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August 2025

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Victim of Algorithms???
by dandrews920＠comcast.net Aug. 18, 2025

Aug. 18, 2025

I am writing users of Mailman2 to see if others might be having similar experiences to me, or Is it just us? I run a Mailman 2 installation for a nationwide nonprofit. We have a lot of smaller lists, and a few big ones. We send something to our members once or twice a week, that is about 11,500 emails. We have been running Mailman for over 20 years, with similar usage. The numbers have gone up some over the years, but not in big jumps. We do send out some fund-raising messages, all our chapters and affiliates do some, but I don't think they are excessive and a small part of the overall volume. Just over two months, Microsoft started blocking all mails from our domain. The error messages said erratic mail volume or user complaints. After a month of back and forth, they eventually lifted the ban. We did improve things technically some, and tried to control things in a way to make them happy. We instituted a hidden form, to defeat bot subscribers to lists. We reduced the rate of emails we deliver per hour to slow down the flow. We reduced the frequency the server tries to resend messages on the queue. We did a full security audit and cleaned up our dns settings etc. We installed more anti malware and anti-virus software. The mail queue had been quite high when we were under some sort of subscription attack, but it is back down in the neighborhood it usually is. In addition to MS blocking us, all the providers for whom they process mail blocked us, Yahoo, AOL, Verizon etc. They removed their ban, that is Microsoft, but said they could do nothing about the others. Yahoo, AOL etc., say, with error messages the block is temporary, but it has been going on for over six weeks. The error says unexpected volume or user complaints. Things seem to have changed in the past six months. These providers seem to be much more sensitive to things. We are doing what we have been doing for over 20 years, and now it isn't acceptable, and I don't know how to improve it. Any thoughts, experiences, etc., advice would be appreciated. We are unable to deliver valuable e-mails to all our members. Dave

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