This page will post available information regarding our Ripples email newsletter. Generally if you have a problem receiving Ripples, the trouble stems from your ISP's spam control procedures. If you think you are having trouble receiving, please be sure to check and see if your email program has a "Junk" folder (or similar type label). Mail that is suspected to be spam is commonly filtered automatically into this folder and the user may forget to check it. Other issues are posted below.

 

August 5, 2007
Comcast subscribers:

Comcast has cooperated with us in removing our IP address from their blacklist. We were placed on that list automatically by a program which identified our mailings has having "characteristics of spam". Comcast subscribers should now have no difficulty in receiving Ripples mailings.

August 3, 2007
Hotmail/MSN subscribers:

We're hearing from some subscribers to our Ripples school newsletter that they are having trouble receiving messages from the mailing list.  A large percentage of these subscribers have Hotmail or MSN email addresses. 

There are two reasons you may be failing to receive messages: 

1)  Hotmail does not keep a server-level "whitelist" or "blacklist".  Their service combats spam by delivering mail only from senders that are in your individual address book (Contacts).  If the sending address of our newsletter (ripples@blackriverwebs.com) isn't in your address book you may not get messages from us. 

2)  You're getting the message but Hotmail filters it directly into a junk email folder.

The following information from CNet describes steps you can take to make sure you are receiving mail you want to receive:

In Hotmail's version, incoming e-mail from senders that match entries in the recipient's address book are displayed in what Hotmail calls its "Today" page, which greets the Hotmail account holder with basic information about the account--along with a slew of MSN marketing messages.

"Your session will always start on the Today page, where you will only see new messages from people you know," the preview's audio explanation says. "To qualify as someone you know, the sender has to have an e-mail address that is only in your contacts. As a result, you will only see the messages that are important to you first."

Hotmail account holders can then click on their "Mail" tab to find the full contents of their in-box. Hotmail also offers a "Junk E-Mail" folder, where it delivers messages the system suspects of being spam.

We have contacted MSN, which administers both MSN and Hotmail addresses to ask for their help in addressing this problem.  Until we have a more definitive answer from them, please make sure ripples@blackriverwebs.com is in your Contacts, and check your junk email folder.  If you continue to have difficulty receiving our twice-monthly newsletters, please contact the school.