Google Gmail puts all Hesk messages in Spam Warning

[DigiMon]

Version of script: Latest 2.2
What terms did you try when SEARCHING for a solution: customer email blocked, hesk spam, gmail warns spam

Write your message below:

I apologize for starting a second topic on this but it is important and I don't want it to be overlooked or mixed up with another issue (such as a language translation or something else).

After upgrading from Hesk 2.1 to 2.2 and doing a lot of testing with various Gmail accounts and a variety of settings, now with 2.2 Gmail automatically sends all Ticket Submitted notices in the customer's SPAM folder and gives them a BIG RED WARNING saying:

"Warning: This message may not be from whom it claims to be. Beware of following any links in it or of providing the sender with any personal information."

Troubleshooting steps I have taken and tests I've done:

- Set Hesk to all of it's defaults, including default emails in /language/en/emails

- Changed my "NoReply" address to an actual POP account, as well as forwarders, all on my Hesk URL domain

- Made sure that my domain passes all SPF and DomainKey DNS checks

- Assured that the mail() function is properly working in my PHP environment and can even send as "nobody" if necessary

- Checked my Exim configuration for any possible hangups

- Tested other HelpDesk scripts (as well as other PHP scripts like WordPress, SMF, phpBB, Coppermine, etc...) to see if auotmated messages from those scripts go to spam, and they don't. All other scripts messages except for Hesk go to Gmail like normal, only Hesk messages get put in SPAM folder and marked with WARNINGS

- Checked my entire server environment settings within PHP, Linux / Apache, cPanel/WHM, mod_security, and gone through all of the related server logs for clues. Nothing wrong.

This is a major bummer! I've been using Hesk for a very long time (I have purchased 2 paid licenses so-to-speak) and only when I upgraded to 2.2 did this problem start.

I love Hesk and have been a faithful supporter through donations and license purchases, and now just when I was ready to purchase my 3rd site license I find myself looking for a different product because Gmail users will end up not seeing replies and this will generate phone calls, defeating the purpose of having Hesk.

Klemen - Hesk has always been a great script and I've had almost no problems with it for over 2 years now, but something in 2.2 is causing Hesk messages to go to spam in Gmail user accounts. I don't want to switch to a different product but this issue may force me to. I hope it is something that can somehow be recognized and fixed.

[Klemen]

First off I need to say: very well written post, I wish all were like this

As for the problem: I always thought SPAM filters from big providers such as Gmail or Aol or Hotmail are sometimes ridiculous. If SPF records match, reverse DNS entries match, reply e-mail works, everything else matches, no obvious promotional text in the email... there is no real reason to mark a message as spam.

There weren't any e-mail changes from 2.1 to 2.2, so the problem must have been there before.

I spent the last hour testing several Gmail accounts to find the problem. After triple-checking all server settings, records, DNS settings, ... I found what seems to be a simple solution to the problem.

To fix the issue all I did was change e-mail subject from "Your support ticket received" to "Ticket received". It all works now, no problems at all. And all I did was change the text...

Try uploading this language file:
http://www.phpjunkyard.com/extras/text.zip

Upload it to the "languages/en" folder.

Then test and see if it fixes the issue for you as well.

[DigiMon]

Thank you for the reply! I will test this out as soon as I possibly can later tonight and let you know my results (fingers crossed! )

[DigiMon]

Thank you again for the reply and for looking into this.

I have some weird news - I was about to download and apply your adjusted language file, but I decided to test things out once more before updating it, and the strangest thing - now, for whatever reason, the ticket notifications to my test gmail accounts are no longer going to the spam folder!

So now I think I might hold off on uploading your modified language file until I can find some friends with gmail accounts to submit some test tickets and see what their results are.

This is just very bizarre that the problem would seem to suddenly resolve itself without me applying your fix. Hopefully I can find some people to test it out today to see if the problem simply disappeared, or if it just aclimated within my own gmail test accounts.

Color me befuddled!

[Klemen]

If you marked the emails as "Not spam" then it's just in your account.

You can simply open a new (test) gmail account and test it yourself - this is how I did it yesterday.

I'll be out of the country until 20th so if this is not resolved globally by gmail spam filter settings try updating the text.php file.

[ChanceD2]

Hi everyone.

I am having this same issue with g mail as well. Emails are taking a while to be received and even some of the emails are not being received at all.

I see that this post was started over a year ago. I wanted to see if this is still a resolution to this issue.

Please help.

Thanks,
Chance

[Klemen]

If emails take a while to be received it's an issue with your hosting company - the SMTP server is slow and/or unreliable. It's not something that can be fixed within code.

[maniekandan55]

Dear Klemen,
Firt of all, really THANK YOU for this wonderful ticketing system.

But as above many of us mentioned for long time, we still facing this SPAM issue.
For long time i was keep checking thru with many settings, found few chances getting this SPAM issue.

1. If using PHP MAILER option > causing the from address is using the hosting server's id.
2. the from & reply to address are encoded with Base64 > causing google found it as EXCESS BASE64 encoded header.

As we checked with http://www.mail-tester.com/, the top negative score of the whole spam score is,

-0.105 FROM_EXCESS_BASE64 From: base64 encoded unnecessarily

[/b]

We found the email header (show original on gmail), shows clearly that the FROM & REPLY_TO address are encoded.
Is it possible to not to be encoded.? Where we can do it?

This will help a lot..

[Klemen]

The "excess encoding" is not the reason why your emails are sent to spam.

Spamassasin may not like it. Not sure why, it's perfectly valid and HESK does it to support also non-ascii chars in names, such as äëéáščćžđ etc. But still -0.105 is way way below the default required Spamassasin threshold of -5 to be marked as spam.

If you think it will help (it wont), you can do these changes to the inc/email_functions.inc.php file:

1. delete this line

Code: Select all

$subject = "=?UTF-8?B?" . base64_encode( hesk_html_entity_decode($subject) ) . "?=";

2. change this line

Code: Select all

$hesk_settings['from_header'] = "=?UTF-8?B?" . base64_encode( hesk_html_entity_decode($hesk_settings['noreply_name']) ) . "?= <" . $hesk_settings['noreply_mail'] . ">";

to

Code: Select all

$hesk_settings['from_header'] = $hesk_settings['noreply_mail'];

Email delivery is a rather complex subject and there are a lot of things that can go wrong and that can make Google (and others) mark your mail as spam.


The most reliable way of delivering emails I have found so far is:

1. host your website (mailserver) on a dedicated IP. If using a shared IP, bad stuff that other users do will affect your emails. Make sure the IP isn't banned in any block lists.

2. make sure your domain has valid SPF records

3. enable DKIM email signatures in your server and make sure they work correctly

4. rather than PHP mail, use an authenticated SMTP server to send mail (account like "support@yourwebsite").The "From" email should be the same ("support@yourwebsite"). The mail transfer agent should automatically sign outgoing emails with DKIM.

These steps may require some help from your hosting company, but once you have all in place Gmail seems to play quite well. Just don't skip any steps. Google is your friend for help with SPF and DKIM

[Klemen]

P.s.: I just sent a message to mail tester from HESK installed on hesk.com utilizing all the steps above and got a 9.9/10 score (only complaint was the "excess encoding" from Spamassasin).