TOPIC:

We're trying to set up a Yelp account, but can't get automated verification emails from @yelp.com. A Yelp employee was able to email contact-7850496[at]toastmastersclubs.org directly. (I replaced @ with [at] to avoid web crawlers from harvesting our club email addresses from public sites. Does FreeToastHost block certain email providers and/or domains for us to check and/or troubleshoot that this is the problem?

Virtual Parliamentariians #7850496

Well, this is something that a lot of *other clubs* would black list and because your club is using the Crowd Sourced Black List feature, that matters. So you probably need to add an entry to your club's email whitelist to override the Crowd Sourced Black List. There is a button in the Email and Contact Forms module to search the Crowd Sourced Black List...

Remember that when you are using the Crowd Sourced Black List feature, you are basically putting your faith in what all other clubs have said should be black listed. It is a very effective feature, but sometimes it is just too effective.

Thanks for the suggestion to add the vendor's email to the white list! I didn't find This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or any with *@yelp.com in the crowdsourced black list, so perhaps it's an issue on their end where they claim emails were sent, but perhaps not received until they approve our business listing.

You need to check the email carefully to get the sending email address--they may be using some "creative" from email address. I would suggest setting your own email address as the recipient of emails from them temporarily to check where they are sending from then setting it back once you have determined that.

I can tell you that This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. *is* black listed by a couple of clubs... I just checked that.

virtual.parliamentarians wrote:

or any with *@yelp.com

The search does not support wildcards... just search for @yelp.com (no askerisk)

Thanks for going the extra mile in searching for This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. and tip for removing the asterisk! I've asked the vendor to confirm which email address sends the verification for us to add to the white list in case that helps resolve the issue.

If there is a way to search for all combinations of addresses at a specified domain, it may help instead of guessing what the username/prefix may be. This would avoid other users like me from missing these blacklisted addresses unless good samaritans, like yourself, see this request for sharing their wealth of wisdom!

The thing is that I am purposely trying not to offer up email addresses from the search that were not specifically searched for... We made a conscious decision that we really don't want to just unnecessarily divulge email addresses in the crowd sourced black list out of respect for the clubs that may have put those email addresses on their black lists for good reason.

I used to have the pop-up show an altered version of the entire black list that had the part prior to the @ in the email addresses replaced with **** for the same reason. (But you had to scan the entire altered list for the email address in question.) However, as the most common use case is that someone is looking for whether a specific email address is black listed by some other club, that is why I replaced it with the current search mechanism.

To be clear, we *do* have a report in our system admin tools (I created it) that tells us what email addresses were blacklisted by which club(s). However, out of respect for the clubs, we will not say which clubs blacklisted which email addresses--we respect privacy and do not want to have any part in doing something that may create some unnecessary drama between users or clubs. In this case, it was a pretty minor (low risk) thing for me to just check our report for you... I just did a Ctrl-F web page search on the report.

I might be agreeable to doing some sort of wildcard search in the future, but I would want to strike the right balance with the above considerations in mind. If you think I should consider that as a future improvement, please post an improvement suggestion in that forum section. I do review and act on those periodically, particularly the ones that other users post in favor of.