Blacklist not working?

digit · February 17, 2016, 7:44pm

Hi,
I am using phplist 3.2.3 and seem to have a problem with Blacklisting.

The images below hopefully should clarify but is seems as if the mail is still being sent to a blacklisted subscriber, this is NOT the only one just one of the instances, fortunately it’s a bounce un-subscription, I would hate it if it were a client un-subscription, but ATM I am a little nervous of this happening.

Above you can see the user received 3 mails, and the dates sent.
Below you can see that s/he was un-subscribed by a bounce rule on the FIRST send so shouldn’t have got the other 2.

Is this a bug or just my lack of understanding of what’s happening ?
Please help.

TIA

anna · February 18, 2016, 10:24am

Hi

Can you tell me if the user is currently showing as blacklsted and/or unconfirmed?

Thanks

digit · February 18, 2016, 11:38am

Thanks for getting back to me Anna,

The user(s) is currently showing as Blacklisted and Confirmed=1 in “Subscriber Profile”, with a down-thumb on “List Membership”.

HTH

anna · February 18, 2016, 3:03pm

So when you say blacklist is not working you mean it very literally: these subscribers are

confirmed
blacklisted
still receiving mails

Is that a correct summary?

I don’t know the source of this issue, perhaps some database issue?

digit · February 18, 2016, 4:51pm

Hi again Anna

Points 1 & 2 are yes
3 I’m not sure about, perhaps it was re-reading a bounce that it should have deleted.
I’m not on the receiving end of live un-subscribers, the ones I checked seem to be OK (no further mails sent (apparently)) nor have I had any complaints (yet) but according to my bounce records that is what appears to be happening, just trying to figure this out.

Would it make any difference if the subscriber is on / added to different mailing lists, I am using both public and private lists.

I’m running a standard LAMP install on Ubuntu 14.04LTS server with phplist ver 3.2.3 so hopefully the DB is not at fault.

Thanks again for your time, any suggestions as to what to do appreciated,
if you need more info just ask.

regards

digit · March 3, 2016, 12:37pm

Bump on this on

I’ve altered the rule a bit but now it seems to be marking the record as unconfirmed ?

So my question now, is can an email go out to an unconfirmed subscriber ?
edit : if not blacklisted ?

TIA

danwaterloo · March 5, 2016, 12:45pm

It is my understanding the system should NOT send an email if EITHER they are not subscribed to the list that you are sending to, OR if they are blacklisted.

There is a subtle difference (that is not really documented anywhere) between blacklisting an email address and blacklisting a subscriber.

You might want to try changing your rule to blacklisting the subscriber vs. blacklisting the email address.

digit · March 5, 2016, 5:29pm

Cool, that’s pretty much what I thought seeing as with the double opt in, the mail may be ignored or otherwise unconfirmed for whatever reason.

Umm yes I have come across this posted elsewhere on this forum, as I am importing data from our CRM I’m using the foreign key to keep track of subscribers and just want to update their data.
OTOH Looking at the subscriber list I can’t tell how many are blacklisted, but I can see unconfirmed, eish, so I’m looking at unconfirming subscribers ??

I guess it’s gonna take rather a lot of trial and error before I find which option(s) works for me but as each campaign goes out it gets a bit more complicated/untidy
Never mind when I do eventually get my head around this lot I’ll be able to help answer others questions about it here

Thanks anyways

anna · March 8, 2016, 2:02pm

No, once they are blacklisted no mails can be sent.

smashingmachine · February 11, 2020, 5:45pm

I’m having the same issue where blacklisted emails are still being sent emails. Should I start a new thread?

smashingmachine · February 11, 2020, 6:08pm

I switched my bounce actions to blacklist user, instead of blacklist email. I also added subscribers that were blacklisted and confirmed to the suppression list. Hoping that does the trick.

NYChris · March 2, 2020, 7:34pm

I had a similar conundrum at one point.
It turned out that the user had entered a second email address that was forwarding to the first blacklisted address.
We can only code for so many odd scenarios before it gets stupid.

Suela · March 9, 2020, 5:18pm

Let us know if this helped solve your problem. Other people might be experiencing the same problem.

leo2 · September 4, 2024, 3:58pm

I have same issue. Phplist sends to blacklisted subsribers.
In a subscriber page I have “Subscriber is blacklisted. No emails will be sent to this email address.”
But phplist keeps sending email to this address until I manually remove it from the list.

phplist claims that if the subscriber is blacklisted it will not send him emails NEVER! But it sends, and that causes me spam abuse records because blacklisted (but not removed from a list) subscribers keep to receive my emails.

Here is example:

|Subscriber|Lists|
|[tarasov@spice.ru]
|msgs: 40
bncs: 11||

It is blacklisted after 3-d bounce by my bouncing rule. But keeps getting the emails.

I’ve read the topic but haven’t found the solution.

duncanc · September 5, 2024, 6:26am

@leo2 The Subcription tab of the Subscriber profile page displays the history of subscribing which might show something.

leo2 · September 6, 2024, 9:15am

There is something. Several times blacklisted, but keeps getting emails.

Subscription history
Events
	
IP
	
Date
	
Summary
46884	185.41.42.212	18 March 2024 15:35:27	Автоматически отписан
Detail
	
The subscriber was automatically unsubscribed because... Rule for processing returned letters 4
Info
	
HTTP_USER_AGENT = Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:121.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/121.0
HTTP_REFERER = http://list.solarhome.ru/admin/?page=bouncemgt&tk=10ec1b11cf69139d150405518197026b
REMOTE_ADDR = 185.41.42.212
46883	185.41.42.212	18 March 2024 15:35:27	Добавлен в чёрный список
Detail
	
Added to the blacklist for a reason Email address moved to the blacklist according to rule 4
Info
	
HTTP_USER_AGENT = Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:121.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/121.0
HTTP_REFERER = http://list.solarhome.ru/admin/?page=bouncemgt&tk=10ec1b11cf69139d150405518197026b
REMOTE_ADDR = 185.41.42.212
45305	185.41.42.212	1 March 2024 10:55:45	Автоматически отписан
Detail
	
The subscriber was automatically unsubscribed because... Rule for processing returned letters 4
Info
	
HTTP_USER_AGENT = Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:121.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/121.0
HTTP_REFERER = http://list.solarhome.ru/admin/?page=bouncemgt&tk=3e7bb101f5aeca5adff9a7a806c4dce7
REMOTE_ADDR = 185.41.42.212
45304	185.41.42.212	1 March 2024 10:55:45	Добавлен в чёрный список
Detail
	
Added to the blacklist for a reason Email address moved to the blacklist according to rule 4
Info
	
HTTP_USER_AGENT = Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:121.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/121.0
HTTP_REFERER = http://list.solarhome.ru/admin/?page=bouncemgt&tk=3e7bb101f5aeca5adff9a7a806c4dce7
REMOTE_ADDR = 185.41.42.212
43911	95.24.177.149	24 January 2024 20:44:44	Автоматически отписан
Detail
	
The subscriber was automatically unsubscribed because... Rule for processing returned letters 4
Info
	
HTTP_USER_AGENT = Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/120.0.0.0 Safari/537.36
HTTP_REFERER = https://list.solarhome.ru/admin/?page=bouncemgt&tk=b3b57d5e12d806a09e76ab7daeeb0bfa
REMOTE_ADDR = 95.24.177.149
43910	95.24.177.149	24 January 2024 20:44:44	Добавлен в чёрный список
Detail
	
Added to the blacklist for a reason Email address moved to the blacklist according to rule 4
Info
	
HTTP_USER_AGENT = Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/120.0.0.0 Safari/537.36
HTTP_REFERER = https://list.solarhome.ru/admin/?page=bouncemgt&tk=b3b57d5e12d806a09e76ab7daeeb0bfa
REMOTE_ADDR = 95.24.177.149
42525	185.41.42.212	2 November 2023 18:50:18	Автоматически отписан
Detail
	
The subscriber was automatically unsubscribed because... Rule for processing returned letters 4
Info
	
HTTP_USER_AGENT = Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:109.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/119.0
HTTP_REFERER = http://list.solarhome.ru/admin/?page=bouncemgt&tk=16ed0ddaf5b18094930107460efd9548
REMOTE_ADDR = 185.41.42.212
42524	185.41.42.212	2 November 2023 18:50:18	Added to blacklist
Detail
	
Added to the blacklist for a reason Email address moved to the blacklist according to rule 4
Info
	
HTTP_USER_AGENT = Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:109.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/119.0
HTTP_REFERER = http://list.solarhome.ru/admin/?page=bouncemgt&tk=16ed0ddaf5b18094930107460efd9548
REMOTE_ADDR = 185.41.42.212

duncanc · September 6, 2024, 10:36am

@leo2 On the Bounce Rules page what is the action for the bounce rule 4? If it is “add email to the do not send …” then change that to “add subscriber to the do not send list …”.

leo2 · September 6, 2024, 12:49pm

It was ‘Add email to the black list’. OK, I will change to "Add subscriber to the black list’

leo2 · September 6, 2024, 12:53pm

what is the difference between ‘add subscriber’ and ‘add email’? I thought email is more reliable, because if I import a subscribers list again (I periodically export-import clients emails from my shop, because the shop doesn’t have phplist features with throttling), there can be different subscribers with same email.

duncanc · September 6, 2024, 5:20pm

@leo2 The action to “add email” adds a row to a different table that is not checked by phplist when it is sending a campaign.

You might want to look at the user_blacklist table in the database to see the email addresses that might have been affected by this. If you don’t want phplist to send to those then the blacklisted field on the user_user table needs to be set to 1.