Mail from HostPC to AT&T being blocked too

[fred]

Beginning about noon on Tuesday, email sent from www.505 to sbcglobal.net addresses started going directly into spam folders. I talked with tier 2 @ AT&T, who had me fill out a "bulk mailer request" form -- really just a whitelist request form. This form is unfortunately addressed to Yahoo. Ugh. I'm no bulk mailer -- this is email from me to myself. They said they were escalating the problem and would get back to me in 72 hours. Whatever.

[tonydi]

It's not just 505, it's doing it on 501 and 504 as well. AT&T has probably blocked the whole IP range. Dumb %#&^$ :mad:

[admin]

Yanno, these blacklist maintainers really go out of their way to piss me off. For years we had bragging rights that we weren't blocked ANYWHERE. If we received a spam report, we acted on it immediately. Then AOL started NOT notifying us of issues - AT ALL.

These days (maybe over the past year or so) companies just block at random to "protect their customers". When they don't notify us (or any provider) of issues, we can't address them. I'm talking NO notifications whatsoever. What's worse is there's virtually no way to get off their lists without offering up your first born as a sacrifice. Our datacenter doesn't allow it, we don't allow it either. We're VERY proactive about spam reports.

Let me be clear - to our customers and any BL provider out there - we have a ZERO tolerance policy for SPAM / UCE. Today alone, 3 accounts were canceled for blatent spam operations (www504). These accounts resulted in temporary blacklists on www504 - which hopefully will be clearing in the next 24 hours.

We submit whitelist requests with these providers daily as needed. Unfortunately, most don't - or won't act until THEIR customers complain. If YOU are their customer - you need to exercise your rights and complain to THEIR customer service departments that they're interfering with your receiving mail. It will definitely help get issues resolved.

Thanks for your help

[tonydi]

Fred, I think they pointed you in the wrong direction by telling you to fill out the bulk emailer form. There is another form in the AT&T Yahoo help system that deals with mail delivery issues but unfortunately I can't link directly to it. I've filled it out for all three IP's that I had the ability to test from and we'll see if anyone gets back to me.

If not, I have a high level tech contact inside AT&T/ASI who will probably be able to help.

[fred]

Thanks, Tonydi and Joe. Strangely, things were working again for about 2 hours late Thursday, but then stopped again. I still haven't heard back from AT&T/Yahoo (their 48 hour response time ends tomorrow afternoon).

When I say "things were working," what I mean is that incoming email didn't get the "[Bulk]" addition to the subject header, meaning that they didn't go straight to the spam folder -- they actually went into the Inbox.

A nasty side effect of this, ironically, is that it breaks AT&T Wireless' idiotic push email client on AT&T cell phones. AT&T, when branding my phone, dumbed down huge parts of it and threw in a push-email client that will only accept email from pre-defined domains -- sbcglobal.net, of course, being one of them. But it only polls the Inbox, so stuff that goes straight to the spam folder never ends up reaching the phone.

Off-topic, but yes, I've --ahem-- made some changes to the phone to re-enable the IMAP client, but it's pull, not push. And whatever AT&T's done to the phone prevents the Consilient push client from working.

And they wonder why I use Vonage for my home phone.

[tonydi]

Still going to Bulk for me as well. If I don't hear back from them by Monday I'll send a note to my inside guy and see if he can shake the right tree.

[admin]

I would imagine that this is the result of having multiple mail servers through the country.. kinda like Google. It takes a while for them all to be reporting the same information. (Yahoo is famous for this).

As a followup, someone, it might have been Tony, was having a problem with Barracuda. Here's their reply:


Thank you for contacting Barracuda Networks regarding confirmation number: BBRxxx-xx.

We apologize for any inconvenience that this may have caused you. If this is your first request, the reputation of this IP address will be temporarily upgraded from "poor" for 48 hours. It may take up to 1 hour for the changes in the Barracuda Reputation System to propagate to all the Barracuda Spam Firewalls in the world.

There are a number of reasons this IP address may have been listed as "poor", including:

1. The email server at this IP address contains a virus and has been sending out spam
2. The email server at this IP address may be configured incorrectly
3. The PC at this IP address may be infected with a virus or botnet software program
4. An individual in the organization at this IP address may have a PC infected with a virus or botnet program
5. This IP address may be a dynamic IP address which was previously utilized by a known spammer
6. The marketing department of a company at this IP address may be sending out bulk emails that do not comply with the CAN-SPAM Act
7. This IP address may have a insecure wireless network attached to it which could allow unknown users to use it's network connection to send out bulk email
8. In some rare cases, your recipients' Barracuda Spam Firewall may be misconfigured


Thank you for your time and understanding.Barracuda Central by Barracuda Networks
http://www.barracudacentral.com/
intent@barracuda.com



Just a note - none of those apply with us - in this case, it was a known spammer signing up for an account and intentionally mass delivering thousands of emails. The account was nailed down and the que cleared. (also used a stolen CC). Another option for Barracuda is that a client on a shared server has a script that has been exploited - that's what happens 9.9/10 times, interesting they don't list that as an option.

[tonydi]

Well, at least AT&T responded. Sent an email asking for the error message we get, which if they actually read the complaint they'd know there is no error, the email just goes to the wrong box!

They also wanted a copy of the full headers for a "failed" email, but also asked for the originating IP and server names.....DUH, those are in the HEADERS YOU JUST ASKED FOR!

We'll see what happens but I'm not holding my breath.

[admin]

See what I deal with everyday? :)

It's aggrevating as hell to deal with these people, some days you think it'd be easier to grown an extra set of limbs. It'd be a whole lot easier if they, when they perceive an issue with an external mail server, flag it, forward a stock complaint to the appropriate abuse dept with a tracking # - and have that tracking all automated, right up to resolution. But no, it's ok - honest, make work harder for everyone :(

[tonydi]

Their way is easier for them and that's all they care about.

[fred]

Non-update update -- After I filled in last week's form they sent me, my email didn't go to bulk for about 2 hours. Then it started again. I did not hear from them within their promised 72 hours (or 120 hours, for that matter), but I had an email address for someone at Tier 2 support AND her supervisor, so they got a nastygram from me this morning. I'll post whatever response I get.

[tonydi]

Fred, are you still having problems sending to sbcglobal.net?

I went through a long process with my AT&T contact and he had their people working on this and eventually they determined it wasn't their block, it was coming from Yahoo. My guy didn't have a contact at Yahoo but he was given this form to submit.

http://help.yahoo.com/l/us/yahoo/mail/postmaster/bulk.html

It took a few days and Yahoo never did reply to my submission other than to acknowledge that they received it, but suddenly all of the HostPC servers I have access to are getting to the Inbox on my sbcglobal.net account tonight.

I submitted the IP's for all of the HosPC servers so perhaps they unblocked all of them, I can't tell.