Members Removed for Marking Messages as spam

[work in progress]

There is one particular circumstance in which members might find themselves automatically removed from the membership of a Group. This note has been compiled in the hope of providing some clarification because as things stand it can be hard for any individual to work out what has happened.

FAQ

Why was I removed from my group?

Possibly because you, or your email service, designated a message from the group as "spam", and then your email service reported that fact to Groups.io, with the expectation that Groups.io will stop sending group messages to you. See also the Mechanism section, below.

It is also possible that the administrators (moderators and owners) of the group removed you. In that case you may or may not have been notified of the reason, depending on that group's practices.

How do I get back into my group?

If Groups.io removed you then it sent you notification of the fact. That notification has a link to automatically restore your group membership. Look in your Spam folder or Trash for that notice, the link expires three days after it was sent. See also the Notification section, below.

If you were removed by the group administrators you will have to re-join the group; if they allow you to do that.

How can I stop this from happening again?

Don't mark group messages as spam, and routinely check your Spam folder for any group messages that may have been misdirected there. If you find any there promptly mark them as "not Spam". Do not delete them from the Spam folder, or allow them to be automatically deleted from there.

Also, if your email provider supports it, consider creating a filter that ensures that messages received from your Groups.io group(s) are never directed to your spam folder.

Why does this happen on Groups.io, but not on Yahoo Groups or other email lists?

Because Groups.io is not too big to block. [beta #16418] That is, email services may give the larger list providers some leeway because blocking messages from them would upset too many of the email service's users. Groups.io's participation in the spam control mechanisms offered by various email services is seen as a way of helping to establish a positive reputation for Groups.io with those email services and thereby help ensure that every Groups.io subscriber receives group messages reliably and in a timely fashion.

What is the position of Groups.io management on why this is being done?

There are statements about why this is being handled this way in [beta #10753] and [beta #11900].

Mechanism

Some Mailbox Providers (MPs), aka Email Services, will send a report back to the sending email service when a received message is determined to be “spam”. This is called a feedback loop (FBL) and is intended as an anti-spam mechanism[1]. Not all MPs implement this mechanism. Among those that do, there are ambiguities as to how some of them make that determination, and what those MPs expect the sending service to do as a result of receiving such a report. These ambiguities have resulted in confusion and inconvenience for Groups.io members and group administrators (group moderators and owners).

In the "User Initiated" case, the determination originates with the MP's user (the group member, for our purposes), most likely by clicking a button to designate the message as "spam". MPs generally interpret that designation as an instruction not to deliver any more messages "like" that one to the user. MPs that implement a FBL then send an abuse report to Groups.io. In that case, removing the member from the group is justified on the basis that the member no longer wishes to receive the group's content. It may be that simply marking a specific email as spam is sufficient to trigger the FBL; it may also be that the triggering occurs when the email designated as spam is finally deleted.

In the "MP Initiated"  case, the determination is made automatically by the MP's discriminator ("spam filter") and the message delivered to the member's "Spam" or "Junk" folder instead of to his/her Inbox. If the member does not discover the message there and designate it as "not spam" before the message is automatically purged from the Spam folder, then the MP may generate an abuse report just as if the member had specifically designated the message as Spam.

The difficulty for Groups.io is that it is not told by he MP whether the abuse report was generated for the "MP Initiated" reason rather than for the "User Initiated" reason. The difficulty for the group member is that if his/her MP implements the latter case the mechanism can operate entirely without his/her knowledge, up until the point where the member is removed from the group.

In either case, Groups.io attempts to minimize the inconvenience to the group member by sending a notice to him/her. The notice contains a link to automatically restore the member's subscription to the group. A notice is also sent to the Owner and Moderators of the group concerned.

Notification

Prior to 22 March 2018 the resulting emails sent by Groups.io to (a) the member, and (b) the Group Owner & Moderators were not entirely clear about what had happened and why, mainly because it was not made clear that it could have been the email service provider that had marked the email as spam. This marking is sent back to Groups.io by the ESP (Email Service Provider), and in turn Groups.io is more or less compelled to react to this by cancelling the individual’s membership of a Group. Not all ESPs send “marked as spam” information back to the message’s originator.

The member was confronted by an email that rather suggested that they were responsible for what had happened, and if they wished to restore their membership to click a link provided for the purpose, but given that the member had no knowledge of the message email that had been marked as spam and thus diverted to the their spam box by their ESP some reluctance to use that link was understandable. Similarly the Group Owner / Moderators were simply informed that the member had marked the message as spam, and as a result could be equally bewildered about what had really happened.

The Notification Messages were amended on 22 March 2018, and are as follows.

Notice to member (from 22 March 2018)

From: groupname+owner@groups.io

To: (Whom it may concern)
Subject: You have been removed from ...

Hello,

Because your Email Service Provider reported to us that one or more messages sent to you from GROUPNAME has been marked as spam you have been automatically removed from the group. We suggest that you check your spam box as soon as possible to see if your Email Service Provider has diverted legitimate messages into it.

You will receive no more emails from that group. If this was a mistake, you can resume your subscription within the next 3 days by clicking the following link:

RESUB LINK

Groups.io groups offer several options for controlling how much and what types of emails to receive. See this Help Center article for more information:

https://groupsio.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/202739445

If this happens repeatedly please check with your email service to learn about how they decide to send feedback reports to list services (such as groups).

Cheers,
The Groups.io Team

Notice to Owner & Moderators (from 22 March 2018)

From: <Group Name>@groups.io Notification [noreply@groups.io]

To: <Owner & Moderators>

Hello,

This is to notify you that <email address of member> has been unsubscribed from your group <Group Name>@groups.io because a message to them was marked as spam. Note that this may have been done by their email service provider, not by the individual member personally.

To turn off this notification, log into https://groups.io and edit your subscription.

Thank you for choosing Groups.io groups.

Cheers,

The Groups.io Team

The above messages are far more informative than those used prior to their introduction. For illustrative purposes the previous messages are shown below. They are liable to future removal from this wiki.

Notice to member (up to 22 March 2018)

From: groupname+owner@groups.io

To: (Whom it may concern)
Subject: You have been removed from ...

Notice to Owner & Moderators (up to 22 March 2018)

From: <Group Name>@groups.io Notification [noreply@groups.io]

To: <Recipient's email address>

Hello,

This is to notify you that xxxxx@yyyyy.zzz has been unsubscribed from your group <Group Name>@groups.io because they marked a message as spam.

To turn off this notification, log into https://groups.io and edit your subscription.

Thank you for choosing Groups.io groups.

Cheers,

The Groups.io Team

Service Providers

As at 30^th March 2018 Groups.io operates (or is believed to operate) feedback loops with the following Service Providers:

aol.com, att.com, earthlink.net, hotmail.com, outlook.com, pacbell.net, rocketmail.com, rr.com, sbcglobal.net, wowway.com, yahoo.com, ymail.com

In addition, those btinternet.com addresses still provided by Yahoo may be subject to messages marked as spam causing the deletion of a group membership..

The above list was prepared in good faith but should not be regarded as definitive.

Remediation

With the change in the "Notifications" no further "corporate" remediation would seem necessary beyond making this wiki more publicly available.

Individual Group Members are strongly recommended to take such steps as they can to minimise the risk of their Service Providers marking emails from Groups.io as spam. (e.g. adding Groups.io to a "safe senders" list.

Notes:

1. Wikipedia: Feedback loop (email)