My Office Phone Number Is Spam!

[elgarak]

I found out today that my office phone number is blacklisted as spam!

So far, only me.com (from Apple's MobileMe service) seems to be blocking emails. The weird thing is that the emails do not show up in junk/spam folders; they seemed to get blocked at some deeper level.

I talked with Apple/MobileMe, and they tell me the blocking is done by ISPs, not by them.

Anybody here has any advice? Try to pursue getting the number whitelisted? Trying to get a new phone number from my university?

As to why the number is blacklisted: I have shared my office, and my phone number, with, oh, maybe five or six people over the years. Two of them got their computers infected with malware, one of them pretty bad (he was very fond of signing up for every free subscription offer, company newsletters etc.). I suspect that this is how the phone number ended up in spam. So far, no other part of my personal info is blacklisted (not my other email accounts, or any other phone number, or my name).

 

[Typicallucas]

How do you know you are "blacklisted"? What specifically is happening that would lead you to that conclusion?

How does having a phone number blacklisted affect your emails? I have never seen any references to originating phone numbers in emails...

If you were told you were blacklisted in some way by your ISP then perhaps you should give them a call?

 

[Puppycow]

I feel sorry for you. My office E-mail is on every spam list out there because a cow-orker got his computer infected with malware. One day I came to work and found my in box full of spam, and it has never ended since (although most of it gets sent to a special spam folder.)

 

[elgarak]

Here's the long story:

A new student in our group complained to me that he would not get my emails. Everyone else does. If someone else forwards one of my emails to him, he would not get them. They would not show up in his junk/spam folders.

He's the first (and so far, only) student we work with that uses a me.com email account. I have one, too, having signed up with MobileMe for other purposes, but I don't use my me.com email very much. I tried to send emails to my own me.com, and couldn't get them either. The test emails were just the words "test" in the subject, in the body, plus my usual signature block with my professional contact information, including my office phone number.

Since the emails were rather simple, I tried it without the signature block, and the email went through fine. After that I tested each element in the signature block. Turns out that only my office phone number, nothing else, would block the email. The other phone numbers I have in there (such as my office fax number) work. I also tried it sending from home, through my private provider. All the other tests I have done connected to my university's network.

Since this seems to only appear with me.com (not the other email services I and our other students use), I contacted Apple. Had a rather nice chat with one of their service people. I send them the phone number. They told me it's blacklisted as associated with spam. According to them, the blocking is not done on the me.com servers (the emails would get send to the junk/spam folder that the user can access), but rather by ISPs.

 

[elgarak]

Funny side note: The contact with MobileMe/Apple was an online chat. At the end, you can opt to get a transcript emailed to you. I agreed to that. Only, they would send it to my me.com email address, and since the phone number is in the transcript, it gets blocked again.

(They asked for an alternate email address, but somehow it didn't get through to use it.)

 

[elgarak]

To add some more: I have informed the IT people of my university and my private ISP about this. I just have to wait and see what they come up with, I guess. Since it's just the phone number, and not anything else (not my email addresses, for instance, and so far only one email provider), I don't consider it a serious problem. Currently, it's more interesting and curious.

I was mostly curious if someone else has experienced anything similar, and have recommendations what to do.

 

[rjh01]

What happens if you send an e-mail with your phone number from another e-mail account? Like if I put in your phone number in my e-mail and sent it to someone else would they get the e-mail?

 

[elgarak]

What happens if you send an e-mail with your phone number from another e-mail account? Like if I put in your phone number in my e-mail and sent it to someone else would they get the e-mail?

As said, everyone else in my work group gets my emails. Most of them use gmail; some use our university email (which is just an alias for gmail, as far as students are concerned). Some others use some other free email service, like web.de (a German one, lots of Germans in our group) or hotmail. All get my email. I tried to send them from multiple email accounts -- that does not change anything.

The problem appears only when the recipient is on me.com; it does not seem to matter where the email originated from.

As I said, one of our people got my email, and forwarded it to the student with the me.com email address. It got blocked.

Which makes me a little skeptical of Apple's assertion that it is not their servers or spam filters doing the blocking.

 

[JWideman]

Apple's denial of responsibility is basically saying "look, we just don't let people painted red in here, it's someone else's fault you're covered in red paint". Of course, they are the only ones using such a ridiculous blacklist as a blocking filter. Everyone else uses it to weight emails as potential spam. The reason is that it's too simple to put someone's phone number, address, or something else in a spam letter and "joe job" them.
The way I'd handle this would be to tell the student that, as a me.com user, this is the type of filtering he agrees to. As such, receiving your emails is HIS problem. And to be helpful, give him a gmail invite.