Is my hosting BSing me?

[Sphearalin]

Hello,

I just wanted to know if my hosting is giving me a line of BS.

The following is happening...

A friend of mine forwarded a e-mail (from a yahoo account) to my e-mail account as an attachment... nothing strange about that I would say...
I didn't get the e-mail that she wanted to forward to me...
Now my hosting has "Spam Assassin" and I had that enabled...

So I tested it myself (with that same e-mail)... and indeed I didn't get the e-mail
I also disabled the "Spam Assassin" and mailed myself from a yahoo account and got the e-mail

I contacted my hosting company about this issue

- They replied with that messages have to be zipped... which is untrue
- Their reply was that it's best to forward messages appending in to the body... again the e-mail didn't make it. :-(
I told them that with the Spam Assassin disabled I get the E-mail but they keep being persistent about it that it isn't Spam Assassin...
- Their next reply was that the mail server is bouncing them back... in my eyes if a bounces back it will give a message in your mailbox (at the sender's side)

I told them normally the sender will get a message when it bounces back...

- Their reply: The messages should not have been coming through before as it is not safe to receive those kind of attachments. The server rejects the messages at the server level.

I told them if this was true than I shouldn't receive the e-mail at all even if the Spam Assassin is disabled...

Can someone tell me if I'm wrong in thinking that this is the "Spam Assassin" that is doing this.

Thanks,

Sphearalin

[Administrator]

Normally this kind of thing is caused by spam software but without actually being your host, i don't think its possible to give a definate yes or no.

Spams software is about the lesser of two evils.

1) Missing some genuine emails
2) Having your inbox full of spam mail

Spam software can be very over protective with the emails it allows through and many businesses don't realise how much business they are loosing by using certain spam software. On the other hand, if you don't use any spam filtering software you likely spend a lot of time manually going through your mail each day.

[george49]

It does sound like the spam assasin, but what was the format of the attachment?

[dannybedor]

Originally Posted by george49

It does sound like the spam assasin, but what was the format of the attachment?

There's so many possibilities of it.
You can visit http://www.spamassassin.org or activate your spam box to see what emails cosidered as spams.

[ashish]

hey you cant win em all, its the better then coming in on monday and finding your mailbox clogged with spam

[Sphearalin]

Originally Posted by george49

It does sound like the spam assasin, but what was the format of the attachment?

Just a forwarded ASCII text E-mail message with a serial # in the body.
Very odd but very true.

Sphearalin

[kradlin]

Originally Posted by Sphearalin

Just a forwarded ASCII text E-mail message with a serial # in the body.
Very odd but very true.

Sphearalin

Very odd indeed. The company behaviour was strange, too.

[Sphearalin]

Originally Posted by kradlin

Very odd indeed. The company behaviour was strange, too.

Yeah, you don't want to deal with the incompetent bunch of toddlers in that company.

[hostingxnet]

In short your host was not BS'ing you - it is true.

[Sphearalin]

Originally Posted by hostingxnet

In short your host was not BS'ing you - it is true.

Care to explain?