Email Return Headers

[trafficg]

Hi

Some email's I've sent recently have bounced, one particular error message is bothering me.

Connected to 205.158.62.36 but sender was rejected.
Remote host said: 553 5.3.0 Mail from 63.236.215.2 refused. Blacklisted.

Does this mean i'm Blacklisted?
Does this mean FutureQuest is Blacklisted?
Does this mean the Person Receiving the Email is Blacklisted?

This email was being sent to a mail.com account.

Thanks
Pete Kelly

[trafficg]

I have been looking in to this problem some more and discovered that it's a much bigger problem that I had first thought.

I have done a search though all my emails and found that 24 different hosts addresses had bounced all with the reason listed as "Blacklisted". I am certain that I am not the one who has been black listed. I don't send Spam type emails, (I never have and never will). So I suspect that the FutureQuest server may have become black listed due to another member spamming these servers.

Although my list contains 24 different host addresses, a lot of the host IP's are the same or very similar, they all may even be the same company. Here are the host IP address from the messages.

205.158.62.23
205.158.62.25
205.158.62.26
205.158.62.33
205.158.62.35
205.158.62.37
205.158.62.38
205.158.62.42

Here is the list of hosts affected.

catlover.com
cheerful.com
consultant.com
doctor.com
email.com
europe.com
execs.com
gothruus.com
hockeymail.com
iname.com
lycosmail.com
myself.com
post.com
profit.i-p.com
programmer.net
repairman.com
representative.com
soon.com
technologist.com
theglobe.com
usa.com
winning.com
witty.com
writeme.com

Can anyone help?

Is there anything that can be done to fix this problem?

Any help would be most welcome.

Pete Kelly

[Deb]

I'll continue to look into it in hopes of discovering what exactly is blocked whether it be you or an entire IP block I am not sure.[nbsp][nbsp]You do not always have to be a spammer to be blocked by a spam blocker...

From their site Mail.com uses a patent-pending spam blocking technology to protect you from unsolicited e-mail. We turn away messages from most spammers before they are even allowed on our system. [nbsp][nbsp]Were these mailing list messages you sent out in bulk or private/personal messages to individuals you know?[nbsp][nbsp]

All of the IPs you list are in fact owned by the same provider....

Deb
[nbsp]- Awaiting Their Response.

[trafficg]

Hi Deb

>>Were these mailing list messages you sent out in bulk or private/personal messages to individuals you know?<<

The messages are welcome emails sent to users as they sign up to my site. I do now send out weekly bulk emails to members but I have bounced messages from before I started the weekly mailings.

Thanks for looking into this problem for me :-)

Thanks
Pete

[robpitt]

Feel free to send test email to robpitt@cyberdude.com which is also an mail.com account.

[trafficg]

Hi

Nope your address bounced too, thanks for offering your email address as a test address :-)


I have copied the message source returned to a text file.

http://www.trafficg.com/tmp/returned_headers.txt


One thing I did not mention in my previous messages is that all the emails was sent from php scripts from the server.

Thanks
Pete Kelly

[Terra]

Email sent to: abuse@mail.com


Greetings,

Please view:
http://www.aota.net/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=2357

63.236.215.2 is the primary interface IP to our ZOOMER server...

I tried finding some way to determine:

1) why we are being blacklisted
2) what email (or client) caused the blacklist
3) the steps require to remove our server from your list

I have also searched my email logs and could not find a notice from 'Mail.com' alerting me that our server was being placed on your blacklist - nor a means to remedy the problem before the blacklist went into effect...

We have a very strict 'No Spamming' policy in our TOS that can be viewed here:
http://www.futurequest.net/Services/TOS/

Thank you for any information you can provide...

--
Terra
sysAdmin
FutureQuest, Inc.
http://www.FutureQuest.net


Awaiting their response...

--
Terra
--Sadly, if you sneeze today - people say euwwww - Spam!--
FutureQuest

[trafficg]

Thanks Terra,

I appreciate your help.

Thanks.
Pete Kelly
www.TrafficG.com
:)

[trafficg]

Update:

In the last couple of days the blacklisted message has changed to

>>Connected to 205.158.62.27 but sender was rejected.
Remote host said: 553 5.3.0 EMail from 63.236.215.2 refused. Blacklisted by postmaster@outblaze.com.<<

Now I had the proper email address I decided to email the person who controls the email servers and explain the situation. A few minutes ago I received a reply


The blacklist has been lifted.
Please allow 1 hour for propagation.


:stardanc:

I'm now a happy bunny 8}

Terra or Bruce:
Is there anyway to change the email system so that the IP address used to send email is taken from the domain sending the email rather than using the servers IP address? This could stop this sort of thing happening again, then if a domain owner gets blacklisted it doesn't effect other server users.

Happy
Pete

[Jeff]

then if a domain owner gets blacklisted it doesn't effect other server users
Except on the older servers up through Phoneix or Dexter (?) which still use shared IP's.

[Terra]

rather than using the servers IP address
I'm afraid not, or none that I've found anyways...

All servers have an ethernet interface: eth0

For that interface, there are two types of addresses:
1) Primary IP
2) Alias IP

ZOOMER == 63.236.215.2

All the rest are aliased IP's that stack on top:

(soon to be deprecated, but still applies)
eth0:001 - 63.236.215.10
eth0:002 - 63.236.215.11
eth0:003 - 63.236.215.12

The IPs do not need to be in order, or even congruent...

So when a daemon goes to send something out the server, it will connect() via 'eth0' interface as this is derived from the servers route table...

--
Terra
--The fundamental difference between bind(2) and connect(2)--
FutureQuest