Spam Filters Can't Take A Joke

As a part-time system administrator I've seen dozens of messages "go missing" due to spam protection systems that are too aggressive.

Sometimes the user innocently drafted an email that looked like spam. Frequently the sending network was blacklisted - often for reasons unknown. Other times the sender was just being sort of stupid.

Let's look at a few examples of emails that never made it past the server:

In both cases the users were completely mystified as to why their emails were bounced or otherwise were not delivered. They wanted me to devote my keen IT skills to hunting down the cause of the problem, and make sure it didn't happen again.

Reality is that filters aren't smart enough to, "get a joke." It seems unlikely they're going to achieve this ability any time soon.

About half the time, if you send an email like the above to someone who hasn't whitelisted your address, it's going to vanish. Even if they have whitelisted you, there's still a good chance that some intermediary server will see the content and delete it. The bottom line is that almost all email passes through some kind of content-based system intended to stop spam mail before being delivered.

So please, until further notice - if you want your email delivered, don't make it look like spam. It's going to get trashed.

That is, unless you're a spammer. Spammers - please keep making your email look like spam. It makes it easy to block.

Thank you.

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