Order Emails going to Spam or Junk

[CosmosK]

ZC version, 1.54
Westminster New template
PHP Version: 5.6.40 (Zend: 2.6.0)

Last week all working fine. This week order emails go to Spam or Junk folder. I can't tell if outlook 2010 (windows 7 PC) is doing it or ESET antivirus. Nothing I do in setting does anything.

After assuming it was my domain email, I created a new email this morning through fastmail and setup order confirmations to be from it. Now, these new emails still go to junk or spam, however, when I send an email from that account to test it they do not go to spam. So, it seems to be something with being sent from Zencart I think.

Any ideas on what could be going wrong?

[swguy]

Four pieces of software you mention in your post are beyond end of life.

[CosmosK]

I understand your observation, but I don't see how that would explain it working last week and not now.

[simon1066]

The first thing I would look at is to compare the source of the received emails - 'spam' vs 'non-spam'. (view source in the email app). That might give clues as to why they went to spam.

[CosmosK]

Well, I look at the raw message and here's what I see. The spam one is being caught by fastmail before it gets to my computer. The one I'm on now is win10 and the test order confirmation never showed up. I log into webmail and it's in a spam folder there with a 7.0 spam rating.


Spam this week

X-Spam-known-sender: no
X-Spam-sender-reputation: 500 (none)
X-Spam-score: 7.0
X-Spam-hits: FREEMAIL_ENVFROM_END_DIGIT 0.25, FREEMAIL_FROM 0.001, FREEMAIL_REPLYTO 1,
HTML_MESSAGE 0.001, INVALID_MSGID 1.167, ME_NOAUTH 0.01,
ME_SENDERREP_NEUTRAL 0.001, RCVD_IN_DNSWL_NONE -0.0001,
SPF_HELO_PASS -0.001, SPF_NEUTRAL 0.652, SPOOFED_FREEMAIL 1.999,
SPOOFED_FREEM_REPTO 1.997, LANGUAGES en, BAYES_USED none,
SA_VERSION 3.4.2
X-Spam-source: IP='192.185.143.39', Host='gateway31.websitewelcome.com', Country='US',
FromHeader='com', MailFrom='com'
X-Spam-charsets: plain='utf-8', html='utf-8'


Older not spam:

X-Spam-known-sender: no
X-Spam-sender-reputation: 500 (none)
X-Spam-score: 1.1
X-Spam-hits: HTML_MESSAGE 0.001, INVALID_MSGID 1.167, LOTS_OF_MONEY 0.001,
ME_NOAUTH 0.01, ME_SENDERREP_NEUTRAL 0.001, RCVD_IN_DNSWL_NONE -0.0001,
SPF_HELO_PASS -0.001, T_SPF_PERMERROR 0.01, LANGUAGES en,
BAYES_USED none, SA_VERSION 3.4.2
X-Backscatter: NotFound1
X-Backscatter-Hosts:
X-Spam-source: IP='192.185.50.73', Host='gateway24.websitewelcome.com', Country='US',
FromHeader='com', MailFrom='com'
X-Spam-charsets: plain='utf-8', html='utf-8'

[carlwhat]

Well, I look at the raw message and here's what I see. The spam one is being caught by fastmail before it gets to my computer. The one I'm on now is win10 and the test order confirmation never showed up. I log into webmail and it's in a spam folder there with a 7.0 spam rating.


Spam this week

X-Spam-known-sender: no
X-Spam-sender-reputation: 500 (none)
X-Spam-score: 7.0
X-Spam-hits: FREEMAIL_ENVFROM_END_DIGIT 0.25, FREEMAIL_FROM 0.001, FREEMAIL_REPLYTO 1,
HTML_MESSAGE 0.001, INVALID_MSGID 1.167, ME_NOAUTH 0.01,
ME_SENDERREP_NEUTRAL 0.001, RCVD_IN_DNSWL_NONE -0.0001,
SPF_HELO_PASS -0.001, SPF_NEUTRAL 0.652, SPOOFED_FREEMAIL 1.999,
SPOOFED_FREEM_REPTO 1.997, LANGUAGES en, BAYES_USED none,
SA_VERSION 3.4.2
X-Spam-source: IP='192.185.143.39', Host='gateway31.websitewelcome.com', Country='US',
FromHeader='com', MailFrom='com'
X-Spam-charsets: plain='utf-8', html='utf-8'


Older not spam:

X-Spam-known-sender: no
X-Spam-sender-reputation: 500 (none)
X-Spam-score: 1.1
X-Spam-hits: HTML_MESSAGE 0.001, INVALID_MSGID 1.167, LOTS_OF_MONEY 0.001,
ME_NOAUTH 0.01, ME_SENDERREP_NEUTRAL 0.001, RCVD_IN_DNSWL_NONE -0.0001,
SPF_HELO_PASS -0.001, T_SPF_PERMERROR 0.01, LANGUAGES en,
BAYES_USED none, SA_VERSION 3.4.2
X-Backscatter: NotFound1
X-Backscatter-Hosts:
X-Spam-source: IP='192.185.50.73', Host='gateway24.websitewelcome.com', Country='US',
FromHeader='com', MailFrom='com'
X-Spam-charsets: plain='utf-8', html='utf-8'

cosmos,
email is hard. ZC is not an email server. it is a shopping cart. it can send email via a multitude of different configurations, and servers. you can NOT blame ZC for your email going to spam. you can blame spammers who have made it rather difficult for legitimate email to get through. because of them, we have to implement all of these email filters.

looking at your headers, you have spam assassin setup. spam assassin assigns a score to your email, and then your email client might have a rule on it to put emails with a certain score into your spam folder. spam assassin is probably configured from your cpanel for your receiving email. it has nothing to do with ZC.

as you can see the SA score went up specifically due to 2 rules:

SPOOFED_FREEMAIL 1.999,
SPOOFED_FREEM_REPTO 1.997

that amounts to almost 4 of your 7 points. and those 4 points are directly tied to you using fastmail.

one needs to train spam assassin and then configure it properly to get the right emails going to the right places. that said, there will always be false positives, and true negatives.... or something like that.

the current gold standard for ensuring proper email delivery is the combination of SPF, DKIM and DMARC. SPF is the easiest part of it to setup. DKIM is probably the most difficult as it involves configuration of the server where ZC resides. and if you are on a shared server, you then have to rely on the tech support of your hosting company to see if they do anything.

as i initially stated, email is hard. your emails are going to your spam folder due to spam assassin not being properly trained and/or configured, and your email client. those 2 things are working in tandem. i do not believe eset has anything to do with it.

good luck.

[swguy]

I quite agree with Carl that using fastmail is a big mistake. You really want the mails coming from your domain. His advice to get sorted with DKIM, SPF etc is also sound. Your hoster can guide you.

[CosmosK]

I'm not trying to blame ZC. Bluehost screwed me last time with a PHP upgrade, so I would suspect them. Spent a while with their tech support, pretty worthless. Carl, thank you for the excellent response. I will read carefully and digest. I'm using fastmail as a attempted cure as my domain email is where the problem started. Upside of switching temporarily is I can use fastmail tech support who I hope is more educated on emails than bluehost. Right now I need a beer ;) and will try some more on it tomorrow. Thanks for the help all!

[werock]

If the hosting providers emails are going to junk send your self an email look at the header for the host of the email and you can run that through spam filter lists and see if their server IP is being blocked.

If you have recently updated your spam settings since the ZC email is a template style email that maybe why. I had the same issue for a little while with template emails going to spam but normal emails going right to the inbox. But if all emails go to spam I would check the host against spam filters.

[CosmosK]

I never changed the source email away from the domain email until this issues came up. I switched to fastmail to try to fix it. Easy enough to switch back.

Fresh set of eyes today. I ran a test order through again with the PC off. I have a Mac also and the email came in fine!

Header has less in it:

X-Cyrus-Session-Id: sloti2d1t02-1587063261-1479588-2-5578048413692244205
X-Sieve: CMU Sieve 3.0
X-Spam-known-sender: no
X-Spam-charsets: plain='utf-8'

looking at your headers, you have spam assassin setup.

I don't know what this is and I never set it up. My current two culprits are Outlook 2010 or ESET antivirus. I have nothing installed other than these that could be at play. Maybe one of them uses spam assasin?

Conspiracy theory-wise, I'm imagining Bill Gates sends out new spam rules for older programs like Outlook 2010 to force me to upgrade. Or ESET updated their rules?

I'm not clear on where the header info comes from and who puts it there. Does my computer create the header info? It seems it must.

How us FREEMAIL fastmail? I've used fastmail for 15 years at it has always seemed solid to me.