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[Gork]

I can't find a more appropriate forum/place to ask this question.  Through searches I can only find how to REMOVE yourself from the JR mailing list, and that you're automatically added to the mailing list when you purchase/download software or create a forum account.

Every so often JR sends out emails from an email list about updates to software and even sometimes communicates information through email about month-long special deals for $10 off the normal upgrade price near when a new version is released.

I have been a member of the forums for a long time, and have purchased/downloaded software at least three times but never hear from JR.  I have tried, over the past few months, changing my email address to no avail.  Where can I sign up?

As an aside, I changed my email address to ...@hotmail.com today and never received the required "reactivation" email.  I had it resent several times, but never received it in my inbox or spam box.  I finally had to change my email address to a different address, receive an activation email, change my email address BACK to ...@hotmail.com THEN activate with the email sent to the other email address to get back in.  Ugh!

[JimH]

When you download, you can enter your e-mail address.

Most likely, your ISP or e-mail provider is treating it as spam.  You could try to tell them it isn't.  If your e-mail program has a whitelist, you could add jriver.

[Gork]

Is there any way to check if my email address is on the list?  The email address I entered before ran on my own personal email server, so the spam/whitelist/blacklist thing wasn't an issue.  The email address I just changed on my forum account is hotmail, which is what my email address in the forms was for several years up until a month or two ago.  When I downloaded v15 I entered an email address, though i don't remember which one.  In several years I have never received a single email from JR.  It just seems odd to me.

[DarkPenguin]

It isn't in hotmail's junk filter, right?

[Gork]

Correct, I have never found an email from JR in Hotmail's junk mail folder - I go through this folder regularly.

[Gork]

I just went through the process of downloading again, and once again entered my email address.  When someone gets an email from JR, if you think about it, would you please post you received it in this thread so I can know for sure if I'm receiving these?

[Gork]

I'm still not getting anywhere with this.  Is there another avenue I should be using to contact a J River employee to request a resolution to this issue?

[bob]

Hi Gork,
Sorry for the trouble, we are looking into it. Will have an answer for you today.

[bob]

I'm still not getting anywhere with this.  Is there another avenue I should be using to contact a J River employee to request a resolution to this issue?

So I checked and the newsletter from last week was delivered to your k******n@hotmail.com account.
I just did a test to my hotmail test account from the listserver (by hand) and it worked (though it did go into the junk folder on hotmail as is often the case for the first message received from a non-hotmail/gmail/yahoo server).
I also sent a test message to your hotmail account and the server accepted it. It's got to be in your folders somewhere. You might want to check your hotmail filtering options...

regards,
Bob

[Gork]

Ah, thank you - feeling better...  I checked my inbox and junk box and don't see anything.  What exactly do I need to whitelist to receive these messages?  I've added jriver.com - should that do it?  And if so, would you mind sending me another test email?  If not let me know what it should be and I'll update it.

Thanks for your help - this is just silly.

[JimH]

  And if so, would you mind sending me another test email?  If not let me know what it should be and I'll update it.

If your forum address is the same as your license address, you can send yourself an e-mail from the Restore Page.  See Purchase above for a link.

[Gork]

@JimH & bob
I did as you suggested and the email came through with no problems, just like the email advising me of my purchase came through with no problems.  (Both showed up normally in the inbox, this test email after I whitelisted jriver.com and the "purchase email" before adding jriver.com to the whitelist.)  I don't know why I get those just fine but have never seen any other email, including the test email recently sent and the recent mass mailing, in the past two years.

Do you have any idea when the next newsletter will be going out so I can watch for it and maybe post back to this thread if I don't receive it?  Or can the system be "tagged" to re-send that least newsletter email to me (now that I've included the entry in the white list) from a week or so back?  (I'd like to have a copy of it anyway.)  I could see me missing one or even a few of these emails when scanning through the junk folder, but two years worth of them?  It doesn't seem possible to me and makes me think something else may be wrong.

This issue is something I've been wanting to address over the past couple of years but just never "got up off the couch" to deal with.  Part of the reason for that is having to post such a dorky question in an open forum.  But I would like to finally make sure the issue is resolved.

[bob]

Try white-listing listserver.jriver.com and webserver.jriver.com. It's possible you flagged a message from them by accident once in the past.
I think that the mail in the junk mailbox is flushed automatically after 30 days so you wouldn't see anything older than that in the mailbox.

[Gork]

I tried adding listserver and webserver as you suggested but it wouldn't allow them to be added - presumably because I've already added *@jriver.com.  I actually am aware that Hotmail disposes of all junk emails, but I normally look through them more often than that.  <scratches head>

[Gork]

I've received test emails from employees, and thank you.  As a followup, I'm posting to enquire as to whether or not anything has been automatically sent out by the system since the last time I posted.  I have received nothing.

[JimH]

The last time we mailed was about March 23.

[bob]

I've received test emails from employees, and thank you.  As a followup, I'm posting to enquire as to whether or not anything has been automatically sent out by the system since the last time I posted.  I have received nothing.

Try turning on notifications for a board. Go to Media Center 15 for example, then in the upper right edge of the main frame there is a notify tab. Click it and you can have the board send an email to your address every time someone posts in that board. I'll watch the queue to see if those messages are being delivered...

[Gork]

I haven't gotten any "global type" emails from jriver at all since the test messages I already referred to, on 3/8.  I never saw a "global type" (newsletter?) email on 3/23, so that apparently didn't come through.  I have purposefully not dumped my junk mails in March so I could check, and just went back to 3/20 checking each and every one of them thoroughly.  (There were well over 300...)

@bob
I did get two emails from the board notifying me of the two new posts (above this one) in this thread...  Would you still like me to try turning on notifications for a board or did these two emails satisfy that question?

[bob]

I haven't gotten any "global type" emails from jriver at all since the test messages I already referred to, on 3/8.  I never saw a "global type" (newsletter?) email on 3/23, so that apparently didn't come through.  I have purposefully not dumped my junk mails in March so I could check, and just went back to 3/20 checking each and every one of them thoroughly.  (There were well over 300...)

@bob
I did get two emails from the board notifying me of the two new posts (above this one) in this thread...  Would you still like me to try turning on notifications for a board or did these two emails satisfy that question?

You don't need to turn on notifications. Since you are got those 2 emails and they come via the same delivery method as the newsletter, it narrows down the problem you are seeing to the content of the email or the headers. One difference I can see is that the newsletters have listinfo headers another is that the sender is different. I think I'll try putting your email on a test list and sending you a copy. I'll let you know here when I get a chance to do that...

Thanks for your help.

[Alex B]

I have had a Hotmail address as the forum email address for years. I get mail from the listserver. The messages come directly to my inbox, but I may have marked them as safe in the past if they ended up in the junk folder.

I have received only one MC16 announcement during the last few months (the older messages are about MC15):

Date: Thu, 24 Feb 2011 14:47:59 -0600 (CST)

Here are the headers that contain email addresses:

X-SID-PRA: bob-at-jriver-dot-com
Mailing-List: contact mediajukebox-at-jriver-dot-com; run by ezmlm
From: Media Center <mediacenter-at-jriver-dot-com>
Delivered-To: mailing list forum-at-listserver.jriver-dot-com
Message-ID: <20110224204759.5221.qmail-at-linux.jriver-dot-com>
To: forum-at-listserver.jriver-dot-com
Sender: bob-at-jriver-dot-com

-at- = @
-dot- = .

[Gork]

@bob
Just wanted you to know I'm still around - no hurry...

[greynolds]

FWIW, I've got the same problem.  I've never had trouble receiving new post notifications from this discussion forum, my license key emails come through just fine, and I never receive the emails that announce new versions of JRiver.  My email for JRiver goes to the provider I use for my web hosting (1and1), so this is not isolated to hotmail.

If it wouldn't be overly difficult to setup (some forum software is easier than others), a news only forum could be setup that only admins / moderators can post to and those of us having problems receiving the existing announcement emails could subscribe to new posts on that forum.  Any announcements that are emailed to users could also be posted to the forum.  There would probably still be some number of people who never receive anything, but it might help to minimize that.

[bob]

Thanks for the reports all. I think what make some sense is to post to this topic when we do another mailing.
Note that the mailings are infrequent and that we try hard to make sure there aren't duplicate postings (based on forum, registration, etc).

Here are the dates of the past years worth of mailings (all mailings the past year included forum members):

23 Feb 2010
20 Apr 2010
25 May 2010
29 Jul 2010
24 Feb 2011

[Gork]

I wish someone could figure out why I (now we) aren't receiving emails though - this has to be something which can be fixed.  I don't regularly visit the forums, and something tells me if I subscribe to this thread it won't end up being a permanent solution.  And it surprises me that marketing isn't a bit more important - here so often people are up in arms about SPAM and I'm practically begging for correspondence...

[JimH]

I wish someone could figure out why I (now we) aren't receiving emails though - this has to be something which can be fixed.  I don't regularly visit the forums, and something tells me if I subscribe to this thread it won't end up being a permanent solution.  And it surprises me that marketing isn't a bit more important - here so often people are up in arms about SPAM and I'm practically begging for correspondence...

You're assuming that the problem is on the sending side.  We believe otherwise.  I'm sorry.  Maybe you could try using a gmail account instead of hotmail.

[MrC]

I wish someone could figure out why I (now we) aren't receiving emails though...

Hotmail is notorious for both rejecting SMTP mail and incorrectly classifying received mail as SPAM.

If the mail is being rejected, JRiver would know this from their mail logs.  Likewise if the message was accepted.  Once the remote mail server accepts the message, as far as JRiver is concerned, their mail servers have done the job.  You can only discover what happened henceforth by interrogating the receiving mail server.

[Gork]

Two things.  I misunderstood if J River checked the sending server logs to ensure whether the message had been sent and accepted, correct?  The other thing is that I've used two different email servers - I only recently changed to hotmail in an attempt to fix the issue.  The other email server is through Dotster (a hosting company), which I pay for, and I have pretty much full control over that one.  I've never received emails at either location.  This second thing is the biggest reason I don't believe it's on my end; I can't check the logs for problems with emails which are never received.

[MrC]

So you've examined your maillogs on your dotster host and verified you have no SMTP connection attempts on the dates given by Bob?

What is the MX host for your dotster service, better yet, the domain name of the email address you've used?  Does that MX run antispam or other connection rejecting software?  If you don't actually control the MX, there's not much that can be done here.  You'd have to ask the MX admin to verify any connection attempts and SMTP status code.

[Gork]

I don't see the point in posting my MX host and/or my domain name, but I own my domain name and control my own MX settings.  I don't have access to the maillogs, but the MX does run antispam software - if I so choose, and I can choose which "mailboxes" it does or doesn't run on.  I have it set to place "***spam***" in the subject field of any message it catches, but still forward on.  I then have my client software filter any messages labelled thusly to a separate folder which I go through at my leisure.

I can't imagine that not being able to examine SMTP connection attempts on the mail server points toward a problem on my end when both Hotmail and my Dotster host don't forward the emails in question to me.

I have a Google Mail account; I guess I could try going through the download process again to input THAT email address instead and also change it on the board here.  But will that prove anything, or will it just be assumed that Google Mail, Hotmail and Dotster are all blocking these messages from JR?

[greynolds]

I have a Google Mail account; I guess I could try going through the download process again to input THAT email address instead and also change it on the board here.  But will that prove anything, or will it just be assumed that Google Mail, Hotmail and Dotster are all blocking these messages from JR?

And add 1and1 to the list too.

I just double checked my 1and1 settings.  I have the spam filter completely disabled as I have my gmail account pull email from my various accounts.  If gmail identifies a virus, it gives me a notification email and leaves the original email on the server it's pulling it from.  If gmail identifies spam, the message goes into my gmail spam folder which I check and empty a few times a day.  I also double check my 1and1 account directly every once in a while.  Of course it's possible that gmail occasionally pulls an email off of one of the servers, deletes it from the server, and then drops it before putting it in my inbox or spam folder, but it seems extremely unlikely that it would have done this with every mailing from JRiver while allowing license emails and forum emails through.

I'll be keeping my eye on this thread for a notification of when the next mailing goes out - hopefully we'll all receive it.

[MrC]

There is a missing piece.  Large mail sites today such as hotmail, gmail, Yahoo, AoL, 1and1, and perhaps Dotster typically have SMTP connection-time rejection rules, often based on rules, blacklists, or their own homegrown mass-sender lists.   End users don't see this.  These connection-time rejection rules are essential or they are overrun by zombie attacks and crumble under the load.

The anti-spam filtering you ultimately see is simply spam classification/tagging to determine into which mailbox messages will be placed (or affects message headers).  This all happens after the MX has *accepted* the mail.  You'll never know, unless you can examine the MX logs, that the message transfer did not take place because the sending host's SMTP conversation was rejected outright.

AoL, Yahoo, Hotmail all have bulk-sender signups - if an SMTP server is not on those lists, mail rejection likelihood is higher.

[JimH]

Thanks for the help, MrC (again).

[Lasse_Lus]

not sure Mr C, Yahoo's spamfilter sucks, numerous times i've received trash junk mail, and asked why those don't get filter out, but it's up to me they say...

[MrC]

not sure Mr C, Yahoo's spamfilter sucks, numerous times i've received trash junk mail, and asked why those don't get filter out, but it's up to me they say...

This is a different topic.  There will never be perfect spam filtering; it is all syntax, protocol or heuristic-based.  Turn the dial too far, and users complain about not receiving mail.  Loosen the settings, users receive too much junk.

Test yourself - take a look at any mail you say should have been rejected outright.  Carefully examine it, and then see if you can define a clear, fast, exact rule that block 100% of these messages (where "these messages" must be defined precisely and exactly), and yet not affect *any* other legitimate email.

But this strays...

[Lasse_Lus]

There will never be perfect spam filtering

for sure...  spammers seems to rule these days 

[greynolds]

There is a missing piece.  Large mail sites today such as hotmail, gmail, Yahoo, AoL, 1and1, and perhaps Dotster typically have SMTP connection-time rejection rules, often based on rules, blacklists, or their own homegrown mass-sender lists.   End users don't see this.  These connection-time rejection rules are essential or they are overrun by zombie attacks and crumble under the load.

The anti-spam filtering you ultimately see is simply spam classification/tagging to determine into which mailbox messages will be placed (or affects message headers).  This all happens after the MX has *accepted* the mail.  You'll never know, unless you can examine the MX logs, that the message transfer did not take place because the sending host's SMTP conversation was rejected outright.

AoL, Yahoo, Hotmail all have bulk-sender signups - if an SMTP server is not on those lists, mail rejection likelihood is higher.

While that certainly has some merit, we would probably be seeing a LOT more people complaining about the same problem if the larger sites (like hotmail, gmail, Yahoo, etc.) were blocking the emails from JRiver.  I would think that a large majority of the users would have email accounts with one of those bigger providers.  I'm not saying that the problem is absolutely JRiver's fault and since I don't have access to all the logs at my email provider I certainly can't say with 100% certainty that the email never made it to my provider.  But there is obviously a problem SOMEWHERE in the chain and I'm hoping there's a way to identify it and get it resolved.

Turning things around a bit, it's certainly not even remotely reasonable to expect each user to setup their own private email server in order to ensure that they have access to all the logs and full control over everything (in addition to being a ridiculous thing to do, it's way more involved than the average user could handle).  There's got to be a better solution to the problem.

[Gork]

Hotmail provides an option to mark specific mailing lists as safe.  (Supposedly all this does is prevent messages from being marked as SPAM though.  It doesn't appear it completely prevents messages from being delivered.)  Even though I've white-listed all messages from listserver.jriver.com and webserver.jriver.com as "safe senders," I could still try placing J River in the "Safe mailing lists" list.  This works by allowing Hotmail to bypass filtering for email which has a different name in the TO field than the receiver of the email message.

However, in order to do this I need an exact email address which shows in the TO field for these mailing list mailings from J River.  Perhaps something like happyusersexample@listserver.jriver.com?  Are you able to advise so I can add this information and see if it provides any resolution?

I could set up an email address through Comcast to try as well, though I don't know if that would be any different from what @MrC is referring to.  I do tend to think along the same lines as @greynolds, fwiw.

[bob]

A few things to consider:

The mailing in February was the only one in the last 10 months.

I checked the logs on the test to Gork and the mailing list email WAS getting accepted by his server. Once it gets there, there is absolutely nothing we can do to find out why it doesn't get from the server to his mailbox.

I've got test accounts on hotmail, gmail and yahoo that always get the mailings. They sometimes go into the junk/spam boxes but I leave the settings to default to make sure I'm not preferentially filtering them into the main box so I can see what's going on for the typical user of those services.

Duplicates are filtered out before sending. If we do a full mailing, you'll be on the registration list, perhaps the download list and the forum. You'll only get one message, not three.

The To: addresses are:
mclist a t listserver.jriver.com
forum a t listserver.jriver.com
mlist a t listserver.jriver.com
mjlist a t listserver.jriver.com

The bulk sender lists are difficult to get on. I've tried several times without a lot of joy.
Also, as MrC says big servers usually have realtime blacklist connection rejecting software running.
We do the same here. I check to see that our address are not on the myriad of blocklists before we send a message.
Also, note that servers can have their own private blocklists which can't be seen.

So, as the bulk mailings go out I monitor the delivery logs to see if there are patterns of rejections. We often exceed the connection limits for a big provider but that means the email gets delivered later. 99% of the email including all of the ones to hotmail, yahoo and gmail are delivered within 2 days. Nearly all of the rest are inactive email addresses that get removed before the next emailing.

Here are the headers from the 24th of Feb email received at my gmail test account. I fail to see anything wrong in them:

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                             
Delivered-To: atester2001@gmail.com
Received: by 10.151.114.14 with SMTP id r14cs201126ybm;
        Thu, 24 Feb 2011 15:36:57 -0800 (PST)
Received: by 10.150.218.16 with SMTP id q16mr2615254ybg.349.1298590616854;
        Thu, 24 Feb 2011 15:36:56 -0800 (PST)
Return-Path: <mclist-return-19-atester2001=gmail.com@listserver.jriver.com>
Received: from listserver.jriver.com (listserver.jriver.com [204.75.156.22])
        by mx.google.com with ESMTPS id d3si15753359ybi.26.2011.02.24.15.36.56
        (version=TLSv1/SSLv3 cipher=OTHER);
        Thu, 24 Feb 2011 15:36:56 -0800 (PST)
Received-SPF: pass (google.com: domain of mclist-return-19-atester2001=gmail.com@listserver.jriver.com designates 204.75.156.22 as permitted sender) client-ip=204.75.156.22;
Authentication-Results: mx.google.com; spf=pass (google.com: domain of mclist-return-19-atester2001=gmail.com@listserver.jriver.com designates 204.75.156.22 as permitted sender) smtp.mail=mclist-return-19-atester2001=gmail.com@listserver.jriver.com
Received: (qmail 8336 invoked by alias); 24 Feb 2011 22:01:59 -0000
Mailing-List: contact mediajukebox@jriver.com; run by ezmlm
Precedence: bulk
X-No-Archive: yes
From: Media Center <mediacenter@jriver.com>
Delivered-To: mailing list mclist@listserver.jriver.com
Message-ID: <20110224220131.10529.qmail@linux.jriver.com>
Subject: Sweet 16 MC Beta Savings, and Before You Install IE9 RC ....
To: mclist@listserver.jriver.com
Date: Thu, 24 Feb 2011 16:01:31 -0600 (CST)
Sender: bob@jriver.com
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII"

I've got a test list that I can put anyone on that's having trouble then we can run a few test messages. Email me your preferred address... bob (at) jriver (dot) com
and in a couple of days I'll send out a test message.

[MrC]

The bulk sender lists are difficult to get on. I've tried several times without a lot of joy.

Interesting.  I had no problems getting approved for bulk sender lists on Yahoo, AoL and gmail.  But this was about 4 years ago.  It is critical that your domain has a good reputation, and this is more problematic for folks that send out product info announcements as users filing mail into Spam folders affect reputation.  I see nothing untoward re: jriver's MTAs.

So, as the bulk mailings go out I monitor the delivery logs to see if there are patterns of rejections. We often exceed the connection limits for a big provider but that means the email gets delivered later. 99% of the email including all of the ones to hotmail, yahoo and gmail are delivered within 2 days. Nearly all of the rest are inactive email addresses that get removed before the next emailing.

Be careful w/exceeding connection limits. This can adversely affect your ability to have mail delivered.

and in a couple of days I'll send out a test message.

This is useful to check the plumbing; unfortunately mail systems behave differently when under severe load.  Hotmail, for example, has been known to simply black hole accepted mail when their system's are taxed.  This of course frustrates affected users, who end up complaining to the senders.

[bob]

Interesting.  I had no problems getting approved for bulk sender lists on Yahoo, AoL and gmail.  But this was about 4 years ago.  It is critical that your domain has a good reputation, and this is more problematic for folks that send out product info announcements as users filing mail into Spam folders affect reputation.  I see nothing untoward re: jriver's MTAs.

I've not had trouble with the domain reputation. IIRC it was more like we were not sending often enough to get bulk status.

Be careful w/exceeding connection limits. This can adversely affect your ability to have mail delivered.

For sure.
I check the logs realtime while the mailing goes out. Most of the time it's no trouble, sometimes one or the other yahoo or hotmail will give the temporary blocked, connect again later message. That's no big deal since I can see them delivered a few hours later when the server goes back through the queue.

This is useful to check the plumbing; unfortunately mail systems behave differently when under severe load.  Hotmail, for example, has been known to simply black hole accepted mail when their system's are taxed.  This of course frustrates affected users, who end up complaining to the senders.

They blackhole the messages after accepting them with an OK status return? That's pretty cheezy. I'm always getting the messages to the test accounts though...

[Gork]

I've added the TO: addresses as "safe mailing lists."  I'll watch this thread for an update for when next a mass mailing goes out and will see if maybe this solves the problem.  Let's all cross our fingers for me, k?

[greynolds]

I've added the TO: addresses as "safe mailing lists."  I'll watch this thread for an update for when next a mass mailing goes out and will see if maybe this solves the problem.  Let's all cross our fingers for me, k?

I'll cross my fingers for all of us who are experiencing the problem.

[MrC]

I've added the TO: addresses as "safe mailing lists."

The To headers address will generally be your own email address.  In some cases, it will be a mailing list address.  You might have better luck whitelisting the address in the Sender header for the From header.  Ideally, you'd whitelist the envelope sender and sending host.

[bob]

The To: address is the list address (as above)

The From: address is usually
Media Center <mediacenter@jriver.com> though sometimes it's
mediajukebox@jriver.com

The sending host is listserver.jriver.com

The sender is almost always
bob@jriver.com

[Gork]

Yes, yes - sorry...  All of us!

And I have already white listed *@jriver.com as far as senders go.  That didn't seem to make a difference.  Hopefully that, along with whitelisting the TO addresses of the mailing lists, something different will occur.  (??)

[bob]

The To: address of the test email will be
mctest@listserver.jriver.com

[Gork]

I have added the mctest info as a "safe mailing list."

I will be surprised if this works.  It just seems like I get on everyone else's mailing lists without any problem.  My problem has always been how to get OFF them!  Sony sends out a mass mailer to me 1-2 times per month which always gets to me.

Here's to hoping!

[greynolds]

FYI, I received 2 emails from J River yesterday, both with the same content:

Message #1:

from   Media Center mediacenter at jriver  [e-mail addresses edited by mod]
to   forum at listserver.jriver.com
date   Tue, Jun 28, 2011 at 5:35 PM
subject   JRiver Media Center 16 Stable -- The Extreme Media Solution

Message #2:

from   Media Center mediacenteratjriver.
to   mlistatlistserverjriver.
date   Tue, Jun 28, 2011 at 6:00 PM
subject   JRiver Media Center 16 Stable -- The Extreme Media Solution
mailed-by   listserver.jriver.

[Gork]

I received this email as well.  (Odd that I'd receive it since I have one of the v15 keys that is supposed to work with v16 - though I haven't taken the time to install v16 yet.)  The header indicates the email was sent to mclist@listserver...  It showed up in my hotmail inbox.  I only received one email, not two like greynolds.

An email was also sent directly to my hotmail address with a header indicating it was sent by bob on behalf of jriver with regard to an updated message in this followed thread.  That email also arrived in my inbox.

I checked my junk folder and there was no additional email from jriver in there.

It seems to appear this issue has finally been resolved!  Thanks for all the work...  It is my intention to continue to watch this thread and post back maybe one more time with results either way.

[JimH]

Two could be from two e-mail addresses.

The mailing went to all customers since it has some important news about MC16 (Blu-ray, for example).  If you have an MC16 license, or you bought MC15 after Jan 1, you can download the latest, free of charge.