| © Jim Edwards - All Rights reserved |

A lady emailed me yesterday very upset over the fact that
her friend's Internet Service Provider (ISP) wasn't
delivering important email messages (or any of her messages
for that matter).

It seems her friend's ISP was filtering her emails, but
there didn't seem to be any rhyme or reason as to why
some messages got through and others didn't.

This lack of delivery caused a real problem for the two of
them with ruined plans, missed appointments, and just plain
inconvenience.

If you don't use email much, this might not sound like a
"big deal," but for others it's having a profoundly
negative impact on their lives.

This problem of non-delivery has dramatically affected the
way businesses use email for about the last year, but it's
now about to reach epidemic proportions for consumers using
email.

To put things into perspective, imagine if every time you
dialed a friend's phone number you had no idea whether it
would ring or not. Sometimes you got through, other times
you couldn't... with seemingly no reason for it happening
either way.

Now imagine the hair-pulling frustration you'd feel over
time if your friend's phone number hadn't changed, but you
kept dialing the number and it never EVER rang for you...
but others could get through with seemingly no problem. :-
That's exactly how you'll feel when your personal emails
start getting blocked for no apparent reason.

The problem of legitimate email messages not getting
through stems from the uncontrolled and unstoppable
onslaught of spam that currently grips the Internet with
seemingly no end in sight.

The fact that viruses can now "spoof" email addresses and
make it look like someone sent a virus to thousands of
people doesn't help matters either.

In an effort to cut down on spam, ISP's implemented a
number of counter-measures, including: text filters, spam
databases, sender blacklists, and IP blocking.

If your email message doesn't get delivered, most of the
time it means you inadvertently got caught in an ISP's
"defense system."

If you ever find your email messages don't get through, or
if you'd like to head off problems before they occur, the
following tips should help:

The first and best tip is to encourage all your email
contacts to "whitelist" your email address in their email
program.

Just like you can say which email addresses you don't want
to get messages from, you can also specify a list of email
addresses you always DO WANT to accept.

In Yahoo or Hotmail you can set up your filters to accept
email messages from a certain source, regardless of the
subject line or content of the message. Your friends and
subscribers can do the exact same thing with your email
address by adding you to their "whitelist" so you don't
miss each other's emails.

It takes a little patience to set up, but it pays big
dividends by not losing important messages.

If you use Eudora, Outlook, Outlook Express, MailWasher,
or just about any other email "client" program, you can set
up rules to always accept messages from certain senders
(just check the help file).

If you send messages to people who use AOL, try this
technique. Get them to add you to their address book
"safelist" or "approved senders."

This helps AOL identify that the message recipient "knows"
you and has a higher likelihood of actually wanting to
receive your message.

Email AOL tech support for help on this if you encounter a
problem.

If filtering and "white" listing don't work and your email
messages are still getting blocked, then your friend needs
to contact their ISP to sort out the problem.

Their ISP can certainly figure out why messages don't get
through, but it may take some concerted encouragement to
get the ISP's customer service to take the time to
investigate the cause. (In other words, they may have to do
some serious complaining to get the ISP to get up off their
butts and do anything about the problem, but you must
encourage them to do it!)

-- Jim Edwards is a syndicated newspaper columnist and the
co-author of an amazing new ebook that will teach you how
to use fr-e articles to quickly drive thousands of targeted
visitors to your website or affiliate links...

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