Confirmation emails being blocked/trashed

Confirmation emails being blocked/trashed

by Kate Rhodes -
Number of replies: 5

Hi there, I'm not sure if anyone has had this problem, but I'm finding more and more, that the confirmation email that my moodle sites send out to new users are being blocked by the company's server / email provider.

Most of my sites are used by several different companies, and it seems like the larger companies end up blocking the confirmation email so it never gets to the user and I end up having to go in and manually confirm them so they can take the course.

Does anyone know if there is something in Moodle that I can do to help prevent this from happening, or is this something I should be asking my server hosts to look at? 

Would having a 'secured' site help?


Any comments or suggestions are greatly appreciated.  It would be nice to prevent this aggravation for the users.


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In reply to Kate Rhodes

Re: Confirmation emails being blocked/trashed

by Visvanath Ratnaweera -
Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Translators
It is rather simple:
- Grab an e-mail account, which does not exist in your Moodle. Create a new account with that e-mail and read the full headers of the confirmation mail. http://www.emailquestions.com/threads/how-do-i-read-the-full-headers-in-an-email.244/

- Collect the messages you get from those blocking mail servers and read them carefully. They explain what is offending in those mails. (I can attach examples, if you need. But they won't help you, we need to know what is wrong with _your_ Moodle's messages.)

Remedy those things one-by-one. You may have to repeat the cycle.
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In reply to Visvanath Ratnaweera

Re: Confirmation emails being blocked/trashed

by Kate Rhodes -

Thank you, but I don't know if this helps. I don't usually  get messages back from the servers who block the email. The confirmation email just doesn't get deliver to the recipient at all, and their account remains unconfirmed.  The user usually contacts me to say they didn't receive the email so I go into the site and manually confirm them.

I do get messages when an email can't be delivered because of an invalid email address, but it doesn't seem like I ever get the ones that are blocked.

And if I did, I wouldn't know the first place to look to remedy the issue even if I saw the headers and the message.






In reply to Kate Rhodes

Re: Confirmation emails being blocked/trashed

by Visvanath Ratnaweera -
Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Translators
Hi

> I don't usually get messages back from the servers who block the email. The confirmation email just doesn't get deliver to the recipient at all, and their account remains unconfirmed.

Then your Moodle is not set-up properly. If you are the administrator, you must set your Moodle in such a way that you get the bounced mails. Could you also clarify what "I don't usually get" means?

> The user usually contacts me to say they didn't receive the email so I go into the site and manually confirm them.

You can't handle technical cases in the air.

> I do get messages when an email can't be delivered because of an invalid email address, but it doesn't seem like I ever get the ones that are blocked.

Who was talking of the mails being sent, I said "Collect the messages you get from those blocking mail servers..", i.e. the bounced mail.

> And if I did, I wouldn't know the first place to look to remedy the issue even if I saw the headers and the message.

Then your Moodle site needs an administrator who could!
sad

P.S. Did you want to say something at the end of your previous post and then hesitated. There is a whole bunch of key strokes there!
;(
In reply to Kate Rhodes

Re: Confirmation emails being blocked/trashed

by Jamie Kramer -

Hi Kate. I know that email deliverability can be a hard thing. I want to point out a few things that might be helpful, but may only end up being more confusing. I'll do my best.

Depending on Moodle version, the sender email address of new user account sign-ups may differ, depending on Moodle version and a number of settings in Moodle.

One very common problem is that the sender of the email (the "FROM" header in the registration email) often has an email domain that is not permitted to send email on behalf of the domain from your Moodle server's IP address.

Example:

Site admin account email address is: moodleadmin@example.com

Lets pretend that example.com is an email service, like outlook.com or gmail.com. These types of email service providers have set up policies that prohibit email from being received if the IP address where the email was sent from is not trusted by policy. The policy I am talking about consists of: domain keys (DKIM), SPF, and DMARC. Those are some technical terms and I am sorry for that smile. Bottom line: spam and phishing prevention.

So how can you make all of these email services and servers on the internet trust your IP? You can't. The sender of the email from Moodle must utilize an email domain that has all of these policies set up.

In my experience, you have two options:

1) Use an authenticated SMTP user with an email service provider (noting that most of the free ones will have sending limits per day). This way the authenticated outbound email from Moodle is authenticated and trusted.

2) Set up DKIM, SPF, and DMARC policies for the email domain from which your Moodle email is sent. This is often only an option where you have an IT department's resources.

So how do you know from who (the FROM address) the email is getting sent? It depends. In my experience it either comes from the main site admin's email address, or the contact email address specified at Site administration / ▶︎ Server / ▶︎ Support contact.

If your email seems to be getting sent FROM the likes of: gmail.com, outlook.com, yahoo.com, or any other type of email service like that, then this is likely the problem. To recap: those services have polices that don't allow any old IP to deliver email on behalf of their domain.

That is the best that I can explain it for now. In most cases for small-scale Moodle sites, I think folks will have the best luck if they use some type of external email service provider, which can provide you with authenticated smtp username/password to use in the email message outputs setting.

Good luck!!

Jamie

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In reply to Kate Rhodes

Re: Confirmation emails being blocked/trashed

by Phuong Hoang -

Hi Kate,

Do you solve the problem? I used to have the same problem. At that time I asked my server host and they said my host was listed in blacklist. Therefore, I must use gmail to send emails in moodle. Would you like to use gmail to send emails in moodle? If so, I can help you.