system.net.mail email tagged as spam!

Hi - I have a small room booking application running, where people logon, and book a room. THey should then get an email confirmation, sent directly from my web app (vb.net - .net2), which uses the system.net.mail class. However, I'm getting more and more people reporting they have not received the confirmation, and most recently, someone advising SPAMASSASSIN reported my email as being spam!

I'm not sure how this happens - as it's a request from someone for a booking, and all I'm doing is replying to their supplied email address, through my web app.

Is there some way I can add an identifier, to 'legitimise' my email?

Before asking, no, I'm not a spammer - I've posted several queries here over the last few years, and am a genuine developer - with a new problem to try and overcome.

Thanks for any help/pointers,

Mark

Im not sure of any ways to legitimize your messages, maybe its because of keywords that you are using in your subject line or body that is causing it to be filtered as spam, or maybe it is the web address you are sending it from.

Usually a subject line is a dead give away of spam though and many programs search for keywords in the subject and body to try to Identify spam, im sure if you search around on google you can find a keyword list and try to improve the context of your messages.

If that doesnt work then i am sorry i cant be much more help.

good luck :)

I'd try to contact SPAMASSASSIN or other anti-spam companies with your problem. I know of 1 other companies, Postini (http://www.postini.com/) which does anti-spam filtering for corporate email systems.

Hi - thanks for the suggestions so far - I will follow up where possible.

In the meantime, I read this (from a link on SPAMASSASSINS website):

"If your message is in HTML,DO include all of the MIME message headers that identify it as HTML. (You'd think this would be obvious, but mailers from the NY Times to Air Canada send HTML messages missing the mime-version header.)" fromhttp://spam.abuse.net/marketerhelp/bulk-howto.shtml

I'm not advocating it, as I'm not certain if it's trying to help, or tell you how to spam - but how from the system.net.mail webspace, how do you include MIME headers, and what should they contain?

Thanks, Mark

I've really done something on anti-spam research before.. Based on my understanding, i don't think it has anything to do with the "MIMI" message(note my suggestion could be WRONG).

i think in your case, the reason probably is that there are some not welcomed words exist in your mail thus cause your email recognized as a spam. So, maybe youshould first check the content of your mail(send the same email using another account like..yahoo..gmail..etc, and see if it's still recognized as spam)

Hope my suggestion helps

Hi BC - thanks.

Do you mean send to a GMAIL/Yahoo email address, or send from one - are there any programs which you can send some html to, to hilight the problem areas?

Thanks, Mark

and most recently, someone advising SPAMASSASSIN reported my email as being spam!

If you can still contact this "someone", send him/her the same confirmation email FROM a yahoo/hotmial/gmail account and see if it's still recognized as a spam. thanks