LCR “Send a Message” application NOT sending to yahoo.com accounts

[russellhltn]

With respect, IT management does as its directed, but it falls to IT management to bring issues forward (or to just fix them).
...
Again, they should just fix it, or if there is a conflict with church policy, they need to bring it forward to church leaders to get it resolved.

You're assuming they haven't. Given how long this has been going on, I don't see how they couldn't know. So many of the church employees are leaders in their own wards and stakes.

Lastly, I suspect that the lack of an unsubscribe button (etc.) probably runs afoul of the CAN SPAM act, so Church IT may be having the Church operating outside US law.

A quick read of it on the FCC website indicates it doesn't apply to general email. But the lack of a unsubscribe link as well as an appropriate selection for messages from ward leaders in managing the subscriptions is another suggestion of a policy.

However, with all of that said, Church IT management doesn't seem to follow this forum, so us discussing it is probably not going to lead to a solution.

That is correct.

So, I reiterate what I said above - every time you hit this problem, call church support and open a ticket (don't allow yourself to be talked out of opening a ticket). That is the only way I can see "us users" ever getting anything done.

That's making some assumptions about how the church works that may not be valid. For one, the church is not out to "serve the user" as we'd expect from most organizations. At least not "serve" in the way we're used to.

[lajackson]

Lastly, I suspect that the lack of an unsubscribe button (etc.) probably runs afoul of the CAN SPAM act, so Church IT may be having the Church operating outside US law.

As long as a Church email is not selling commercial products and is related only to religious matters, it does not violate the Act and does not require an unsubscribe or opt-out button. Different laws apply in other countries.

The Church is very careful to follow the law. This law in particular is specifically targeted to commercial activities, not religious ones.

From what I have seen with regard to LCR Send a Message, the issue with some ISPs seems to be that there are too many messages being sent over and over to the same invalid email addresses and those addresses are not being removed from future transmissions. Different providers have different levels of tolerance for these types of things, and more and more of them are deciding not to process emails from organizations that will not clean up their email lists.

[mattprasmussen]

At the very least, they could create a new email address for the "send a message" so the email doesn't come from the "noreply@churchofjesuschrist.org" address that is flagged by Yahoo and AOL.

If they don't fix the underlying issue now, how long until Gmail and iCloud decide to block church mail? Then what will be the church's solution?

[karlburk]

I expect one of the challenges may be that The Church, as an entity will not send off-topic messages, but The Church is unable to screen all messages sent by all people with access to the LCR "Send a Message" system, so there is no guarantee that all messages sent via that system conform to policy (e.g. "for Church purposes only").

Also consider that there may be recipients who report a message to their email service provider because they were only included due to a an actual member entering an email address incorrectly, or by others who may harbor animosity for some reason.

Also, the email service providers jobs are not simple either. They are understandably expected by their users to control dissemination of spam, and they rely on filtering algorithms and heuristics that frequently evolve to counter evolving methods of unscrupulous entities to circumvent these methods (by adjusting server settings, message scheduling, or even by emulating the sending of messages from a good source). Tuning these algorithms is an iterative process and seldom simple. There should be a related hint when they say "For the best probability of not being blocked, we recommend: Email messages sent via “Send a Message” be sent during the week instead of near peak hours of Saturday and Sunday." I expect a new sender email address (a tactic frequently employed by spammers) might help for a short time, but would not likely resolve the overall issue.

By all this, I don't mean to imply that I understand the issue in detail, or that any of these scenarios have actually occurred, or to excuse any party involved, but rather I would hope to encourage patience with The Church's IT department. Though, it still sounds to me like a good idea to continue reporting issues to help justify to leadership the continued need of resources for investigating and resolving the issue.

[jtjacks]

At the very least, they could create a new email address for the "send a message" so the email doesn't come from the "noreply@churchofjesuschrist.org" address that is flagged by Yahoo and AOL.

Interesting thought, but I don't think that would help. Emails would still come from a church domain which would get the same reputation pretty quickly -- unless they set up a "dummy" account, which would make the emails look even more spammy

If they don't fix the underlying issue now, how long until Gmail and iCloud decide to block church mail? Then what will be the church's solution?

If you scroll up in this thread, you will see that we already have/had this problem with Gmail. I don't know whether it got resolved with google or whether they just stopped sending failure notices or ??.

[mseawrig]

To Andrew and all who have experienced email not going to Yahoo.com email accounts from LCR.

I'm the product manager for the Church's email infrastructure that delivers the LCR messages to the internet email service providers. A little over a year ago Yahoo and other Verizon owned email domains started to blacklist us or severely throttle us. The biggest issue was that the Church had a lot of bad email addresses we were sending to. We've worked with the team that manages that database and we've made a lot of progress, but unfortunately, it hasn't cleared up our reputation yet with Yahoo. We are working on deploying a new solution during December to hopefully fix this once and for all.

What we need from all Stake Technology Specialists, Ward and Stake Clerks, Bishoprics, etc. is to have you encourage ward members to keep their email addresses updated at account.churchofjesuschrist.org. Once in the site, go to Contact Settings > email address and make sure your address is correct. While there, go into Email Subscriptions and uncheck any of those notifications you do not want to receive. Please subscribe only if you intend to use the settings.

The two biggest things that hurt our email reputation is bad addresses and emails that are never opened and deleted. The worst thing is when our messages are reported as spam. Please help us improve our reputation by encouraging your members to follow good email practices.

I'll try to add a post to the system when we go live with the new solution. We could use a few prayers to help this be successful.

Mike Seawright
South Jordan Utah Stake Technology Specialist
Product Manager - Client Security and Email Services
Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

[garystroble]

To Andrew and all who have experienced email not going to Yahoo.com email accounts from LCR.

I'm the product manager for the Church's email infrastructure that delivers the LCR messages to the internet email service providers. A little over a year ago Yahoo and other Verizon owned email domains started to blacklist us or severely throttle us. The biggest issue was that the Church had a lot of bad email addresses we were sending to. We've worked with the team that manages that database and we've made a lot of progress, but unfortunately, it hasn't cleared up our reputation yet with Yahoo. We are working on deploying a new solution during December to hopefully fix this once and for all.

What we need from all Stake Technology Specialists, Ward and Stake Clerks, Bishoprics, etc. is to have you encourage ward members to keep their email addresses updated at www.account.churchofjesuschrist.org. Once in the site, go to Contact Settings > email address and make sure your address is correct. While there, go into Email Subscriptions and uncheck any of those notifications you do not want to receive. Please subscribe only if you intend to use the settings.

The two biggest things that hurt our email reputation is bad addresses and emails that are never opened and deleted. The worst thing is when our messages are reported as spam. Please help us improve our reputation by encouraging your members to follow good email practices.

I'll try to add a post to the system when we go live with the new solution. We could use a few prayers to help this be successful.

Mike Seawright
South Jordan Utah Stake Technology Specialist
Product Manager - Client Security and Email Services
Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

The link you provided above does not work for me, but account.churchofjesuschrist.org does work.

[ambldsorg]

I'm the product manager for the Church's email infrastructure that
delivers the LCR messages to the internet email service providers.
...
The two biggest things that hurt our email reputation is bad addresses
and emails that are never opened and deleted.

Maybe you can help in resolving another issue that could potentially
impact the reputation of emails coming from LCR:

https://tech.churchofjesuschrist.org/fo ... hp?t=41439

Many spammers cannot be bothered to follow RFCs and there are various
spam rating systems in place that may score anomalies in email as
potentially coming from spam sources. Some of the spam blocking
techniques that I employ rely on the sloppiness of spammer code (and in
particular the botnet variety). Perhaps by fixing the above reported
bug, the email reputation will improve.

Even if it doesn't improve, I would think that the bug should be fixed
as it is most egregious.

Apropos, what is the proper mechanism for reporting bugs? What is the
proper channel for reporting problems with LCR? Is it the "Send
Feedback" link?

Thanks.

[caillines]

What we need from all Stake Technology Specialists, Ward and Stake Clerks, Bishoprics, etc. is to have you encourage ward members to keep their email addresses updated at account.churchofjesuschrist.org. Once in the site, go to Contact Settings > email address and make sure your address is correct. While there, go into Email Subscriptions and uncheck any of those notifications you do not want to receive. Please subscribe only if you intend to use the settings.

It might be worth getting approval for the LCR team to send a bulk mail to Stake Presidencies, Bishoprics, and Clerks with this information. Wrap it up in a reminder of the importance of keeping membership records up to date.

[arne]

To Andrew and all who have experienced email not going to Yahoo.com email accounts from LCR.

I'm the product manager for the Church's email infrastructure that delivers the LCR messages to the internet email service providers. A little over a year ago Yahoo and other Verizon owned email domains started to blacklist us or severely throttle us. The biggest issue was that the Church had a lot of bad email addresses we were sending to. We've worked with the team that manages that database and we've made a lot of progress, but unfortunately, it hasn't cleared up our reputation yet with Yahoo. We are working on deploying a new solution during December to hopefully fix this once and for all.

What we need from all Stake Technology Specialists, Ward and Stake Clerks, Bishoprics, etc. is to have you encourage ward members to keep their email addresses updated at account.churchofjesuschrist.org. Once in the site, go to Contact Settings > email address and make sure your address is correct. While there, go into Email Subscriptions and uncheck any of those notifications you do not want to receive. Please subscribe only if you intend to use the settings.

The two biggest things that hurt our email reputation is bad addresses and emails that are never opened and deleted. The worst thing is when our messages are reported as spam. Please help us improve our reputation by encouraging your members to follow good email practices.

I'll try to add a post to the system when we go live with the new solution. We could use a few prayers to help this be successful.

Mike Seawright
South Jordan Utah Stake Technology Specialist
Product Manager - Client Security and Email Services
Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

In the link https://account.churchofjesuschrist.org/subscriptions there is an "Unsubscribe from All" option - does this also prevent "Send a Message" from sending to that email address or does the member need to delete their email address from the system? I need to know what instructions to send when a member complains.