SPAM provider not letting emails through

Maria Shanley

Our SPAM provider Reflexion is not letting our blackbaud emails through to our staff because they are blacklisted. We recently started having this issue. Does anyone else use Reflexion? If so, what has been your resolution?


I've talked to Blackbaud and our IT guy. There appears to be no resolution unless we move to another spam provider or ask our staff to subcribe to our emails with their yahoo, or gmail accounts. Can you also let me know what SPAM provider you are using? thank you!


Maria  

 

Joshua Bekerman bCLO bCRE

"because they are blacklisted." - sorry, who is blacklisted?  Your organization's domain?

Maria Shanley

Blackbaud emails going to our email filter.


Here's a summary of what's going on from Trent (Blackbaud). He's been helping us try and figure out how to resolve this. He suggested I also post on here.


An email filter called Reflexion is blocking us due to being listed on a low priority Blacklist (Barracuda, ivmURI , ivmSIP and ivmSIP24).

Blackbaud will monitor high priority blacklists that large email providers use to block spam senders (such as Spamhaus and Spamcop), but there are thousands of smaller blacklists on the internet that could potentially list any sender. Anybody can create a blacklist and add any sender for any reason, but this doesn't mean they are an authoritative source for determining spam senders. Listing email senders is at the discretion of the blacklist owners and choosing to use those blacklists is Reflexion's decision.

Major email providers (Gmail, Yahoo, etc) disregard low-priority lists entirely and only use information from high-priority services such as SpamHaus and SpamCop. Being listed on one of the smaller blacklists does not have to mean an automatic rejection of email from that source. The block is happening on the Reflexion side. If they can't whitelist us, that sounds like a limitation of their system.

Blackbaud can guarantee that your emails will be sent in a quick and efficient manner; that part is in our control, however we cannot guarantee all emails will be received. The only entity that can guarantee emails are received is the email recipient. A potential workaround we discussed on the phone was to change the email address of the constituent records in LO to use a webmail address, like Gmail/Yahoo/Hotmail so they emails don't get funnelled through Reflexion.


 

Philip Nawrocki

The blackbaud e-mail issues continue...


I don't see why Reflexion can't whitelist e-mails from BB.


It says they have an "allow list" in the 'How Reflexion Works' video on their homepage, so they should be able to whitelist BB e-mails.


Contact Reflexion and explain what is going on. BB has resources here:
https://bb-email-services.docs.blackbaud.com


that Reflexion can use to get e-mails to your company.


Gotta love the nuclear option from BB to have employees use a webmail account instead of their work e-mail.


Thanks,


Phil

Maria Shanley

We've been talking with Reflexion as well. We are able to whitelist and we have already. But what happens is that the emails don't even make it to that second layer of protection where the white listing happens in reflexion.  We are looking to go with another SPAM provider. Any recomendations?


Maria



Philip Nawrocki:

The blackbaud e-mail issues continue...


I don't see why Reflexion can't whitelist e-mails from BB.


It says they have an "allow list" in the 'How Reflexion Works' video on their homepage, so they should be able to whitelist BB e-mails.


Contact Reflexion and explain what is going on. BB has resources here:
https://bb-email-services.docs.blackbaud.com


that Reflexion can use to get e-mails to your company.


Gotta love the nuclear option from BB to have employees use a webmail account instead of their work e-mail.


Thanks,


Phil

 

Jason Thomas

Maria Shanley:

We've been talking with Reflexion as well. We are able to whitelist and we have already. But what happens is that the emails don't even make it to that second layer of protection where the white listing happens in reflexion.  We are looking to go with another SPAM provider. Any recomendations?


Maria



Philip Nawrocki:

The blackbaud e-mail issues continue...


I don't see why Reflexion can't whitelist e-mails from BB.


It says they have an "allow list" in the 'How Reflexion Works' video on their homepage, so they should be able to whitelist BB e-mails.


Contact Reflexion and explain what is going on. BB has resources here:
https://bb-email-services.docs.blackbaud.com


that Reflexion can use to get e-mails to your company.


Gotta love the nuclear option from BB to have employees use a webmail account instead of their work e-mail.


Thanks,


Phil

 

 

I get BB's point that they can't spend their time on each and every one of the thousands of blacklists out there, but Barracuda is a pretty popular spam filter, no? Would it be unreasonable when when a client reaches out to BB about a specific spam filter, that BB contacts that spam filter and investigates?

So, maybe not proactively screening the thousands out there, but instead, as needed when a client comes in for help.

Jason 

John Alan

Jason Thomas:

Maria Shanley:

We've been talking with Reflexion as well. We are able to whitelist and we have already. But what happens is that the emails don't even make it to that second layer of protection where the white listing happens in reflexion.  We are looking to go with another SPAM provider. Any recomendations?


Maria



Philip Nawrocki:

The blackbaud e-mail issues continue...


I don't see why Reflexion can't whitelist e-mails from BB.


It says they have an "allow list" in the 'How Reflexion Works' video on their homepage, so they should be able to whitelist BB e-mails.


Contact Reflexion and explain what is going on. BB has resources here:
https://bb-email-services.docs.blackbaud.com


that Reflexion can use to get e-mails to your company.


Gotta love the nuclear option from BB to have employees use a webmail account instead of their work e-mail.


Thanks,


Phil

 

 

I get BB's point that they can't spend their time on each and every one of the thousands of blacklists out there, but Barracuda is a pretty popular spam filter, no? Would it be unreasonable when when a client reaches out to BB about a specific spam filter, that BB contacts that spam filter and investigates?

So, maybe not proactively screening the thousands out there, but instead, as needed when a client comes in for help.

Jason 

 

"Popular" isn't the driving force with a blacklist.    As noted here (https://bb-email-services.docs.blackbaud.com/overview/blackbaud/blacklists/)  in our Email Resource Center, not all blacklists are created equal.  When "informational" blacklists are used to actually block delivery the end user is doing themselves a disservice.  Informational blacklists are there to warn of a pending issue:  SPAM traps on mailing lists.  If a SORBS or Barracuda or IVM trap is on those sending lists and remains it's only a matter of time before an Important blacklist like Spamhaus or SpamCop is hit.  The Important blacklists DO impact delivery.  The Informational do not. 


My team recommends configuring the Reflexion product to whitelist our sending IPs and utilize Important blacklists rather than Informational blacklists.  Unfortunately, we don't know enough about the Reflexion product to train on specific settings to apply (nor is that our role in delivery - Reflexion is not a Blackbaud product).  Of course, my team does continue to work with a small sub-set of clients who are using this product and experiencing difficulties and, if a site is willing to provide their configuration plan that completely resolves the issue, we'll share it with the community.

Jason Thomas

John Alan:

Jason Thomas:

Maria Shanley:

We've been talking with Reflexion as well. We are able to whitelist and we have already. But what happens is that the emails don't even make it to that second layer of protection where the white listing happens in reflexion.  We are looking to go with another SPAM provider. Any recomendations?


Maria



Philip Nawrocki:

The blackbaud e-mail issues continue...


I don't see why Reflexion can't whitelist e-mails from BB.


It says they have an "allow list" in the 'How Reflexion Works' video on their homepage, so they should be able to whitelist BB e-mails.


Contact Reflexion and explain what is going on. BB has resources here:
https://bb-email-services.docs.blackbaud.com


that Reflexion can use to get e-mails to your company.


Gotta love the nuclear option from BB to have employees use a webmail account instead of their work e-mail.


Thanks,


Phil

 

 

I get BB's point that they can't spend their time on each and every one of the thousands of blacklists out there, but Barracuda is a pretty popular spam filter, no? Would it be unreasonable when when a client reaches out to BB about a specific spam filter, that BB contacts that spam filter and investigates?

So, maybe not proactively screening the thousands out there, but instead, as needed when a client comes in for help.

Jason 

 

"Popular" isn't the driving force with a blacklist.    As noted here (https://bb-email-services.docs.blackbaud.com/overview/blackbaud/blacklists/)  in our Email Resource Center, not all blacklists are created equal.  When "informational" blacklists are used to actually block delivery the end user is doing themselves a disservice.  Informational blacklists are there to warn of a pending issue:  SPAM traps on mailing lists.  If a SORBS or Barracuda or IVM trap is on those sending lists and remains it's only a matter of time before an Important blacklist like Spamhaus or SpamCop is hit.  The Important blacklists DO impact delivery.  The Informational do not. 


My team recommends configuring the Reflexion product to whitelist our sending IPs and utilize Important blacklists rather than Informational blacklists.  Unfortunately, we don't know enough about the Reflexion product to train on specific settings to apply (nor is that our role in delivery - Reflexion is not a Blackbaud product).  Of course, my team does continue to work with a small sub-set of clients who are using this product and experiencing difficulties and, if a site is willing to provide their configuration plan that completely resolves the issue, we'll share it with the community.

 

Thanks for the additional information, as we've been experience less than great deliverability ourselves since switching over to BB.


So, you're saying that this product, Reflexion, utilizes low priority informational blacklists to determine what it'll allow through? And that low-priority blacklists only block senders whose lists contain known spam trap email addresses?


If so, would running the email list through a list cleaning tool (to remove the spam traps) resolve the issue? (rather than asking reflexion to either whitelist blackbaud ips or ask that they switch the blacklists they currently rely on)


Also, is there a non-blackbaud resource that states generally which blacklists to focus on? I'm asking, so that I can forward to our IT team here. Doing a quick search, another ESP seems to have an expanded list of ones to focus on: https://www.mailgun.com/blog/not-all-blacklists-are-created-equal So, not sure if there's a generally agreed upon list (among larger ESPs), or if it's more subjective (based on ESP)


Thanks,

Jason