Semalt Expert: Why Does Thunderbird Perceive My Email As Spam?

There is a valuable lesson that Mozilla learned after they sent out monthly newsletters to their subscribers. The following article would wish to share this finding. Most of the people using the Thunderbird email client from Mozilla received their newsletter with a prefaced with an alert. The alert read that Thunderbird thought the message sent was an email scam.

Ivan Konovalov, the Semalt Customer Success Manager, says that the truth of the matter is that the company did not intend to scam anyone using their monthly dose of tips and any updates on the website, which they send to users using their emails. It led them to ask themselves what they had done wrong.

After assessing the problem and making a few tweaks, they found out that the system automatically brings up the alert whenever it finds a URL in the HTML copy of the email. The same issue affects other programs like Outlook and Entourage email. There have been complaints similar to the current issue that Thunderbird experiences from their clients.

The problem with Thunderbird's alert in the email window was because they had added a marketing line to their message. They inserted a text about the National Wildlife Federation. The intent was to gain mass support for the organization, in protecting wildlife and their environments. At the end of the text, was a URL to their website for anybody who wanted to donate to their cause.

Although when an individual adds a text link to an email message that does not constitute spam, it may still put off some readers. It follows that spam filters may not detect the text link as spam. Therefore, the email still gets delivered to the recipient. The structure of the text also matters.

Mozilla fine-tuned the text link to read the same but omitted the part where there was an URL. Instead of asking for people to donate to the specific website indicated above, they asked any willing people to donate today. After tweaking this, the Thunderbird community calmed down. It was quite something to realize for the company. It is also something that they should not repeat.

Another way that they could prevent the problem from reoccurring is to append the link using the extension cm_dontconvertlink. Phishing alerts work by trying to match the URL in the body, to the URL it tries to link. If they do not match, the warning system treats it as a phishing attempt and therefore pops out these notifications. By adding the extension stated above to a link notifies the app not to trace the link or make it traceable. In short, they will just leave it alone. Consequently, a discrepancy like the one identified with Thunderbird email does not arise again.

The only downside to the solution is that any clicks on the links in the email do not appear in the campaign efforts. They will also not show up in the analytic reports.

The moral of the story, from Thunderbird's case, is that people, businesses, or companies should not include any emails in any copy of an email they wish to send. If it is a must for them to do so, they must turn off the URL's tracking. Otherwise, Thunderbird will take action and treat the email as spam.