I’m sure we can do better than Harvard! 😊
From: arrl-odv <arrl-odv-bounces@reflector.arrl.org> On Behalf Of Phil Temples
Sent: Tuesday, September 13, 2022 7:52 AM
To: Minster, David NA2AA (CEO) <dminster@arrl.org>
Cc: arrl-odv <arrl-odv@arrl.org>
Subject: [arrl-odv:34075] Re: Email issues
A followup to an earlier message thread about arrl.net aliases:
Harvard University announced yesterday it is dropping its two "forwarding-only" alias addresses effective December 1, 2022:
"Alumni email forwarding was introduced in the 1990s and no longer functions well with most email service providers. In recent years, we have heard growing concerns from many alumni about the challenges of this aging technology. For instance, alumni frequently reach out to us frustrated about emails they never received, spam and phishing inquiries through their forwarding accounts, and more.
"Due to the nature of email forwarding technology, in most instances we cannot resolve these complaints. New spam rules and policies at email providers (Gmail, Yahoo, etc.) make it very difficult to offer a reliable forwarding-only service at this point, and many institutions have migrated off email forwarding."
73,
Phil Temples, K9HI
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On Fri, Jun 10, 2022 at 5:48 PM Minster, David NA2AA (CEO) <dminster@arrl.org> wrote:
This topic came up at EC. Here’s more info on the two issues:
We continue to struggle with the ever changing and advancing anti-SPAM measures that ISPs are putting into place. Kristin raised an interesting point in the Zoom Chat that I’m not sure everyone read, so I will repeat it here: MIT has abandoned the forwarding-only side of their alumni “email for life” service and now require anyone desiring this service to use their Office 365 in the cloud for email. You can select to forward the email from there, but here’s what MIT said in reference to this:
You should note, though, that new spam rules and policies make it very difficult to offer a reliable forwarding-only service at this point. We have found that email forwarding is becoming less reliable as spam filtering policies get more aggressive. In other words, forwarded mail looks suspicious and causes a red flag in spam filtering systems where mail is forwarded to. This results in the forwarded mail getting flagged as spam or silently dropped (the latter of which is becoming more common). This is why we are now offering the alumni Outlook mailbox. Unfortunately email forwarding alone is no longer a viable option and you run the risk of losing/missing mail if you use it strictly as a forwarding address.
I would submit that if with MIT’s vast resources they cannot provide a “reliable forwarding-only service” why would anyone think that we could? This is an ongoing major problem for us to manage and we will need to take action at some point. One way or another.
We are working with consultants to determine how we can use DNS records and whitelisting services to keep ARRL.ORG emails out of SPAM folders on people’s email clients – which is what we frequently find happening – or blocked entirely by ISPs who determine that something we have originated or forwarded causes us to be blacklisted. Again, if a user is forwarding their ARRL.ORG email to their personal email, the exact same results apply as described above. This was why I did not continue the conversation at EC. We are fully aware of SPF, DMARC, and DKIM in relation to not only our ARRL.ORG email configuration but also the knock on effect of using other services that send email on behalf of ARRL.
This is not an easy fix to an ongoing problem that has existed at ARRL, and gotten worse, over the past decade. We are working to make ARRL.ORG email more reliable on a forwarding basis, but the very best advice is for anyone who has a .ORG address to login via web or client and access their ARRL email that way.
Please address your email concerns to me directly and I will keep you apprised of what efforts and results we are achieving as we move forward managing these issues. I also want to echo what Bill Morine said and not let it get lost in the comments made or that likely will follow: Jim Schaum has been extremely responsive and very aggressive at working to solve the email delivery issues that have been brought to his attention. He is deeply ingrained in getting this solved to the extent that we can. These problems are not a result of inaction or lack of using a silver bullet to solve the problems.
Thanks
David
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Phil Temples <phil@temples.com>