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FBL Processing
FBL stands for “Feedback Loop”. As an email marketer, it’s a good approach to get enrolled in ISP FBL programs. In this way, you will get notified every time a SPAM complaint is reported by one of your recipients. This FBL reports must be processed and following actions must be taken:
- Identify the SPAM complaint owner recipient
- Unsubscribe from your lists
- Add to the suppression list
- Make sure you never send an email to that recipient
FBL Program Application
In order to receive FBL reports, you must apply for individual FBL programs for each ISP you are sending to. Under “ISP Information” section, you can find the list of ISP’s that offer Feedback Loop programs. Start from the #1 ISP used by your audience and start applying to all major ones to make sure you have wide FBL coverage.
FBL Processing
Once the FBL program application is completed, the next step is to process them. When applying to FBL programs, you will be asked to enter an email address to receive FBL email addresses. Make sure that you have a separate mailbox dedicated to FBL reports. For example, you can setup a mailbox such as fbl@yourdomain.com and set it in FBL program enrollments.
The next step is to start processing received FBL reports. Processing can be done by Octeth, by PowerMTA or any other third party software/service. In this chapter, we described how to perform FBL processing by Octeth and PowerMTA.
Octeth
Octeth can connect to your FBL mailbox and process received FBL reports. To enable this feature, go to [Admin Area → Settings → Email Delivery → SPAM Complaints] tab:
In this section, you can define email addresses and other settings related to the Spam Complaint and FBL processing.
| Name | Description |
|---|---|
Abuse Reports | Enter the email address you would like to receive abuse and spam complaints. This email address will not be disclosed publicly. |
Complaints | This email address will be added to outgoing email headers as “x-complaints-to”. Do not set your personal email address for this setting. In order to align domains inside outgoing emails, you can use %sender_domain% merge tag to make sure the complaints email address is always the same with the sender domain.
Example:
complaints@%sender_domain% |
FBL Email | The email address which has been submitted to FBL programs such as Outlook JMRP, Google FBL, etc. |
List Unsubscribe Email | The email address set here will be added to outgoing email “list-unsubscribe:” headers. List-unsubscribe header email address (or URL) receives a copy of the unsubscription request processed by the ESP. If you leave this field empty, Oempro will set the list-unsubscribe email address to the MFROM sender domain set in the Delivery Server settings. |
Monitoring Method | Choose POP3/IMAP and enter connection parameters. “Email Piping/CLI” option will be deprecated in future versions. |
Choose “POP3/IMAP Connection” option for the “Monitoring Method” setting. Once it’s chosen, you will be asked to enter connection parameters for the FBL mailbox. Enter the IMAP host, port, username and password of your FBL report mailbox. Octeth will start processing incoming FBL reports and detected ones will be registered to the system:
- The spam complaint owner recipient will be unsubscribed from the list
- The spam complaint owner recipient will be added to the suppression list
PowerMTA
You may prefer PowerMTA to process incoming FBL reports instead of Octeth. In such case, you must point your FBL email address MX server to your PowerMTA server and peform a set of configuration in the PowerMTA configuration file.
First of all, you must enable “relaying” for the FBL email address domain. To do this, set the following directive in PowerMTA configuration:
relay-domain yourdomain.comTo enable Feedback Loop report processing, set the following directive:
<feedback-loop-processor>
deliver-unmatched-email no
deliver-matched-email yes # default: no
forward-unmatched-to youremail@yourdomain.com
forward-errors-to youremail@yourdomain.com
<address-list>
address /fbl@fbl.yourdomain.com/
</address-list>
</feedback-loop-processor>In order to log received FBL reports, enable reporting:
<acct-file /var/log/pmta/fbl.csv>
records feedback-loop
record-fields f *,header_X-HmXmrOriginalRecipient
</acct-file>The best approach to setup FBL email address on your domain is to set a subdomain and point MX records to your PowerMTA server.
If your PowerMTA server is running on 100.100.100.100 IP address, and if your corporate domain is mydomain.com, we recommend you the following setup:
fbl.mydomain.com MX 100.100.100.100
Feedback Loop Email Address: fbl@fbl.mydomain.comPowerMTA and Octeth FBL Integration
Received FBL reports will be logged into /var/log/pmta/fbl.csv file if you have followed instructions above. This CSV file can be processed and logged email addresses can be added to the global suppression database of Octeth. In this way, these email addresses will be removed from all future email campaign deliveries and you will be in good standing.
ISP Information
Last updated on 8th May 2022
| ISP | Postmaster site | Feedback Loop | Whitelist | Support |
|---|---|---|---|---|
AOL | Whitelist Signup | |||
AT&T | does not offer | does not offer | ||
Bellsouth (AT&T) | does not offer | does not offer | ||
Charter | does not offer | does not offer | ||
Comcast | does not offer | |||
Cox | does not offer | |||
Earthlink | Send email to fblrequest@abuse.earthlink.net | does not offer | ||
Excite | does not offer | does not offer | ||
Fastmail | ||||
GMX | ||||
Gmail | does not offer | |||
Hotmail (Outlook) | ||||
Integra | does not offer | does not offer | does not offer | |
Juno | ||||
Live.com (Outlook) | ||||
Mail.com | does not offer | does not offer | ||
Mail.ru | ||||
Netzero | ||||
Office365 | ||||
OpenSRS | ||||
Outlook | does not offer | |||
QQ | does not offer | does not offer | ||
Rackspace | does not offer | |||
Roadrunner | does not offer | |||
Synacor | ||||
Telenor | ||||
Terra.com.br | ||||
Time Warner Cable | ||||
Tucows | does not offer | does not offer | does not offer | |
United Online | does not offer | Whitelist Signup | ||
Usa.net | does not offer | |||
Verizon | does not offer | Whitelist Signup | does not offer | |
Yahoo | Yahoo! Mail Bulk Sender Form | |||
XS4ALL | ||||
Zoho |
Email Delivery and Filtering Details
Last updated on 8th May 2022
| ISP | Connection Limits | Sending Limits | Certification | Reputation Providers |
|---|---|---|---|---|
500 emails per connection100 recipients per message | Return Path Certified | |||
no published limits | no published limits | Return Path Certified | ||
no published limits | no published limits | |||
no published limits | no published limits | no confirmed | ||
25 connections per IP address | 100 recipients per message | Return Path Certified | Spamhaus Spamhaus ZENCloudmark CSIReturn Path Reputation Network Blacklist. | |
5 connections per IP address | 100 messages per connection | Return Path Certified | ||
does not publish | does not publish | no known certification services | ||
10 per IP | 10 per connection | Return Path Certified | ||
Spamhaus XBLSpamassassin | ||||
does not publish | not using any | |||
based on the reputation | based on the reputation | Return Path Certified | ||
no published limits | 100 emails per address | |||
very little information available | very little information available | has not published | ||
500 simultaneous connections | ||||
1 connection per IP | 1 email per connection | |||
very little information available | very little information available | Return Path Certified | has not published | |
do not publish | do not publish | Return Path Certified | ||
very little information available | very little information available | Return Path Certified | has not published | |
does not publish | does not publish | Return Path Certified | Cloudmark | |
Return Path Certified | not known to use | |||
20 emails per connectionreputation based rate limiting | Return Path Certified | Spamhaus XBLSpamhaus PBL | ||
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