How do you handle members who report forum emails as spam?

[Stuart Wright]

We require AVForums members to maintain a valid email address, but I’m reconsidering how we should handle members who report our emails as spam.

Our email service suppresses delivery to those addresses after a spam complaint. Some affected accounts remain Valid in XenForo, so the members can continue using the forum while receiving no emails—including potentially important account and recovery messages.

One member has 96 entries in our bounce log. These appear to be repeated attempts blocked by an existing complaint suppression, rather than 96 separate complaints.

The address may still work perfectly well. The problem is that our sending service will no longer deliver to it. Simply asking the member to reconfirm the same address won’t resolve that suppression.

How do other admins handle this?

• Do you restrict the account until the member resolves delivery, or let them continue using the forum without email?
• Do you distinguish complaints about optional notifications from an inability to receive essential account emails?
• If the complaint was accidental, what recovery process do you offer?
• Do you provide access to a private help forum while the account is restricted?

I’m reluctant to lock established members out unnecessarily, but we do require a reachable email address. Equally, we shouldn’t override a spam complaint and resume sending without resolving it properly.

I’d be interested in both your policies and any XenForo add-ons or workflows you use to manage this.
Thanks

 

[DragonByte Tech]

1 complaint or 1 failure = Email Invalid (Bounce). It's not worth having to go back to SES customer support and beg them to restore my account again

 

[Stuart Wright]

1 complaint or 1 failure = Email Invalid (Bounce). It's not worth having to go back to SES customer support and beg them to restore my account again

Thanks for the reply. There is no automatic way to do this, right? I'm exploring developing an addon to do it.
Also have you experienced emails being blacklisted and therefore rejected? It's an issue with the send. Maybe a Spamhaus report. It's what kicked off my investigation. Members not getting forum emails - e.g. for email confirmation - and being unable to let us know about it through the forum.

 

[DragonByte Tech]

Thanks for the reply. There is no automatic way to do this, right? I'm exploring developing an addon to do it.
Also have you experienced emails being blacklisted and therefore rejected? It's an issue with the send. Maybe a Spamhaus report. It's what kicked off my investigation. Members not getting forum emails - e.g. for email confirmation - and being unable to let us know about it through the forum.

I use my DragonByte Mail addon which comes with an Amazon SES endpoint It uses Amazon's own SDK to verify the message came from Amazon itself and once it's worked out the source account/SMTP code, it forwards the information to XenForo's own bounce handler.

I don't believe I've experienced blacklisting since moving to SES. Selfhosted email I had all kinds of blacklist problems with, but that was before I learned anything at all about DKIM/SPF/DMARC

 

[wmtech]

We clearly distinguish between transactional and promotional emails. The two categories are handled separately and sent through different email providers.

Email authentication and security mechanisms, including SPF, DKIM, DMARC, and BIMI, are properly configured and continuously strengthened as needed to ensure reliable email delivery and maintain sender reputation.

Promotional Emails

• Promotional emails are sent via AWS.
• Users can opt out of promotional emails at any time.
• If a user reports a promotional email as spam, they are automatically unsubscribed from all further promotional emails.

Transactional Emails

• Transactional emails are sent through a separate email provider.
• Some of those emails are essential for the operation of the forum and cannot be opted out of.
• If a user reports a transactional email as spam despite having enabled it in their account settings or having agreed to receive it under our Terms of Service, their account will be closed in accordance with our forum rules.

 

[Stuart Wright]

If a user reports a transactional email as spam despite having enabled it in their account settings or having agreed to receive it under our Terms of Service, their account will be closed in accordance with our forum rules.

What if they accidentally reported as spam?

 

[Digital Doctor]

What if they accidentally reported as spam?

re-instate them with at $100 admin fee

 

[Digital Doctor]

re-instate them with at $100 admin fee

I bet Painbreaker could made an AI chatbot that fixes the situation with a mere admin approval needed.

 

[Stuart Wright]

I’d set them to Email invalid (bounced) with a custom message explaining why.

 

[z3r010]

Any member who marks our emails as spam receives an immediate ban. If they reach out to complain and are an active member, I offer them the chance to use a new email address, with the clear understanding that if it happens again, the ban will be permanent.

 

[Stuart Wright]

Any member who marks our emails as spam receives an immediate ban. If they reach out to complain and are an active member, I offer them the chance to use a new email address, with the clear understanding that if it happens again, the ban will be permanent.

I understand this.
However, if you have a member who, for example, is in the middle of a trade in our classifieds or has thousands of posts and is a genuinely valuable member, then an automatic ban could be disadvantageous for forum.
I am considering setting their account to Email invalid (bounce) and displaying a notice explaining what they need to do to restore their account. This would still be problematic for a trading partner.

 

[wmtech]

What if they accidentally reported as spam?

We have no way of knowing whether the spam report was intentional or accidental. When an account is marked as bounced following a spam report, it is automatically disabled, and a 45-day countdown to account deletion begins. The user can reinstate their account at any time during this period by changing their email address.