Invalid Registration Email (aka E-mail) Addresses

[Marc]

When you Register, a Verification / Account Activation e-mail is sent which contains a link you must click. Clicking the link once should take you to a forum web page and 'auto-magically' validate your account. You may not even notice it happen if your browser is open.

You should get the Verification / Account Activation e-mail within 1 to 5 minutes after registering depending on your internet connection and mail service. BUT - If your e-mail server is slow or otherwise problematic, it may be delayed for hours or days.

E-Mail Verification / Account Activation is enabled to prevent someone from signing someone else up without their knowledge (to prevent 'spoofing').

Often times someone registers with a mis-spelled or otherwise incorrect e-mail address. When this happens, I get a bounce notice. The bottom line is, if you do not receive a Verification / Account Activation e-mail, you may have mis-spelled or otherwise entered a 'bad' e-mail address. In this case there is nothing I can do to contact you to let you know, obviously.

NOTE: In some cases the e-mail is refused by a 'spam filter', especially some company e-mail 'spam filters'.

If you do NOT receive a Verification / Account Activation e-mail, please contact me and I'll help out --> E-Mail Marc

OR

You may be seeing this Notice at the top of forum pages:

Although you are Registered, your e-mail address appears to be Invalid. To fix this problem, please go Here and let me know your forum user name (screen name) and a VALID E-Mail address so I can fix your record in the database. Please be sure to adjust your spam filter to 'White List' (allow) e-mail from Elsmar.com so that Elsmar Cove e-mail can reach you. For more information about invalid e-mail addresses, please see This Thread.

because you were, or are, Registered but e-mails to you are 'bouncing' indicating either a full mailbox or an invalid (possibly a former) e-mail address. Please contact me and I'll help out --> Contact Marc.

If you do not remember your password, or have other problems, just e-mail me and I'll help out --> E-Mail Marc.

[Marc]

THIS IS AN EXAMPLE!!!

Fisfis - If you're reading this - Your e-mail server is bouncing e-mails to you (User Unknown). It is correct that you will not get a verification e-mail or any other e-mail when your main server says you do not have an account.

On 6/12/04 4:04 PM, beztmail @ absa.co.za wrote TO MARC SMITH:

> You didn't send me a mail
> User Name: Fisfis
> User ID: 9038

The software sent you the e-mail - Your server said it is an invalid e-mail address and refused it!!!

****** Message from InterScan Messaging Security Suite ******

Sent <<< RCPT TO:beztmail @ absa.co.za
Received >>> 550 beztmail @ absa.co.za ... no such user

Unable to deliver message to beztmail @ absa.co.za (and other recipients in
the same domain).

************************ End of message **********************

______________________________________________


From: "The Elsmar Cove Mailer"
Date: Sat, 12 Jun 2004 15:56:46 -0400 (EDT)
To: beztmail @ absa.co.za
Subject: Action Required to Activate Your User Account for The Elsmar Cove!

Dear Fisfis,

[Marc]

Background: I get one or more bounces a day so this isn't anything new. A lot of times the user account is over limit. Other times it's a No Such User Account situation. I used to post in a thread whenever this happened but found it was rare that I got a response. I quit trying to contact everyone whose e-mail bounces a couple of years back.

I posted the message to this person because I received direct e-mail from the person - anxious for access. I tried sending the info again from here with no luck. When e-mails bounce there's really not much one can do.

What is becoming 'popular' now is many people register and their mail server returns a message along the lines of "The server has held your message to -----. Please Reply to this e-mail and include the response number which follows in the Subject line and your message will be delivered." Or something similar. I only see this once every couple of weeks right now but I expect it to become more popular as more people screen their e-mail with 'Trust' or Reply Verification programs.

This one just came:
Our Email System has detected that you have sent an email which meets one or more of the following unacceptable criteria: The message may be SPAM mail

The email is held in quarantine until released - please contact 01463 704999 and ask for email with subject Action Required to Activate Your User Account for The Elsmar Cove! sent to ian.beange @ haht.scot.nhs.uk to be released.

Obviously I can't call everytime someone registers and tell their mail admin to release it. I could end up with one mighty big phone bill every month.

Another failure mode is more and more are being caught in spam filters as people tighten up their 'Rules Filters' and such (false positive as spam). I get an e-mail from someone saying that the forum server didn't send them a verification e-mail - but it's in their spam filter.

So it goes.

[Wes Bucey]

I sympathize with this problem. I am a public relations chair for two non-Quality associations. Our email newsletters to association members are constantly getting hammered by this super-awareness of possible spam and worse (virus-infected messages.) The major burden we face is that we hide all addressees in the bcc to prevent their addresses from being visible to the rest of the mailing list. Many spam filters divert email which doesn't have account holder in To: or cc: box.

We suggest to our members they NOT use corporate email addresses if at all possible (job mobility makes many of them obsolete within a year.) It is a burden to ask corporate IT administrator to add "exception" to email rules for each association to which their employees may belong.

If they have home computers accessible to the internet, we suggest they pick up a free, anonymous email address from yahoo or some similar provider to use for this express purpose of receiving association email and then to check it only every 48 hours or so since none of our association email is time-crucial. They do have to be alert to empty the email from time to time to avoid going "over quota" on message size or quantity.

My personal opinion is that using one's corporate email address for even business-oriented memberships like the Cove or even ASQ may leave that person scrambling in the event of job change or loss (an added burden just at the wrong time in life.)

An added advantage of an anonymous internet email address is that it can be just abandoned if it becomes clogged by Spam and only desired correspondents given address of a new account when it is established.

[Guy Van Hooveld]

I just tried to register several times using my gmail account and I never received the email confirmation. I then tried my office email account and I received the confirmation email with a "spam warning" from my company filter. So everything is working fine now, but I was wondering if something could be changed to the contents of the mail so that it does not get trashed as spam. I have used a lot of forums using a very similar technique and until now this is the first time I have such a problem...

[Marc]

This has been an issue over the last 5 years or so. I have seen people with Gmail find the registration email in their spam box. Others have no problem. I've seen some who say they never got it at all. The same problem comes up with hotmail from time to time. Company firewalls are all different so that's something I have no control over.

Gmail, Yahoo and Hotmail are the main 'problem' email providers.

I have revised the email it sends out a couple of times, but it's been a year or so since I've looked at it. I'll look at it again.

Fortunately, this does not appear to be a major problem, as there are very few complaints. It could be that Gmail, for example, is inconsistent in how it handles emails from here.

One thing people CAN do is 'white list' emails from Elsmar.com. I recently found out that you can auto-magically do this with Gmail by putting a + after the Gmail user name and then elsmar and then the @gmail.com - I don't know about how hotmail works.

I have tried to explain to people registering in several places during the registration process that they should try to whitelist Elsmar.com to ensure email deliveries to avoid problems.

[Wes Bucey]

Originally Posted by Guy Van Hooveld

I just tried to register several times using my gmail account and I never received the email confirmation. I then tried my office email account and I received the confirmation email with a "spam warning" from my company filter. So everything is working fine now, but I was wondering if something could be changed to the contents of the mail so that it does not get trashed as spam. I have used a lot of forums using a very similar technique and until now this is the first time I have such a problem...

Some folks find the gmail filters send Cove emails to its spam folder. Please check there.

[Jim Wynne]

Originally Posted by Wes Bucey

Some folks find the gmail filters send
Cove emails to its spam folder. Please check there.

Not only that, but the spam filter can be "trained" to allow senders from destinations not considered spammers. Go to the gmail site, log on and open the spam folder. Find the message or messages that you don't want flagged as spam, click on the check box next to them, then click on "Not Spam" at the top of the page:



You might have to do this a few times before gmail gets the idea.