Batty Public Service Announcement

[thebattycakes]

Or, something...

So this came up in crackchat, and I know a lot of people have been plagued by the lack of LJ notifications. I sent an email to LJ about it and thought I'd share the reply with y'all.



I had written about not receiving a reminder about a paid account payment coming up, only the payment confirmation after it was already taken out. I told them that was annoying and asked when the notification problem was going to be fixed.

This is what they said:

Dear LiveJournal user,

Thank you for your inquiry, and I am very sorry for the problem you are having with your notifications.

LiveJournal has been placed on the spam-block list by an external service that is used by several (not all) email providers. (This is why some users are receiving their notifications normally, while others are not.) Because of this listing by a third-party site, our notification and other types of emails are being blocked from being delivered by any email provider that uses this particular spam-blocking service.

We do not have any direct control over this third party -- we cannot remove ourselves from the list, etc. Note that this is not a 'service' that is used by LiveJournal itself, in the way that term is commonly perceived; it is not an on-site feature or a partnership that is causing this situation (Games, etc).

We are working very hard to get LiveJournal removed from this spam-block list, but it is ultimately not something we have immediate control over. That is why we do not have an estimated timeframe as to when this can be completely resolved -- it is not something we can 'fix' entirely on our own (such as a regular bug or feature problem).

We have recently made some changes which has allowed notifications to start working again for some, but not all, users. This may be why you got the notification about your payment, but not the earlier one about it approaching.

We're also working to solve the root cause of issue, which is a certain type of spammer that uses external email to spread spam links to LiveJournal, to help prevent this situation from occurring again in the future.

I really am very sorry that this has gone on this long. We are doing our best to resolve this situation, and doing all we can to get this fixed as quickly as possible.

Regards,
Erica
LiveJournal Community Care Team

So, um... I guess we're all boned for now? But, it doesn't seem to really be LJ's fault. :/

Comments

[boston_bruiser]

Or you could just check your account's inbox every once in a while. Worked for me.

[innerbrat]

Well, yes, it is LJ's fault. Know why all the notifications have been blocked recently? Because recently LJ has become under seige by a deluge of spam comments - I get spam comments on my journals at least twice a day right now. If LJ did something to block those spam comments, the notifications of such comments wouldn't have triggered the third-party spam blocker.

[wanderlustlover]

I'm getting those, too.

[aisforamy]

[Bad username or site: @ livejournal.com] is right. Recently, i've been getting spam comments on journal entries from YEARS ago. If it helps at all, I use gmail, and am still getting my notifs, for the most part.