Diane and I were subscribed to several of the same mailing lists and we were both having problems for weeks seeing our own messages reach the mailing lists. Neither of us had adjusted our E-mail settings but yet we were both seeing the same strange problem.
I found the cause this morning. It was Comcast’s spam filter.
Mailing lists such as the Entourage:mac Talk list will send subscribers individual messages with a From address using the original sender’s E-mail address. A Reply-to header in the mail message redirects replies to the mailing list server instead of the original sender so that all subscribers can receive the response.
That means if I send a message from my somebody@comcast.net address then I will shortly receive that message back to my somebody@comcast.net address.
Entourage and other E-mail clients will flag messages coming to an account from the same address as spam. Sending a person mail using his own E-mail address is a common tactic used by spammers. But the account owner usually has the ability to add his address to his own spam filter to prevent his messages from being blocked.
I have had the Comcast spam filter enabled on my account for months, if not, years. This is set using their webmail interface. However, they apparently altered their spam filter a few weeks ago, which is when I noticed my mailing list messages were missing. I was no longer receiving my messages sent to mailing lists but everyone else on the list was getting them.
I've disabled Comcast’s spam filter for now since it has no feature to allow me to whitelist E-mail addresses and I will deal with any spam that slips through as I receive it.
To disable Comcast’s spam filter:
- Browse to http://www.comcast.net and click the Email button in the upper left corner.
- Sign in to your email account using the same name and password entered into your Entourage or E-mail client account settings. The account name is the name before the @comcast.net in your Comcast E-mail address.
- Click the Preferences link to the left of the webmail Inbox.
- Click the Spam Filter link.
- Select the Do not filter spam radio button and then click the Update button.
Disable Comcast’s spam filter only if necessary. It’s still better than nothing. For more information about dealing with spam in Entourage read FAQs: Junk, Dealing with Junk Mail, and Junk Mail where “From is Me” on The Entourage Help Page.
