'Non real email companies like Fastmail'. ?

[Abydos]

Yeh, while I'm always tempted to contact the company involved, there are endless news reports of how many PCs are infected with virus' that harvest email adresses etc. I'd think it likely that many companies have no idea they're leaking customer adresses out to spammers.

Subdomain addressing is an invaluable anti spam measure. Just shocked a company would take such a massively ill-informed knee jerk reaction like this. Ahh well, couldn't join a watch company's official forum on timetechtalk, so went & joined that company's page on Facebook instead. No issues with subdomain .fm addresses or militant admin staff there.

[sflorack]

Originally Posted by qwertz123456

So what I normally do is give them another email address from my catch-all domain name that points to my FM account. And just to **** them off I use their name or company name and my domain e.g. amazon@mydomain.com or jeff.rubens@mydomain.com (remember I can use ANYTHING@mydomain.com) You should listen to their reaction. I get a kick out of this every time

You can't imagine the number of times I've had to explain this one.. "You work here, too?!"

If only I was dishonest, I'd probably have gotten a million employee discounts by now.

[JMac]

Same problem here. Many, many forums where I have tried to register refuse to accept any email addresses "from that domain". Some allow it if I use one of FM's other domain names but a few bounce my attempts with every one of FM's other domains. Has something to do with FM's free account history. These forums usually refuse any addresses from "free email services", suspecting that spammers often or always use the free services to send their spam from. Probably was true at one time but now the spammers seem to be able to spoof any domain they want.

This does make using FM more difficult than other services IMO.

Jim

[qwertz123456]

Originally Posted by sflorack

You can't imagine the number of times I've had to explain this one.. "You work here, too?!"

If only I was dishonest, I'd probably have gotten a million employee discounts by now.

You should have said something like this: "Of course I work here too! All morons like you and I work at company ABC

[ChinaLamb]

Originally Posted by JMac

These forums usually refuse any addresses from "free email services", suspecting that spammers often or always use the free services to send their spam from.

Are you serious? It seems like half the world now uses Hotmail or Gmail... I cannot imagine a forum rejecting those free services....

[JMac]

Originally Posted by ChinaLamb

Are you serious? It seems like half the world now uses Hotmail or Gmail... I cannot imagine a forum rejecting those free services....

Sure I'm serious. And many of them state as much when they reject my email addresses. Been like this for quite a long time - since long before I used FM. I used to get my Yahoo and/or Gmail addresses refused also.

All I can say is that at some time in the past Fastmail must have gotten a rep for a lot of spam coming from their addresses. Or possibly when forums stopped accepting free addresses Fastmail had enough of them out there that they got lumped in with the others. Either way it's one of those things that apparently sticks with them for a long time.

Jim

[David]

Originally Posted by JMac

Sure I'm serious. And many of them state as much when they reject my email addresses. Been like this for quite a long time - since long before I used FM. I used to get my Yahoo and/or Gmail addresses refused also.

All I can say is that at some time in the past Fastmail must have gotten a rep for a lot of spam coming from their addresses. Or possibly when forums stopped accepting free addresses Fastmail had enough of them out there that they got lumped in with the others. Either way it's one of those things that apparently sticks with them for a long time.

Jim

Jim: I must say that I agree with you, and that this is one reason why I don't have a paid Fastmail account today. I also am of the opinion that Fastmail don't deserve this bad reputation... but am thinking that (these days) the amount of enhanced account holders, who use their account purely for personal mail are in a minority. Many professional email marketers are using Fastmail accounts to a large degree these days.... to mass mail their customers and clients, which makes one wonder, if a Fastmail account is still the best deal out there, for those customers and clients who only need an email account for personal mail.

[ChinaLamb]

Originally Posted by David

Jim: I must say that I agree with you, and that this is one reason why I don't have a paid Fastmail account today. I also am of the opinion that Fastmail don't deserve this bad reputation... but am thinking that (these days) the amount of enhanced account holders, who use their account purely for personal mail are in a minority. Many professional email marketers are using Fastmail accounts to a large degree these days.... to mass mail their customers and clients, which makes one wonder, if a Fastmail account is still the best deal out there, for those customers and clients who only need an email account for personal mail.

That is a pretty harsh statement to Fastmail, and I question it's validity...

My gut says that pretty much any service is going to have similar issues.

My gut also says that this is probably not true because I have had almost no problems in all my years at fastmail. I have several businesses, and all my personal mail going through fastmail. The only problem I have ever had is when I tried to send mail through my asian isp - and my emails were immediately labeled SPAM to all my recipients. I get better luck going through fastmail and a vpn than I do going through gmail and a local asian isp...

Fastmail would have been on all the spam lists long ago - but from everything I know Fastmail has been quick to make sure that they stay off of spam lists.

just my thoughts

[William9]

I've had a couple of instances where my Fastmail messages were rejected by the recipient server because Fastmail's IP was blacklisted -- but not for a long time. For one of those experiences, Fastmail support worked with the receiving service to remove Fastmail from the blacklist. It took a couple of days.

[David]

Originally Posted by ChinaLamb

That is a pretty harsh statement to Fastmail, and I question it's validity...

My gut says that pretty much any service is going to have similar issues.

It was not intended to be a harsh statement C/L, but consider that Fastmail has (imo) specifically targeted their enhanced service at business users, who wish to discharge large volumes of mail. Consider that lower level account holders (eg: Full) are no longer even allowed to host a domain name (that privilege was retracted years ago) The enhanced account is specifically targeted at email marketers and I am not indicating this is necessarily a bad thing. See Rob's post here.

If you are in a position however, where your smtp requirements are less, and when you send mail to folk who have addresses at one of the 'big three' and your mail is often directed to bulk mail folders, or (worse) bounced, you have to wonder if a Fastmail account is still the best way to go.

Sure... my mail accounts that come with my webhost and ISP are more restrictive than a Fastmail account (and are not as full featured) but my messages to folk who host with the big three almost never get bounced or end up in a spam folder.

[ChinaLamb]

Ok, well that is a lot of messages. Many more than I usually send, but I occassionally send out emails to 500 of my closest friends.

Anyhoo, this is only the second time in 5 years that I have heard anything like this. Another time was when fastmail got bumped onto a spam list. But they cleared it up fast.

True "Spammers" selling male enhancement and other stuff would probably find the 1000 messages too restrictive. Sending out e-zines, etc. is just becoming standard practice. At what point an ezine becomes spam is probably in the eye of the beholder...

[SvLSvLSvL]

Originally Posted by ChinaLamb

Ok, well that is a lot of messages. Many more than I usually send, but I occassionally send out emails to 500 of my closest friends.

500 of your closest friends !! Wow, you're popular

[Abydos]

Yeah, I felt like a loser when I read that too.

[qwertz123456]

Originally Posted by SvLSvLSvL

500 of your closest friends !! Wow, you're popular

Everything is a little bigger in China than in other parts of the world - they just have more people

[ChinaLamb]

Originally Posted by qwertz123456

Everything is a little bigger in China than in other parts of the world - they just have more people

Cities here don't even get on the map unless you have 2 million people. under 1 million is considered a small town. 1.3 billion is a lot of people.