Member removed for sending spam only not
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Hi,
I'm a new owner here. Today one of my group members was removed supposedly for sending a spam message, only that isn't true. We are running classes and only people who pay for the class are sent invitations. Is this common and is there anyway to prevent the platform from doing this without the owner's approval? Not happy, Linda McLaughlin OCC/RWA Online Class Coordinator |
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On Wed, Aug 15, 2018 at 08:26 PM, Linda McLaughlin wrote:
Today one of my group members was removed supposedly for sending a spam message, only that isn't true.You're correct, it isn't true. What actually happened was the user (or their email provider) reported a [non-spam] groups.io message as spam. What also happened is that the subscriber was immediately sent an email with a link; if that link is clicked on within 3 days, their subscription is reinstated. This is explained in great detail in the GMF wiki (see?/g/GroupManagersForum/wiki/Removed-for-spam). Please read the wiki entry and let us know if you need further clarification. Searching this group's message archive for "removed spam" will also turn up multiple threads initiated by other irate group owners. The bottom line is that there is nothing you can do, short of educating your subscribers not to mark group messages as spam, and complain to their ISP whenever it chooses to do so without their consent. Hope this helps, Bruce? -- The system Help is your friend.??/static/help |
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Linda,
She found other group messages in her spam folder and I told her toDon't be shocked if that doesn't help. The group's posting address is not in the From field of messages from the group. If her email interface considers only the From address when evaluating the message with respect to the contacts list there won't be a match. Different email services have different mechanisms. In some you can add a filter to move group messages (detected by the group tag in the subject line, or the group's posting address in the To field) to one's Inbox, bypassing the spam filter. In others persistently marking misplaced messages as "not spam" is the recommended solution. Shal -- Help: /static/help More Help: /g/GroupManagersForum/wiki Even More Help: Search button at the top of Messages list |
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And this is one of the reasons why I do not like this feature :-(? Also, if the person's ISP is filtering out groups.io messages on their front-end ISP spam filters, the list member has no ability to fix this (short of emailing their ISP), nor would they receive the auto restore email sent out.? Not fan of the feature.? At the least, I would like this feature to be optional, for list mods/owners to be able to turn on/off for their respective lists.? It is forcing me for my lists, to have to turn on an addt'l notice (more emails to my Inbox), so I'm notified of all list members leaving or joining (I can't just turn this one type of "leave" notice on), and, also having to send out an email to all auto un-subbed list members from my own email address, letting them know they've been auto-unsubbed, and how to either restore their membership, or re-subscribe.? A lot more work for a feature whose benefits to me, seem not worth the extra effort.? Truly, probably my only complaint I have about groups.io.? And yes, I have posted on the Beta forum about this.?
Patty Sliney
-- Patty S. |
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On Wed, Aug 22, 2018 at 01:36 PM, Patty Sliney wrote:
At the least, I would like this feature to be optional, for list mods/owners to be able to turn on/off for their respective lists.I seriously doubt that will ever happen.? The FBL mechanism has to be used with all email providers or some of them will end up blocking the site for all of their users, creating even more problems for Mark and the site.? The entry for /g/GroupManagersForum/wiki/Removed-for-spam has a very good explanation of this. Duane -- Help: /static/help GMF's Wiki: /g/GroupManagersForum/wiki Search button at the top of Messages list A few site FAQs: /static/pricing#frequently-asked-questions |
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Patty,
As I said, some
email services provide a means to have group messages bypass the spam
filter. In Gmail, for example, one can create a filter to do that. For those that don't the "fix" takes longer: you have to consistently mark group messages as "not spam" when they land in the spam folder.
I have a feeling we've had this conversation before.
The goal is that no Groups.io messages end up in members' Spam folders. If Mark were to ignore the feedback from these services (the ones on our list) then eventually Groups.io could become unusable for people with those services - all of its messages might end up rejected or sent to Spam. It is a little ambiguous, but in that topic where you posted there's some indication that progress may be being made toward the goal: one group owner in "removed for spam" events. Shal -- Help: /static/help More Help: /g/GroupManagersForum/wiki Even More Help: Search button at the top of Messages list |
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Duane, then, instead of unsubbing list members, why not suspend them, so mods can restore them?? I haven't had any issues on Yahoo Groups with spammers getting into my lists, and that's because I always set for restricted memberships, and required a Comment to be included with the membership request.? If the respective list member either didn't send a comment, or sent something odd/general/nonsensical, then were denied membership with a reason.? And, offered to resubmit with a list-specific comment, the version of their software/model of their embroidery machine, etc.? Spammers just wouldn't bother replying - too much work for them.? Worked well for us, rarely needed to ever deal with that.? But with this set up, I'm getting list members automatically unsubbed almost daily.? We list mods then need to send out a separate email, from our own email accounts, telling the list member what happened and why, and where to find the auto restore email (if it came to them at all - could have easily been screened out at the front end, by their ISP's front end spam filters).?
I just don't think this is a very effective tool for those that run restricted membership lists.? It creates more work than the results.? I get it for lists that do not have restricted memberships, or, for lists that allow non-members to post - you are are much higher risk for spammers to hit your lists.? But, that's exactly why I run all my lists with restricted memberships.? We did a very good job screening out spammers, had virtually none.? Just an awful lot of extra work, and my list members often do not understand what happened, and several have been very upset, jumping to conclusions, and think we've banned them from the list :-(?? Gotta be a better way of managing this??
Patty Sliney
-- Patty S. |
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Shal,
You said:? As I said, some email services provide a means to have group messages bypass the spam filter. In Gmail, for example, one can create a filter to do that. For those that don't the "fix" takes longer: you have to consistently mark group messages as "not spam" when they land in the spam folder. Yup.? You said that, alright? :-) .? But, my list members are not nearly savvy enough to figure out how to create a spam filter.? I'm lucky if they can figure out how to create a password.? And, I've mentioned, that before :-)? My list member population is just not very computer savvy, even though that acknowledgement has made some of these forum members upset, it is what it is for us on our particular list, in our particular world.? So, not an option for my membership.? You said:? I have a feeling we've had this conversation before. Yup, we have. Here, as well as on the Beta list.? Still not happy with this unsub feature.? Still hoping I can drum up support for having Mark adjust this, so list members aren't unsubbed, then notified via an auto email that will either not get to them at all, or go to their Spam/Junk folder.? I don't get that logic.? To me, that's sort of worthless?? Am I missing something? You said:? f Mark were to ignore the feedback from these services (the ones on our list) then eventually Groups.io could become unusable for people with those services - all of its messages might end up rejected or sent to Spam. Understandable, and not what I'm disputing (Bruce, also responding to your comment as well).? Not saying Mark should ignore the feedback at all, it's important he doesn't, of course.? What I DON'T want to happen, is for list members to just be unsubbed.? I propose there is some other, better way to manage this.? You said:? It is a little ambiguous, but in that topic where you posted there's some indication that progress may be being made toward the goal: one group owner in "removed for spam" events. We have also seen a reduction from the beginning of moving over to groups.io, but, we are now at sort of a stalemate.? I think there was much more unsubbing activity for my groups right after the transfer, due to inactive list members not understanding what was going on, seeing messages from a site they were unfamiliar with, and simply marking them as spam.? Or, for inactive list members who didn't want to receive messages, and marking them as spam.? We sort of had a flurry of that activity right after our list transfers, which has now slowed down to about 1 per day.? Or 1 every other day.? And, maybe ISP's are "learning" groups.io should remain whitelisted, despite what folks might be inadvertently sending to their ISPs.? That's great.? But, the unsub issue is still cumbersome and time consuming for list mods to deal with.? Just a pain to have to email these list members privately, so they'll actually find out they've been unsubbed.? Many wouldn't figure that out for days, maybe longer, if they're on No Mail, and try to go to the list to view messages, only to find out they're no longer a list member, and that link provided in the auto restore email has expired.? Ugh.? But, promise I'll quit kvetching about this.? I love groups.io overall, just not in love with how Mark is managing the handling of spam issues.? I think there could be a better way to handle this without unsubbing list members, all I'm saying. -- Patty S. |
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Patty,
But, my list members are not nearly savvy enough to figure out how toWell, not a "spam filter" per se, but a filter for group messages. But I take your meaning. Perhaps the section on "How can I stop this from happening again?", or parts of it, should be brought out into its own page for easy reference by group members. Then maybe it could get some elaboration, or pointers to instructions, for different email services. Still hoping I can drum up support for having Mark adjust this, soI understand that unsubscription has a certain ruthlessness to it ("learn or die"). And I've made my alternative suggestion: Every now and then I've thought perhaps I should flesh out that seed of an idea into a more fully considered proposal, but I keep stumbling on the fact that I think allowing the mods to resume a member would defeat the purpose. And without that ability you'd likely be faced with the same level of effort to get the member to un-status him/herself. Also, Mark seems firmly convinced that unsubscription is the best way to force the issue to be resolved, despite all the objections presented in beta. Confounding the issue, I'm sure, is that some fraction (and I don't know if it is large or small) of the spam markings are probably by members who actually want to leave the group, but have been trained not to ever trust the "unsubscribe" link in a message, but to use their service's "Spam" button instead. Many wouldn't figure that out for days, maybe longer, if they're on NoEh? I don't see how this would happen to someone on No Email. Except maybe as a "time-bomb" lurking in their Spam folder if they've switched to No Email within the last month (or whatever their service's expiration time is). On the other hand most of my other groups have only intermittent activity, so the idea that a member might go several days or longer before realizing that they haven't heard anything in a while isn't too far-fetched. On the gripping hand those groups also have smaller membership and very little for me to do as a mod. So far this has happened to exactly one of those members (an AOL address) and he promptly resumed himself. Shal -- Help: /static/help More Help: /g/GroupManagersForum/wiki Even More Help: Search button at the top of Messages list |
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Patty,
instead of unsubbing list members, why not suspend them, soBecause allowing mods to reinstate the members would defeat the whole purpose. Which is first and foremost to satisfy the (former) member's email service that Groups.io will stop sending messages that get marked as spam. And to that end, the member and the service's filter must be trained not to mark Groups.io's messages as spam. It is either the vicious cycle (more marking as spam means more deliveries to the spam folder means more marking as spam), or the virtuous cycle of the reverse trend. I haven't had any issues on Yahoo Groups with spammers getting into myKeep in mind that this issue has nothing directly to do with members sending actual spam, or spammers getting into your group. It is about the behavior of /receiving/ members, and their email services. Granted if there are groups on Groups.io that do deliver messages that their members sincerely believe to be spam, that's a problem - for all groups on Groups.io - as it drives the vicious cycle. One advantage of unsubscription is that it tamps these down too - spam-filled groups lose members. Shal -- Help: /static/help More Help: /g/GroupManagersForum/wiki Even More Help: Search button at the top of Messages list |
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On Thu, Aug 23, 2018 at 01:34 AM, Shal Farley wrote:
Which is first and foremost to satisfy the (former) member's email service that Groups.io will stop sending messages that get marked as spam. And to that end, the member and the service's filter must be trained not to mark Groups.io's messages as spam.I think what too often gets lost in these discussions is that groups.io does not unsub people just to punish them. For whatever reason, the receiving email service got a message from groups.io that it BELIEVES TO BE SPAM, and on that basis has REQUESTED that its user be unsubbed. That's how these feedback loops work, and groups.io is just doing what it was told to do.? Failing to act on this request may seem like no big deal, but it is. Back in February, a well-respected antivirus provider (Norton) began flagging groups.io as a phishing site. AVG and a handful of others soon followed suit. This situation persisted for nearly week. You can read all about it . One of my subscribers contacted Norton and asked them what all the hubbub was about. He was referred to a perfectly innocuous groups.io message that had something to do with a party invitation. I had just transferred our main group from Yahoo a week earlier, and had a great deal of difficulty convincing everyone in our club that we hadn't just made a terrible mistake. The hope is that as groups.io grows and more email providers become "trained" to accept high email traffic from this source it will become less and less of a problem. Meanwhile, if an occasional subscriber gets bumped off my group and has to be reinstated, that's a very small price to pay to avoid a repeat of that experience. Regards, Bruce? -- The system Help is your friend.??/static/help |
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You said:?
Perhaps the section on "How can I stop this from happening again?", or parts of it, should be brought out into its own page for easy reference by group members. Then maybe it could get some elaboration, or pointers to instructions, for different email services. I do have a Wiki entry, and I also have set up a Guidelines notice to go out monthly to our group, about what will happen to you if you mark a groups.io list message as spam.? And, our Welcome letter also has a little blurp in it about NOT marking groups.io list messages as Spam, or emptying your Spam/Junk folder without looking for valid emails and restoring them as "NOT SPAM".? I think I've done everything I can do as a list owner to warn new and existing list members about this feature.? It is a foreign concept to my Yahoo Groups transfer members, so they tend to be the ones that are most frequently unsubbed.? You said:? I understand that unsubscription has a certain ruthlessness to it ("learn or die"). And I've made my alternative suggestion:II d https://beta.groups.io/g/main/message/16955 Hah, well put, "learn or die".? That's how I feel, and agree with your suggestion of some other "corralling" of a suspected spam sender, rather than ruthlessly unsubbing them.? You said: Eh? I don't see how this would happen to someone on No Email. Let me correct that statement: We have a fairly significant amount of tranferred Yahoo Groups members who actually ARE receiving list messages in some fashion (individual or digest), but don't know it, and function as though they are No Mail by going to the list to read messages.? How?? Again, back to a fairly significant number of list members that just didn't understand the Yahoo Groups sign up process, created a yahoo.com email address they never used, the default email delivery on Yahoo Groups is Individual Emails, and just went to the list's home page to read and reply to list messages.? And, took that behavior with the to groups.io, since they don't even know they have a yahoo.com email address that has been receiving list messages (for years).? So, it's as though they're No Mail by virtue of how they read list messages.? If they get to their email and empty the gaillion spam emails, or, if Yahoo decides to mark groups.io email as spam, now they're unsubbed and will never see the restore email.? Have had a few of those folks get unsubbed. In fact, I had one list member vehemently argue with me that, "I have NEVER had a yahoo.com email".? I had to screen snip her old Yahoo Groups membership to prove to her she did.? Sigh... Clearly, this seems to only be an issue for me, so, I will figure out how to deal with it best we can.? Otherwise, very happy with how Mark's designed groups.io, and it certainly beats the slow disintegration and dysfunction of Yahoo Groups. -- Patty S. |
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On Thu, Aug 23, 2018 at 09:37 AM, Patty Sliney wrote:
It is a foreign concept to my Yahoo Groups transfer members, so they tend to be the ones that are most frequently unsubbed.That's one thing that causes a lot of confusion.? Yahoo expects their FBL notice to be observed, but they don't (at least, didn't) honor the same request. Duane -- Help: /static/help GMF's Wiki: /g/GroupManagersForum/wiki Search button at the top of Messages list A few site FAQs: /static/pricing#frequently-asked-questions |
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Tony, What about putting the member on No Mail (effectively unsubbing them from email) , tell them That's essentially what I proposed in beta, except I decided that it would be best not to mess with the member's actual Email Delivery setting (and the distraction that some groups don't allow No Email). So I proposed a "status" akin to bouncing status - which stops group postings being sent to their email, and displays a banner on the web site when they visit. The "tell them they can find the groups mails on the web" will probably have to come from a That's a "maybe" in my book. The source of the notice is , but not an address associated with their group or its members, so I think it is already more likely to be delivered to the member's Inbox than whatever triggered the FBL in the first place. I think the only two choices here are the automatic message from or a message sent by a group mod from a personal address. Anything else is likely to be (rightfully) mistrusted by the member. That said, there's no reason to choose -- do the automatic message, and if a group mod wants to follow it up later that's great. Shal -- Help: /static/help More Help: /g/GroupManagersForum/wiki Even More Help: Search button at the top of Messages list |
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Patty,
Let me correct that statement: We have a fairly significant amount ofIf that's what they're doing, then you can help them out by setting them to No Email. If they're not checking their email they won't notice, and if there's nothing sent then Yahoo Mail's automatic spam filter no longer matters. That seems too simple, so there's obviously a flaw I'm not seeing. Maybe it is only that you don't know which ones to flip until their first unsub event. ([voice="C3PO"] No! Shut them all down!"[/voice]). In fact, I had one list member vehemently argue with me that,Oh, I've heard that one before. ;-) Clearly, this seems to only be an issue for me, ...I don't think so. This topic doesn't come up time and again for no reason. Shal -- Help: /static/help More Help: /g/GroupManagersForum/wiki Even More Help: Search button at the top of Messages list |
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Duane,
That's one thing that causes a lot of confusion. Yahoo expects theirI'm pretty certain that's because Yahoo Mail didn't have one until well after all development on Yahoo Groups had ceased. But it always possible that even if Yahoo Groups were still under active development that they'd do something else, at least with respect to Yahoo Mail. Shal -- Help: /static/help More Help: /g/GroupManagersForum/wiki Even More Help: Search button at the top of Messages list |
Linda McLaughlin
Bruce
Shal Farley
Patty Sliney
Duane
Tom Link