Members with Yahoo! and AOL Accounts Might Not Get Emails from the Church
"Some holders of email accounts from notable (and formerly ubiquitous) web services providers Yahoo! and AOL may not receive any sort of email communication from Church accounts, including official messaging and marketing from Salt Lake City, emails from area representatives, and even any message sent by local leaders over Leader and Clerk Resources (LCR), the main gateway local leaders use to carry out administrative work."
Can anyone confirm this? If it is accurate, is there any word on whether it can or will be fixed?
As Ward Technology Specialist, I need to alert my leaders to all this. Yesterday, we went through a massive boundary realignment in the stake and leaders need email to communicate with anybody right now. They need to know what they can do and when they can do it.
My communication through the Global Services Department indicates the issue is known; is being worked; has high priority; is in negotiation with the email providers; requires the church as an email sender to meet grading/rating criteria for which they have dropped below the threshold for; and the timeline is unknown since the church does not control the process to improve their grading/rating.
JD Lessley Have you tried finding your answer on the ChurchofJesusChrist.org Help Center or Tech Wiki?
I identified this problem at least 4 months ago, and it seems to be spreading wider. Originally it was only AOL.COM and the extensions serviced by AOL .... yahoo.com and verizon.net to name two.
My postings to LCR feedback have been ignored, or at least unanswered. Four months seems a little long if the problem is being taken seriously, and it is getting worse.
As an EQ Secretary I have combed all the e-mail addresses in the Ward we have on file, send "test" messages through LCR requesting a reply a representative extensions, and confirming the AOL and affiliates suspicion. I have also extracted a separate list of addresses I know are affected and sending all LCR messages also to my wife (gmail) who forwards to me, and I re-forward to my scratch list from my personal e-mail account - which is a verizon.net address (AOL having be bought by verizon, and verizon transferring its e-mail responsibilities to AOL).
Gmail.com seems to work fine, as does msn.com, erols.com, rcn.com, and some other smaller variants ... apparently all subject to change -- since it seems the root problem is not understood.
Regardless, the lack of concern and communication on the "break" is astounding. Our Stake still uses e-mail for most Stake business (Releases, Sustaining, being notable), which then excludes about 25% of our Ward from that communication (all of which are "active" members). So we are relying on a tool that is broken, and has been for some time.
If getting a new e-mail address was less "messy" I would get a gmail.com account (which works with LCR at the moment) -- and maybe that is the simplest solution for me ... however the Church seems to have rapidly pushed technology past many of its more senior members, especially widows, who are struggling with basis e-mail -- not to mention -- signupgenius, justserve, LDS.Tools (which is never up to date even with automatic updates "on"), google.doc, and every other tool which is the favorite of one of our leaders at a point in time.
I am committed to serve, and will do my best with what is presented -- but a little communication from "above" would help in understand a problem and a timeline to resolution.
The post immediately before yours actually does a pretty good job of explaining the problem, albeit in technical terms some may not understand. It also provides the reason there is no timeline for resolution.
In terms I would understand, the "grading/rating criteria" simply means the minimum standard at which an email will be forwarded by the receiving ISP to the recipient.
My two cents: As long as disaffected members report these email messages as spam to their email system providers, it is likely that such email messages will continue to be sent to the bit bucket. The perception of the recipient is all that matters.
drepouille wrote: ↑Thu Sep 15, 2022 6:25 am
My two cents: As long as disaffected members report these email messages as spam to their email system providers, it is likely that such email messages will continue to be sent to the bit bucket. The perception of the recipient is all that matters.
It isn't just disaffected members. My daughter recently complained to us that she receives at least 3 emails per week from her stake (not to mention what comes from her ward) and she feels that is too much. Since the church doesn't have an opt-out option and (in my experience) church leaders are reluctant to unselect individual members before hitting send, I imagine many find their only course of action to reduce the flood of chatter to their in-box is to mark the messages as spam.
drepouille wrote: ↑Thu Sep 15, 2022 6:25 am
My two cents: As long as disaffected members report these email messages as spam to their email system providers, it is likely that such email messages will continue to be sent to the bit bucket. The perception of the recipient is all that matters.
It isn't just disaffected members. My daughter recently complained to us that she receives at least 3 emails per week from her stake (not to mention what comes from her ward) and she feels that is too much. Since the church doesn't have an opt-out option and (in my experience) church leaders are reluctant to unselect individual members before hitting send, I imagine many find their only course of action to reduce the flood of chatter to their in-box is to mark the messages as spam.
I get 3 or more emails from church headquarters most weeks, between regular church things and family search.
There are plenty of options available besides marking legitimate emails as spam:
Contact the sender and ask to receive less emails.
Either change or remove your email address from your membership profile or ask the ward clerk to do so.
Set up a separate email just for the Church and put that email address in your profile.
I am sure tech savvy folks can think of others.
Back in the day of LUWS, I always received bounceback messages from invalid email addresses whenever I sent out a stake broadcast message. One active sister had changed her email address to something like me@none.com, so nothing I sent out was ever delivered to her. When I asked her about it, she said she was far too busy to bother with all those church emails.
I find the Gospel Living circle messages to be even more annoying, since they make my phone PING most often after I go to bed.
garystroble wrote: ↑Thu Sep 15, 2022 12:39 pm
There are plenty of options available besides marking legitimate emails as spam:
True, but the generally accepted way for dealing with this - to unsubscribe from local leaders' email, or even specific senders - is not available.
One thing that could help is if leaders go though the list of emails and remove all the ones that are no longer valid. As far as I know, the church has no process for removing emails that are rejected as invalid. To keep sending to those addresses lowers the church's ratings as a sender. Normally I don't advocate for removing emails, but if the email is known to be wrong, it should be removed - especially if it goes to one of the problematic domains. ("me@none.com" isn't likely to be an issue, but "me@yahoo.com" would be.)
Another thing the leaders could do is try to limit the number of emails. Lately, my ward has been sending a single weekly email of all the upcoming events. That seems like a good practice - it's frequent enough without turning into a regular flood.
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