Stupidity should be a fatal disease

[joreth]

I posted a Tech Support issue a few days ago.  Here's the latest update on it:

Here's the original link.  Basically, I emailed my more gullible family members that Ebay phishing scam I posted about a few days before that.  Everyone I emailed it to that has a Yahoo! based email address (yahoo, sbc, etc.) bounced it back to me with the yahoo auto Mailer-daemon bot that said my email was suspected of being a Phishing scam.  I emailed yahoo's tech support for help.  They responded that they didn't understand why I wanted their help.  I reiterated what the problem was and included the original bounced email with full headers, as requested.  Here's their response:

=========================
Hello Joreth,

Thank you for writing to Yahoo! Mail.

After looking into the issue, it appears that your emails may have
become deprioritized due to a number of potential issues with your
mailings. To continue to receive prioritized delivery, we recommend
ensuring that your email lists are well maintained. If you conform to
industry standard practices, then you will not be deprioritized and you
should see improvements in delivery times as well as available
connections.

Please visit the following URL for information on improving list
maintenance:

    http://help.yahoo.com/help/us/mail/spam/spam-18.html

    http://help.yahoo.com/help/us/mail/defer/defer-01.html

    http://help.yahoo.com/help/us/mail/bulk/bulk-01.html

The above help page lists several techniques and technologies that will
help you to effectively maintain your email lists. If you are not
conforming to these standards, then you will likely experience
significant delays in connections, as our system automatically
prioritizes connection availability based on the type of information
contained in this FAQ. By trying the basic suggestions listed on the
help page, you can potentially:

    * decrease your cost of mailings -- in bandwidth, hardware, AND
management.

    * increase the effectiveness of your mailings -- nonexistent users
can't open your mail or respond to your offers!

    * increase the speed of your delivery -- mails sent to large numbers
of nonexistent users can definitely impact the time it takes for you to
deliver your important messages.

Plus, you'll ensure that your messages are prioritized by our delivery
system which helps us differentiate you from spammers.

Please let us know if you still need assistance so we may assist you
further.

Your patience during this process is greatly appreciated.

Thank you again for contacting Yahoo! Mail.

Regards,

Ashlar

Yahoo! Customer Care

For assistance with all Yahoo! services please visit:

    http://help.yahoo.com/

==========================

My response:

I don't have any mailing lists!!!  I sent an email out to a handful of
friends and family and it got bounced back.  Are you people even READING
what I'm saying?  I'll repeat it again, slowly this time.

I sent an email.

I sent it to my parents, sister, and a few other family members.

It was a warning about someone who was doing a Phishing scam.

The email got bounced back to me with the explanation that it was
suspected of being a Phishing scam.

I included the email with full headers below.

I just want to send a stupid email to my parents.  WTF?

==========================================

Hello,

Thank you for writing to Yahoo! Mail.

Based upon the information you have submitted, it appears the true
sender of that email seems to have used your email address in the
"reply-to" and/or the "from" field of the message sent out and, as a
result, misdirected email is being returned to you.

Unfortunately, there is no industry-wide technical solution to this
problem.  Yahoo! (or any other email provider) is not able to prevent
its domain name from being forged in the headers of an email message -
nor is it possible to preempt the misuse of an email address within
forged headers.  Individuals are strongly discouraged from forging the
Yahoo! domain and, in the future, appropriate action will be taken as
necessary.

Please know that typically mailer-daemon errors such as these usually
arrive in large quantities that eventually tend to decrease.

If you are a Yahoo! user, and are receiving multiple failure delivery
messages and would like to direct them out of your Inbox, you may want
to utilize our filter feature to do so. Filters automatically sort your
incoming messages into the folders of your choice, according to rules
that you set up. The benefit of filters is that you don't need to read
through each message to decide where it goes.

For example, you could create a filter so that messages from your family
members are automatically delivered to a personal folder called
"Family."

For more information on how to set up filters, please visit the
"Filters" section at:

    http://help.yahoo.com/help/us/mail/manage/

Please let us know if you still need assistance so we may assist you
further.

Thank you again for contacting Yahoo! Customer Care.

Regards,

Greg

Yahoo! Customer Care
http://www.yahoo.com/

35160976

===============================

Once again,

I SENT AN EMAIL

IT GOT BOUNCED

It was not someone forging my name, it was not a mailing list, it was not spam, it was not a phishing scam.

You people suck.

*grumble grumble*  Some day I'll learn how to not be so annoyed by the stupid that is tech support.  I apologize to those friends of mine who are in tech support.  Clearly you are the exception, not the rule.

Comments

[omnifarious.livejournal.com]

What account did you send it from, if you don't mind me asking?

[joreth]

My regular email address at techie.com

[omnifarious.livejournal.com]

How did you get an email with them?

I was just looking at things that could be set up differently to make things like that work better, but you don't seem to have much control over the techie.com domain so I don't think any of my ideas would work very well.

There are ways of setting up your domain that make it less likely that your stuff is classified as spam. And, unfortunately, the resources most places have for dealing with people who are upset over their stuff not getting through because it was tagged as spam are fairly small, especially since most of the upset people are actually spammers.