Receiving spam from a Nylas application? Learn how to report it.
This page explains what to do if an account using your project is blocked for suspected spam.
Blocked when sending messages
To preserve their message sending reputations, some providers will review all outbound messages through their spam filter before they’re sent. Spam filters work by comparing messages to an extensive list of matching behaviors and giving each behavior a score. If the cumulative score of an outbound message exceeds a set threshold, the provider blocks the message.
Some spam filters look for automated senders like Nylas and add a score for using them. This is because spammers often use similar automated services. Because of this, some messages might go over the blocking threshold when sent using Nylas. Contact your email administrator if you have any questions about their spam filters.
If a message is blocked because of a spam filter, Nylas returns a response stating that the message was blocked. It doesn’t have any visibility into what caused the message to be blocked, however.
Message flagged as junk
“Bulking” refers to an email server’s practice of accepting messages sent to its users, but routing them to a Bulk, Spam, or Junk folder or label. There are many reasons that providers do this, but Nylas has no visibility or control over the process. It often happens when a recipient’s email server starts to receive a large number of messages from an IP address that’s never sent to it before, or when recipients of earlier sends have flagged the messages as junk.
It’s important to ramp up sending to new contacts, and to ask your recipients to mark your messages as not spam. You should also respect any unsubscribe requests and remove recipients who aren’t engaging with your messages. For more information, see Improving email deliverability with Nylas.
Message marked as spam
If your email records are configured incorrectly, that can cause a message to be marked as spam. The recipient’s email server adds headers to messages that indicate whether the email records are configured correctly. If you see headers like spf=pass, dkim=pass, or dmarc=pass, this means that the sender is properly authorized. If any of the headers say fail, you should check with the sender’s email administrator to verify that the records are configured properly.
IP address blocked
Many Exchange servers have two SMTP servers: one for automated sending from applications like Nylas, and the other for sending messages directly from Outlook. Since one SMTP server handles the larger sends, it’s more likely to be flagged as spam. This is because of the volume spikes compared to individual messages sent from the Outlook client.
Messages sent using Nylas are routed through the larger SMTP server and are more likely to get caught in any spam blocks on the server’s IP address. If you see a bounce notification indicating your IP address has been blocked, bring it to your email administrator’s attention. They can look into solutions, like getting a new IP address for the SMTP server. You should also review your outbound messages and make sure you’re following email deliverability best practices to avoid being blocked.
Account blocked for spam
Sometimes, we receive reports from email providers about accounts that have been flagged for spam. As a preventative measure, and to comply with the CAN-SPAM Act, the GDPR, and other anti-spam policies, Nylas is required to block the flagged accounts from making any API calls and report them to their respective organizations.
How abuse reports work
When a message is marked as spam or junk, an abuse report is automatically created. The report is sent to the recipient’s ISP (internet service provider) and a warning is sent to the sender’s ESP (email service provider). If the message was sent using Nylas, our Customer Support team receives the warning, including…
- A copy of the sent message.
- A brief explanation that a complaint has been issued.
- The actions that must be taken to address the issue.
If Nylas doesn’t address these warnings, our servers are blocked from sending messages.
How Nylas addresses spam
To protect your reputation and our own, we carefully monitor abuse reports that we receive. If we detect that a message’s content doesn’t comply with the CAN-SPAM Act, GDPR, CASL, or CCPA policies, we immediately block the originating account from making API requests and report it to its organization.
There are two things that happen when we block an account belonging to your organization:
- You receive a message titled “Notice: User Account Suspended” from Nylas Support. The message specified the affected grant ID and email address.
- All API requests from the grant return a
403error until the account is unblocked.
How to unblock grants
To get a user’s grant unblocked, your organization needs to send an email confirmation that the user has been educated about anti-spam policies and that they won’t engage in spam activities again.
The following guidelines can help your users avoid getting flagged for spam: