Hi all,

When I try to e-mail certain people, the e-mail gets returned to me. It started out with me not being able to e-mail AOL users. Over the past few weeks, though, it has gotten worse and now happens when I try to e-mail people using other providers. There are several other threads on this subject, and I thought that it was because AOL was blocking residential IP addresses (which actually is somewhat true), but it seems that my IP address for my mail server has been blacklisted!!! Here are some of the error messages I get when e-mailing certain addresses:

----- The following addresses had permanent fatal errors ----- <someone@aol.com>
(reason: 550-The IP address you are using to connect to AOL is a dynamic (residential))
... while talking to mailin-04.mx.aol.com.:
<<< 550-The IP address you are using to connect to AOL is a dynamic (residential) <<< 550-IP address. AOL will not accept future e-mail transactions from your <<< 550-IP address until your ISP removes your IP from its list of dynamic <<< 550-(residential) IP addresses. For additional information, please visit <<< 550-http://postmaster.info.aol.com.
<<< 550 Goodbye


----- The following addresses had permanent fatal errors ----- <someone@uml.edu>
(reason: 550 Denied by policy: Sender is listed on DNS-based RBL)


<someone@aspi.net>
(reason: 553 5.3.0 REJECTED mail from suspected SPAM source - see http://relays.ordb.org)
... while talking to mailgate.destek.net.:
>>> MAIL From:<chris@bartlett-family.net>
<<< 553 5.3.0 REJECTED mail from suspected SPAM source - see http://relays.ordb.org 501 5.6.0 Data format error


----- The following addresses had permanent fatal errors ----- <someone@oarie.net>
(reason: 550 5.7.1 Rejected: 24.61.77.188 listed at list.dsbl.org)

I have followed some of the URL's in the e-mails to get myself off the list, but nothing has come of that so far. Does anyone know if there is anything else I can do about this? I am NOT a spammer myself, and to the best of my knowledge, I am not relaying for spam. I am no expert on sendmail (the MTA I use for my mail server), but I am quite certain that I am NOT running open-relay. How can I check if my mail server is being used to send spam? How can I ensure that I am NOT an open-relay? Any other suggestions? Please let me know as this is highly annoying. Thanks, everyone!

Chris

I'm having the same problem as well. I think by doing the steps at http://ordb.org/removal/ we can fix this issue. I don't think that it will happen instantaneously though. How long ago did you go through the removal process?

Hey crashed!

I haven't gone to that particular sight yet, just the one mentioned in my starting post. I went to that one this morning, and I had the e-mail for confirmation sent to my postmaster username, but I forgot to previously alias postmaster to my personal user, so I didn't respond to the e-mail in time. Now I have to wait a week before I can request removal again! That's gonna be annoying. We'll see. I'll keep you posted on my situation here, I hope you do the same. Later

Chris

I just had a little chat with www.ordb.org and they are resubmitting my IP address for testing. I hope they will let me know if they remove it or not. We'll see.

Chris

Yeah let me know if you get this resolved. This is really a pain. Somehow theses people have decided to block us who are using e-mail for legitimate reasons yet they can not block those people who send me e-mails everyday saying that I need to increase the size of my you-know-what.

I agree completely! What really kills me is that instead of these large companies spending the money to FILTER out spam, they simply block the sources altogether. All they end up accomplishing is blocking legitimate communications. Becuase of this, right now I can't e-mail any of my professors from my local e-mail address! I have to use their roster, or my Yahoo! address. It'a really a pain in the @SS. Keep checking back and let me know if you find anything. I know I will!

Chris

Sup Crashed...

Ok, I have had my IP address removed from:

relays.ordb.org
relays.osirusoft.com
dnsbl.njabl.org

I have one more to go (unconfirmed.dsbl.org), but I have to wait 5 more days before I can resubmit to them. Pain in the ass! Hopefully, this will do it! Keep you posted!

Chris

Cool. I am using this thread as link for one of my projects. This is one of our biggest issues considering all the people who use AOL. Its just frustrating.

Thanks for your help.

Feel free, Crashed... You've helped me out in the past. The least I can do is return the favor! Peace

Chris

Hey guys one more point.
I think if you get your SMTP server to send via your ISP's smtp server rather than delivering directly it will save you a lot of hassel.

I think you're right, David.

The only thing is that sending mail directly wouldn't be a problem for me, except that I was hacked previously and the hacker opened up sendmail to be open-relay. That's why I got blacklisted. Provided that doesn't happen again (which I am now watching more closely!), I shouldn't have any more trouble. Definitely something to think about, though! Thx!

Chris

Ah yes, the open relay. Note that is it impossible to stop those sending all those messages about increasing you know what as long as open relays are as prevalent as they are. I've been blacklisted myself by my own neglect. While I have few kind words for aol (besides the fact they cannot properly spool mail to a dyndns address), blocking of IP's with those open relays is at least an attempt to slow spam down. One does tend to be a bit more diligent after the blacklist experience which can only be a good thing. Direct mail is far more satisfying than spooling through the ISP, besides which I really do not want them archiving all my messages for homeland security (sic) --even if there is nothing compromising there.