I run a legit website, A few months ago I could use php mail() function to send veritification emails to prevent spam but now GMAIL is marking my emails as SPAM.


What can I do to resolve this issue?
Did you blacklist us, if so why?
Is it because our server is from Germany?
Is there a work around?
How can I view their blacklist?

Anyhelp be great guys.

Send mail always has had issues. many times you'll find mail blocked by Microsoft products. Pretty strange, I read about that some 3 years ago, But I forgot how I solved it back then. I do know there is a piece of header required not to label the domain as spam, I can't recall which, sorry.

Can you ping the mailserver from your server IP btw?

pretty sure google blocks inbound pings, a better test for network connectivity would be to telnet to port 25 on a gmail MX. However, most mail blackholes don't operate at the network level and allow a connection, so you might not learn anything even if you can connect.

-id

*cough* I can ping gmail id, haha... ^^ I know doesn't do any good but I figured it might be a connectivity issue?

If it's a connectivity issue, you might want to try a couple of route servers across the globe. Here is a list or servers I use:

telnet://ner-routes.bbnplanet.net
telnet://route-server.belwue.de
telnet://route-views.on.bb.telus.com
telnet://route-views.ab.bb.telus.com
telnet://route-server.cerf.net
telnet://route-server.ip.tiscali.net
telnet://route-server.gblx.net
telnet://public-route-server.is.co.za
telnet://route-server.exodus.net
telnet://route-server-ap.exodus.net
telnet://route-server.as5388.net
telnet://route-server.opentransit.net
telnet://route-server.gt.ca
telnet://route-server.ip.att.net
telnet://route-server.colt.net
telnet://route-server-eu.exodus.net
telnet://route-server-au.exodus.net
telnet://route-server.manilaix.net.ph
telnet://route-server.east.attcanada.com
telnet://route-server.west.attcanada.com
telnet://route-server.ndsoftwarenet.net
telnet://route-views.oregon-ix.net
telnet://route-server.utah.rep.net
telnet://zebra.swinog.ch

I swear google used to block all ping...or maybe just from ha.ckers...dunno.

-id

I found out that I can email to gmail from my actual mail server but not from my web server which is on a virtual host.

I now now the cause just got to find a solution now.

just use your mail server as a forwarder

-id

You could use the PHPMailer class to send mail with an SMTP server, too.

-Dan

Google is notoriously bad about blocking email or marking it as spam from ha.ckers.org. I would say less than 1% of my mail made it into people's inboxes at Gmail. No wonder everyone thinks that Gmail has great spam filters - they never get any mail! We took some recent steps to try to improve that ratio and I think we have succeeded in bypassing their fairly overly aggressive rules. id could probably go into a lot more detail on that one that I could.

- RSnake
Gotta love it. http://ha.ckers.org

GMail has the best filters, I never have spam.

And yes sometimes, but thats really 0,001% a legit mail into the spambox, but only because I'd make my own filters in GMail which block strings like: v1agra, slots, phermentine et al.

Until this day I only had 2 mails in the spambox that where marked incorrect. I'm pretty happy with GMail for this as you can see :)

I knew someone would have to speak up on that one. All I can say is that none of our email ended up in the correct spot. Highly annoying. Also annoying to the people who missed my emails too, I might add. In one case I actually had to email another friend of mine to talk to his friend to tell him that my message was in his spam box at Google. Ya, great spam filters. :-/ Forget using them if business continuity is an issue for you.

- RSnake
Gotta love it. http://ha.ckers.org

I noticed that I get almost no spam with my mailadress "-Reiners@...". I guess the starting character just doesnt fit the most filters.
by the way.

Not a bad technique actually. Preceding non alpha chars probably don't fit most people's regex.

- RSnake
Gotta love it. http://ha.ckers.org

on the other hand you sometimes have to confirm that this is your emailadress, because it doesnt look like a valid email adress to some people. But thats way less work than hitting the delete button every day I guess.