[Mailman-Users] Blocked By Earthlink

[Mark Sapiro]

On 6/19/2011 1:18 PM, Chuck Peters wrote:
> 
> Later the earthlink page says to include the bounce message, and just how
> are we supposed to do that with mailing list software that is designed to
> handle these bounces?


The Exim log entry should suffice, but given how brain dead earthlink
sometimes seems, it may not. If you need an actual DSN, you can be sure
that the list's Bounce processing -> bounce_notify_owner_on_disable is
Yes and wait for an earthlink member to have delivery disabled, at which
time the owner will receive a copy of the DSN with the disabled notice.


> This isn't even a discussion list where it would be more likely for this
> sort of thing to be flagged as an open relay.  A quick search on google
> for earthlink feedback loop brings up pages not hosted by earthlink.  So
> does anyone have suggestions how to get this mess straight to avoid these
> problems in the future?


I've been blocked by earthlink. At one point, I was sending my personal
mail from a machine with a fixed IP and full circle DNS, but with a
'generic' FQDN like netblock-68-183-193-239.value.net, and earthlink
blocked me. I changed the name and had the rDNS PTR changed to
msapiro.net, and they eventually unblocked me. I'm not sure if earthlink
has blocked me on other occasions or not, but I have also been blocked
without justification by Comcast and Microsoft (Hotmail and MSN).

Earthlink, like many other ISPs, will not actually tell you why you were
blocked because they think it gives away their secret spam fighting
algorithms. The only thing you can do is be sure your mail server
follows best practices as outlined in Section 2.1 of RFC 1912
<http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc1912>. Also see
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forward-confirmed_reverse_DNS>.

Publishing SPF records may help, particularly with Microsoft.

If you are repeatedly blocked by an ISP, it is sometimes effective to
have your list member who is their customer do the complaining. Some
ISPs are more willing to actually listen to their paying customer than
to someone they write off as a spammer. To do this effectively, you may
need to help your user with drafting complaints and interpreting
responses, but it can get the ISPs attention.

-- 
Mark Sapiro <mark at msapiro.net>        The highway is for gamblers,
San Francisco Bay Area, California    better use your sense - B. Dylan