E-mails from FPA treated as scam

Sugit

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34
Hello,
First a big thank you to all the people of FPA. I have been using your site for quite some time and take my hat off for your long time effort to give the best information to traders.

I find one tiny nuisance, which is that my e-mail program (Thunderbird) always regards e-mail messages from the forum as "may be a scam". The cause of this is probably that every e-mail has a link at the bottom, that looks like this: "https://www.forexpeacearmy.com/community/" . But the real link below it is something else: "https://mandrilapp.com/track/click ... and a lot more". So for the e-mail program that looks like a scam: showing one thing, and in fact linking to somewhere else.

Maybe the solution is simple: have the link look like "Link to the FPA community.", in stead of having it look like a web address. (In fact, that is how all the other links in that e-mail look like, and I think those are not the problem.)

Kind regards,
Sugit
 
Since many forex related emails are spams or even scams, it's not surprising that some filters misunderstand the FPA.

I'm surprised they don't like the Mandril links. Those are from the FPA's mail service, which is double-opt in. We use the Mandril links since those are trackable. No one checks to see exactly which people click a link in which emails. Knowing how many people followed the links is useful. If someone doesn't click on a link for a long time, a message is sent asking that subscriber whether he or she wants to remain on the mailing list. If there's no click in that message, the email account is removed. If the FPA didn't have trackable links, a lot of emails would be sent to addresses abandoned years ago. I'd also have no way to be sure which mailings are the most effective.

Your mail filter should have a whitelist option. Tell it that announcements @ forexpeacearmy.com is a valid address.
 
Sorry, maybe a misunderstanding. I was not saying that FPA e-mails are generally considered as scam. This specific sort of mail from the FPA forums is, though. And I have described what I think is the cause: linking to mandril below a text that looks like a link to something else.
FPA e-mails link also (and mostly) to mandril below text like "Forex Peace Army - Your Forex Trading Forum", so text that does not like a link. I think that using that style exclusively would be the solution.
 
Ah, I thought I can do an experiment.
1. I took the original e-mail from the forum and forwarded it to myself. Indeed, again it was labelled as "This message may be a scam."
2. I took the same original e-mail, and changed the visible text that read "https://www.forexpeacearmy.com/community/" into "forexpeacearmy - community", leaving the same link (to mandril) below it. Then forwarded it to myself. And lo and behold: no scam warning! So indeed, that is the cause of the problem. (And rightly so: an apparent link, that is in fact linking to something else should sound alarm bells.)

So my request: can FPA please change that in the e-mails?
 
The drawback to doing that is there would be no way to check the mailing list for members who never click on a link. About once a year, everyone who hasn't clicked on a link for a year gets a message asking them to click to remain on the list.

I can see that if I had a link saying forexpeacearmy.com/somethread really point to fxarmyofpeace.com/something else would trigger a spam or scam warning. Mandril is another story. It's part of MailChimo, one of the biggest mailing services out there. All lists using it are double opt-in and most companies using it have tracking links for the same reason the FPA does.
 
Sorry, I still feel there is a misunderstanding. The problem is *not* with the mandrilapp links as such. I understand your point to be able to track response, and my suggestion is not to omit any clickable links from the e-mail.
In the e-mails from the FPA there are 11 links, all via mandrilapp, of which 10 are no problem at all. The shown text of these links are e.g. #1: "Forex Peace Army - Your Forex Trading Forum" or #10: "disable all emails".
But there is one link, the last and 11th one, that *is* a problem, and that is the link that has as "text" : "https://www.forexpeacearmy.com/community/". So this specific link shows a "text", suggesting it is directly to that site, bit in fact it is to mandrilapp. That triggers Thunderbird (one of the most used e-mail clients) to say hey, that may be a scam. And rightly so.

So I propose to keep that 11th link to mandrilapp, but only change the shown text to something that does not start with "http://www." etcetera, but instead has some text like "forexpeacearmy - community". That would solve the problem, and keep the links.
I added a picture of what I see in the my experiment above in post #4.

By the way, the consequence of the scam-warning is that all links are disabled... which is a nuisance for me, and not really helpful for FPA...
 

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I understand that the trigger is displayed domain vs target domain. Phishing emails can use this. I'm a little surprised that major email systems can't tell a trackable link is from a major mailing service.

I do have some good news. The coders tell me they may be able to plant the tracking data into a string after a direct link to the FPA site and feed that back into the mailing system. If this can be done, your email program will stop complaining and the FPA will still get the information needed to allow dropping email addresses which have gone completely inactive.
 
Hello FPA,
I use your website everyday, most often for Sieve Morten. Yesterday, for the first time I get a message
Error (1006) we are experiencing technical difficulties, please come back later.​
Today, the problem is still there. I use browser FF. Then I tried IE, same message.
Now I am on a different PC, and here the problem does not occur, I can also login normally.

So what is wrong? Is this something with cloudflare maybe? Did I do something illegal?
I really hope this can be solved quickly.
Kind regards,
Sugit
 
In sequel to post #8:
Just after writing that post, the same problem now occurs on that PC.
I am writing this on my mobile phone.
 
Dear AsstModerator,
Would you please have a look at the Error 1006 problem in my posts #8 and 9? Thanks!
Sugit
 
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