My forum has been blacklisted by Yahoo

AndyB

Moderator
I've been running a very popular forum for the past 15 years. But a few years ago I kept getting a bounce backs from Yahoo. The message contained in the bounce back is " temporarily deferred due to user complaints".

I made sure I have SPF and DKIM set on my server, but this turns out to be a complete waste of time.

I filled out the form on Yahoo's web site located here:

http://help.yahoo.com/l/us/yahoo/mail/postmaster/bulkv2.html

This is Yahoo's reply:

Hi Andrew,
Thank you for contacting Yahoo Mail.

Based on the information we've gathered, we're unable to offer prioritized delivery privileges to your sending IP(s) at this time. We can't provide you with specific information other than to encourage you to evaluate your mailing policies and practices to see how you may be able to improve your sending reputation. We encourage you to review some of our recommended best practices for sending to Yahoo Mail.

Another option is to register for the Complaint Feedback Loop program.

Yahoo Mail offers a free Complaint Feedback Loop program to help email senders minimize complaint rates. If you participate, Yahoo Mail forwards complaints from our users about emails sent from your organization.

Your patience is greatly appreciated.

Regards,

Frank
Yahoo Customer Care
http://help.yahoo.com

My conclusion is that Yahoo as a company is by far the most brain dead company I have ever seen. I now blacklist Yahoo on my forum and don't allow any members to register or use Yahoo as their email address.
 

EQ Admin

EQ Forum Admin
Staff member
Hi Andy,

It's unfortunate that you received that response.

Most likely you would have filled out a form with lots of seemingly redundant questions triple checking if you are shared vs. dedicated mail hosting on your IP address and if you are sending regular emails and/or email newsletters.

What is your domain name? Here is an SPF Wizard that can be used to help create an SPF record that can be published in your DNS if that's not already done.

What is your IP address? Have you checked it's sender score?

If you have a neutral sender score instead of a good/green score it means that the large email services such as Gmail and Yahoo are not seeing much email from your IP address, assuming I'm looking at the correct IP.

A great sender score can be used when communicating with a company such as Yahoo to help prove to them that you are a good email sender.

Is there any chance too many Yahoo members were reporting your email as spam at the time? Maybe there was some automated email sending such as the Weekly Digest that was emailing Yahoo accounts that did not want the email?

I'm more than happy to help you submit a new request if you would like to open a new ticket with Yahoo and work to get email from your server delivered to their users.

If the rate limiting is intermittent it can help to slow down how fast and how many connections your server is concurrently opening to the Yahoo mail servers.

Are you try sending to the Yahoo mail servers today is the email still deferred from your server?

Here is a similar thread that mostly repeats the information above:

http://www.emailquestions.com/threa...-blocked-by-aol-comcast-earthlink-yahoo.8108/

:welcome: to Email Questions!
 
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AndyB

Moderator
Is there any chance too many Yahoo members were reporting your email as spam at the time? Maybe there was some automated email sending such as the Weekly Digest that was emailing Yahoo accounts that did not want the email?

This happened a couple years ago, just normal email stuff a forum sends.

As I said I have a MX Record and SPF Record, that makes no difference to a company like Yahoo as they are brain dead.

I'm more than happy to help you submit a new request

I doubt anything can be done as I followed all the steps. A company like Yahoo just needs to be black listed by forums and we can only hope they will eventually go out of business.
 

AndyB

Moderator
It's not hard to work with large email service providers.

I had no problem with other large email providers, but after trying many times to communicate with Yahoo I gave up. Yahoo is truly a very messed up company.
 

EQ Admin

EQ Forum Admin
Staff member
Update: Resolving this issue ended with the OP not wanting to create a Yahoo account so their support can be contacted.

If anyone else finds this discussion, and has a Yahoo account too, I'm happy to try and help them work through the process :)
 

AndyB

Moderator
Last week I re-enabled sending emails to Yahoo and so far have not received any bounced Yahoo email notices.

Before re-enabling sending Yahoo emails to my members, I first filled out the Yahoo bulk email form here - Yahoo - login

I'm not sure if the bulk email form or the fact that I stopped sending emails to Yahoo for a year did the trick, but either way emails are now going through to Yahoo without issue.
 
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