OT: email blacklists?

Having a bit of a nightmare with my email at the mo and don't really know where to turn.

Last week it's become apparent that a lot of my outgoing emails simply aren't reaching their destination; the problem appears restricted to a number of (completely unrelated) outgoing addresses. The biggest problem is that there's no bounce message, so I have no idea whether *any* of my emails are getting through, or whether they are simply vanishing into the ether.

Is this likely to be caused by anything other than a false-positive entry on a server blacklist? I don't know much about this stuff, but googling and trying

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seems to indicate that one out of 45 published blacklists (one called spamcannibal.org) has listed me (why only one?). Is this therefore likely to be the reason for my problems?

If so, what's the normal way out if this problem - do I need to get my ISP (VirginMedia) on to it? :( Or is likely to be something else anyway?

Thanks

Reply to
Lobster
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"So, contact Virginmedia and have a good read of the link page

Reply to
greyridersfirst

Are you sending mail direct from your machine/server to the destination MX machine or via your ISPs "smarthost" mail machine?

Depends on how you are sending mail if using the Virginmedia service get onto Virginmedia and hope you get a tellietubbie that will understand the problem. Most of the blacklists sites have a means of finding out why your are on the list, spamcannibal does. But if you are sending direct having your IP listed shouldn't affect things.

If sending direct you should have logs (somewhere...) of the reason for failure, though I would expect a bounce message in this case even under 'doze.

Reply to
Dave Liquorice

Do you send emails via your Virgin's SMTP server, or do you run your own SMTP server?

If the latter are you on a dynamic IP address or fixed, if it's dynamic and Virgin identify it as e.g. "123-234-213-132.dynamic.yourtown.virginmedia.co.uk" then that is enough to get your mail refused by other SMTP servers out there.

Also it the hostname for your server doesn't match with the external DNS name your IP address resolves to, that's another good way to get your messages junked.

Reply to
Andy Burns

This seems to be a fact of life with Virgin, even though they use Google servers, the problem is that the server, maybe only one has had a large number of spam sent through it, and a blacklist organisation has thus blacklisted it, and hence any organisation who uses that list does not accept connections from that server . Now normally I'd say this generates an error, but as this alerts the malicious persons to it, increasingly the fact that the email is being dumped is not sent back. I thought we had got past this draconian problem myself, but it appears not More and more greylisting is being used where a connection will be refused the first time and only accepted after a set period. this stops botted machines which do not actually check what responses are coming back when they spam, from sending many messages that way, as they do not know that they are sending into nothing.

I guess to get off all black lists is down to the isp really but if you yourself is listed, this could mean that your webmail account is hacked and someone is using your account to spam directly, though the usual course here is to send everyone in your address book a message the might say, hey great pictures here with a link to an infected page that will make the machines either into bots or allow key logging for passwords credit cards etc. Hopefully anti virus software is good enough to spot it.

One reason I do not use webmail and store stuff there.

Brian

Reply to
Brian Gaff

No, nothing complicated; I use Outlook on my PC and send my email out via the VM server at smtp.ntlworld.com. I'm also using SSL which AFAIK is supposed to protect you against being blacklisted? But maybe not.

So it doesn't look as if anyone here's disagreeing with my own diagnosis of false-positive blacklisting, anyway. However - I tried sending out a test email just now to a gmail webmail address which was one of the addresses which wasn't receiving anything from me yesterday, but it's come through no problem. I won't be able to find out till Monday earliest whether the other 'problem' destination addresses (corporate, non-gmail ones) are also OK, but indications are that my problem may be resolved - this time. If so, there'll be nothing for VM to fix if I whinge at them.

I can understand that blacklisting may be necessary to combat spam; but the lack of any bounce message is appalling. How can anybody ever be sure that mail is getting through? I just don't know what to do about this, moving forward. Are other ISPs any less or more affected?

Reply to
Lobster

Using SSL encryption between you and VM's mail server just stops snooping on your mail between you and them (unlikely anyway) it doesn't mean the encryption will continue from their server to the final recipient, doesn't do anything for blacklisting.

Yes, sounds like (one of?) VM's servers has got itself blacklisted, if you're lucky VM will work to get it removed, if not it'll probably drop off the blacklist in time.

If another server sends bounces when it thinks something is spam, that means you get lots of backscatter emails when someone else forges their from address as one of yours.

Delivery or read receipt? A human reply?

Reply to
Andy Burns

Not always

We used to bounce mail but with spam the sender address is usually forged and often invalid.

The standard today would be to refuse to accept the email and if you are sending direct that should show up as a 'could not send' from the mail client, or of its a mail relay and its set up correctly a bounce back to you. But that depends entirely on the relay. It is not clear if the OP is sending via a relay or whose in fact it is.

Reply to
The Natural Philosopher

There's also grey listing which AIUI is like a temporary blacklist. You et restored if no further issues after a time. (IANAE) I had this from time to time when I was with Demon and spammers seized my domain name. Fortunately Demon use fixed IP addresses so it was easy to get whitelisted on any spam traps.

Reply to
bert

frankly most ISP dynamic address ranges are routinely blacklisted anyway, to prevent direct sending from random accounts from being used to spam. Noddies use their ISP relay, clever people have fixed iP addresses and proper DNS records. Anyone else is probably running a botnet or spamming from an internet cafe etc etc.

Reply to
The Natural Philosopher

If its vias virgins relay, that is what has been blacklisted and its up to them to stop it.

But in fact there is no pint in checking YOUR IP address if you are using a relay. Only virgins relay IP address. Unless someone has been using your domain and address to send spam and that *sender* email address is blacklisted.

I am.

If you are using a relay.

Id be more inclined to think VM had a mail relay issue and your mail is stick in a queue or simply been erased to clear disk space etc etc.

I have vivid memories of taking our mail relay down, deleting a load of bounce storm material manually, reconfiguring it to remove the bounced bounced bounce problems, bringing it up and running queues to clear the last 24 hours backlogs. We were conscientious. The easy way is to delete all the backlog and start again.

I don't think you are blacklisted at all.

I think there have been issues and the messages may still be in a queue somewhere.

Depending on how that's set up you MIGHT get a message saying 'delivery unsuccessful, am retrying' or not, after 24 hours or somesuch. Assuming the mail relay is functioning correctly. If its clogged with uncleared mail, you wont.

Reply to
The Natural Philosopher

You can't, just like the snail mail system. You drop a letter into a post box and hope it arrives in a timely manner. Anything the machines do in the way of "read receipts" etc still doesn't mean the intended human has actually read the message. When I looked at "read receipts" years ago they where generated the instant an mail message was shown in a preview screen. No way could anyone have actually *read* the message, even if they had selected the message to read. Things may have changed but without some direct human action to say "yes I have read this message" anything else is a waste of time. And I don't want people knowing the date/time I *might* have seen their email.

"moving forward", retch, where is that list of management speak bullshit?

All the main mass market ISPs delegate their mail handling to the likes of google/yahoo etc. They all suffer from the fallout caused by spam and/or infected customer machines and to some extent their own incompetence. And even if the configs etc are all OK they still manage to delay mail for hours or days at random.

Best bet is to have your own server on a static IP and send mail direct to the recipients listed MX machine. How you do this can vary from you own private server in a datacenter, a virtual server or a machine under your desk hanging off your 'net connection.

Reply to
Dave Liquorice

How? Are your recipients checking their spam folders?

Reply to
DrTeeth

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