maybe I'll try that.

- Phil

[obetz]

As I wrote: I suggest to use a specific SMTP account for SMF mails.

Ah.  I see.  So I could use my gmail account and not use dreamhost at all.  Maybe I'll try that.

Don't use a personal mail account. Your mail account credentials need to be exposed at least to the exiftool.org hosting administrators, but what if SMF or dreamhost has a vulnerability enabling access to the SMF configuration files? Then an attacker could take over your mail account and then most of your other personal accounts used with this gmail address by resetting the password.

SMF shall use a separate mail account dedicated only for the forum mails. The most elegant would be a specific @exiftool.org account. But a separate freemail account might also do the job.

Oliver

[Phil Harvey]

OK.  I've set up an "exiftool.forum@gmail.com" account, and changed the forum settings to use this account for sending mails via SMTP.  I've also sent reminders to all new accounts created in the last two months that are still awaiting activation.

Hopefully this will work better for people.

- Phil

[Phil Harvey]

OK.  That seems to have solved the problem.  In the month since I made this change, there were no new forum registrations that are still awaiting activation.

- Phil