[Update (March 19, 2021)] The following article deals with email reception problems being experienced by ON/NO members who use email services provided by Bell Canada (email addresses ending in bell.net or sympatico.ca). The severity of this problem appears to be getting worse. Early reports had suggested that members with these email addresses were receiving some email but not other email. However, more recent reports state that no email from ON/NO is being received. The following article suggests adding communications@onno.ca to your online “allowed email addresses” list as a measure to mitigate the problem. However, we have received no feedback indicating that doing so has resolved the problem and we have some evidence that doing so has made no difference. Based on this, ON/NO strongly advises members to avoid using Bell Canada email services as their ON/NO email address. Please provide us with an alternative email address. Should you wish, we are happy to send email to both your Bell Canada email address as well as a second email address so you can see for yourself how much email you might be missing.
ON/NO has received reports from several members that emails from the club have not been reaching them. In some cases, members have apparently been receiving no emails at all while in other cases they may have been receiving some emails but not others.
Almost all reports have had one thing in common — the member uses a Bell Canada email service (either sympatico.ca or bell.net). However, there have also been a few reports from users of other email services. The following information applies specifically to Bell Canada although certain aspects may also be relevant to other service providers.
In the case of Bell Canada, ON/NO believes that Bell is falsely identifying our email as spam and blocking its delivery. ON/NO has made efforts to identify why this might be happening:
- we do not believe it is volume related as only five of our members use Bell Canada email services and five messages should not constitute a “mass mailing” (one criteria used by ISPs to identify spam)
- we do not believe it can be content related as messages seem to get delivered to some members using Bell Canada email services but not to others
- we have changed the format of emails to eliminate certain features that we thought might possibly be an issue but these changes seem to have made no difference
We have also learned that ON/NO is not the only organization affected by this issue. On their website, an organization named Church Social (a social media platform catering to churches) posts the following:
“Bell email addresses have been known to fail more frequently than other mail service providers. This affects email accounts ending with sympatico.ca, bellnet.ca and bell.net. This happens because Bell often falsely identifies emails as spam. Further, since many of these recipients use desktop mail applications like Microsoft Outlook, these spam emails are never seen. Users must login to their online accounts in order to view them.”
Have you been affected by this issue?
To help you judge whether you have been affected by this issue, you will find below a list of emails sent by ON/NO since the start of this year.
What can ON/NO do to resolve this issue?
ON/NO can do nothing more than we have already done other than to provide members with information on what they themselves can do to resolve the issue.
What can members do to resolve this issue?
There are a few things that members affected by this issue can do.
- The least technical fix may be to change the email service provider you use to receive ON/NO email. You could subscribe to a free email service such as Gmail or Hotmail and have your ON/NO email sent to that address. One member who has done that reported “Since I informed you to change my address from sympatico to hotmail, I have received all messages from ONNO on hotmail, but I have not received any further messages on sympatico” (Note: for a period, we continued to send his email to his sympatico address in addition to his hotmail address so he could compare the performance of the two services). If you do elect to use a new email address, send an email address change request to us at communications@onno.ca.
- A slightly more technical fix would be to add “communications@onno.ca” to your sympatico.ca (or bell.net) “allowed email addresses” list. You must do this in your online email account and not in any desktop mail application (such as Outlook or Thunderbird) that you may be using. This will require you to sign into your online email account — at which time you can also check your online Spam folder to see what email may be stored there (from ON/NO and possibly from other sources as well). Marking email in your online Spam folder as “Not Spam” may cause it to be automatically downloaded to your desktop mail application (this has not been tested by ON/NO). Instructions are provided below. [Caveat: the latest information we have received from members appears to show that Bell is not even depositing the lost email in their online Spam folders but seemingly blocking it entirely. Based on these reports, we would strongly advise members to avoid using Bell Canada email services.]
- Complain to Bell Canada that you are not receiving email from ON/NO and you believe that it is being falsely identified as spam.
How to configure your “allowed email addresses” list
The following information is from the Church Social website and has not been tested by ON/NO as we do not have access to a Bell Canada email account.
Login to your online email account at webmail.bell.net. You should have been given an email password by Bell when you signed up. Then add communications@onno.ca (and any other desired e-mail addresses) to the “allowed email addresses” list. You can find specific instructions on how to do this here:
http://support.bell.ca/internet/email/how-to-change-settings-in-bell-mail?step=2#displayStep
Send feedback
We would appreciate feedback from members on this matter. You can contact us at communications@onno.ca. In particular, answers to the following questions (as well as any other related information you might care to share) would be useful in helping us better understand this issue:
- How do you receive your email? Do you use a desktop mail application such as Outlook or Thunderbird? Or an online webmail account? Or both?
- Have you been affected by this issue? If so, what actions have you taken to deal with this issue?
- Did you examine the contents of your online Spam folder and, if so, did you find missing ON/NO email there?
- Did you mark email in your online Spam folder as “Not Spam” and, if so, did it automatically download to your desktop mail application?
- Did you add communications@onno.ca to your “allowed email addresses list”? If so, has it made a difference?
Index of ON/NO emails (January – March 2021)
- Mar 12: [ON/NO Communiqué] Trivia Night at the Bare Bum Pub – Friday, March 19 | [Communiqué d’ON/NO] Soirée quiz au Pub Bare Bum – vendredi, le 19 mars
- Mar 3: [ON/NO Reminder] Zoom Coffee Klatsch – Thursday, March 4 | [Rappel d’ON/NO] Coin café par Zoom – jeudi, le 4 mars
- Mar 1: [ON/NO Communiqué] Zoom Coffee Klatsch – March 4 | [Communiqué d’ON/NO] Coin café par Zoom – le 4 mars
- Feb 19: [ON/NO Communiqué] Zoom Laughter Yoga Workshop | [Communiqué d’ON/NO] Atelier de Yoga du rire sur Zoom
- Feb 16: [ON/NO Communiqué] Members Gathering & Status Update — February 2021 | [Communiqué d’ON/NO] Rassemblement des membres et mise à jour sur l’état – février 2021
- Feb 5: [ON/NO Reminder] ON/NO Zoom Pub Night Tonight | [Rappel d’ON/NO] Soirée pub d’ON/NO par Zoom ce soir
- Feb 3: [ON/NO Reminder] ON/NO Zoom Coffee Klatsch Today | [Rappel d’ON/NO] Coin café d’ON/NO par Zoom aujourdhui
- Jan 31: [ON/NO Reminder] Janaki’s Naturist Yoga Classes – Winter 2021 | [Rappel d’ON/NO] Cours de yoga naturiste par Janaki – Hiver 2021
- Jan 29: [ON/NO Communiqué] Two Upcoming Virtual Events – Coffee Klatsch & Pub Night | [Communiqué d’ON/NO] Deux événements en ligne à venir – Coin café et soirée pub
- Jan 25: [ON/NO Communiqué] Status Update — January 2021 | [Communiqué d’ON/NO] Mise à jour sur l’état — janvier 2021