Telecoms Yahoo Xtra email service is incorrectly marking some of my companies emails as spam. There is no real solution from telecom.

Forums › Spark New Zealand (including Skinny and BigPipe) › Telecoms Yahoo Xtra email service is incorrectly marking some of my companies emails as spam. There is no real solution from telecom.

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robbypreb

131 posts

Master Geek

#176951 9-Nov-2008 18:15

zocster:
freitasm:

Damn Zocster, putting this thread off topic...

Sorry

Edit: as it is confusing why they have Yahoo!Xtra on top of the page

No problem, it is confusng and telecom make it so, branding their webmail Yahoo Xtra, and also Yahoo Xtra Bubble, although I don't think they refer to the 'bubble' brand anymore after teh bubble popped. I just want them to get their subcontractor Yahoo to fix the problem, or to relax or tune the filtering for a NZ email environment. I assume it is currently so strict,because it is tuned to their US and free email service, which is both the source and receiver of spam.

Green

18 posts

Geek
+1 received by user: 2

#177006 9-Nov-2008 23:43

I ran into trouble like this all the time when I was running my own mail server. There are all sorts of hoops that needed to be jumped through this days for email to work correctly - and part of it has to do with how your domain's DNS entry is configured. I'd suggest starting off by checking your SPF host record & reverse DNS entries for your mail servers.

These days I don't run my own server any more. Instead I've 'outsourced' the job to gmail (keeping a server patched & spam filters up to date is a real pain), so it is important for me to have a valid SPF record for my domain pointing at the google mail servers. That way the servers receiving email from my domain know that it's OK to get it from a google machine.

As an example, here's what my SPF host record looks like.

v=spf1 include:aspmx.googlemail.com ~all

You mentioned that your ISP was xnet, so looking at their DNS records, I the following should work (assuming you're using their servers to send your email):

v=spf1 ip4:58.28.0.0/16 ~all

Note: I'm suggesting '~all', rather than '-all' (which is what xnet have in there records) as this will lead to a 'soft fail' which should result in servers taking a fail as a hint rather than an absolute for marking your mail as spam. This will also buffer you against any unannounced mail server changes at xnet's end.

Hope this helps!

PS. Emails from my domain do get through to my yahoo.com & xtra.co.nz accounts.

robbypreb

131 posts

Master Geek

#177123 10-Nov-2008 14:32

Green:
I ran into trouble like this all the time when I was running my own mail server. There are all sorts of hoops that needed to be jumped through this days for email to work correctly - and part of it has to do with how your domain's DNS entry is configured. I'd suggest starting off by checking your SPF host record & reverse DNS entries for your mail servers.

These days I don't run my own server any more. Instead I've 'outsourced' the job to gmail (keeping a server patched & spam filters up to date is a real pain), so it is important for me to have a valid SPF record for my domain pointing at the google mail servers. That way the servers receiving email from my domain know that it's OK to get it from a google machine.

As an example, here's what my SPF host record looks like.

v=spf1 include:aspmx.googlemail.com ~all

You mentioned that your ISP was xnet, so looking at their DNS records, I the following should work (assuming you're using their servers to send your email):
v=spf1 ip4:58.28.0.0/16 ~all

Note: I'm suggesting '~all', rather than '-all' (which is what xnet have in there records) as this will lead to a 'soft fail' which should result in servers taking a fail as a hint rather than an absolute for marking your mail as spam. This will also buffer you against any unannounced mail server changes at xnet's end.

Hope this helps!

PS. Emails from my domain do get through to my yahoo.com & xtra.co.nz accounts.

In this case it is not the email address that is the problem, but rather the contents/subject of the email, as it contains 'account information'. I know this becuase it will arrive in the xtra.co.nz junkmail if it is sent from either my domain based email address, or if I send it via another ...@xtra.co.nz email address, going through Xtras own SMTP servers.

robbypreb

131 posts

Master Geek

#181185 29-Nov-2008 23:45

Bumped up. In case anyone from Telecom comes to visit, after the Telecom outage this weekend.

kiwitrc

4123 posts

Uber Geek
+1 received by user: 833
Inactive user

#181198 30-Nov-2008 06:15

I have lost count of how many people I have convinced to move from Xtra email due to the Yahoo crap filters.

Stryfe

56 posts

Master Geek
+1 received by user: 1

#181635 2-Dec-2008 18:22

What I always find somewhat amusing is the amount people who complain and rage about 'an email service that they pay for', when in effect it is supplied free of charge with the service which they do pay for, a connection to the internet, be it dialup or broadband. In this current market an ISP has to offer 'perks' or 'fluff' services to enhance the percieved value of the service they actually supply. If people wish to effectively use an email service then they need to use it in the manner which the supplier envisages them doing so. If that means they need to login into webmail periodically to ensure that they recieve email that they wish to recieve which has been blocked by an automated system then so be it. Alternatively, if the spam filter is such an issue, they could by all means turn it off and use other methods to control the spam that they _will_ recieve.

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jfnz

211 posts

Master Geek
+1 received by user: 6

Trusted

#181978 4-Dec-2008 11:40

Please note, this is only applicable should you administrate your own mail server and need to relay mail to Yahoo!Xtra. If this is not you, please contact your ISP or your mail administrator.

Please also note, this is based on assumption and should not be relied on as 100% accurate. I certainly don't claim it to be.

Here is a documented I drafted not so long ago regarding this:

Primarily when delivering mail to Yahoo!Xtra mail servers it checks for three things.

1) Reverse DNS (PTR Record) Double checked as follows:

joshf@punisher:~$ host mail.domain.co.nz
mail.tectra.co.nz has address 222.22.222.22

joshf@punisher:~$ host 222.22.222.22
212.201.89.219.in-addr.arpa domain name pointer mail.domain.co.nz

2) Hostname supplied during SMTP transactions. You need to check what name your mail server identifies itself with as sometimes it can be in "hostname.domain.local" format. This should preferably read as your PTR record. That being in this example "mail.domain.co.nz"

Depending on whether your mail server listens for connections, this can be checked as follows:

joshf@punisher:~$ telnet 222.22.222.22 25
Trying 222.22.222.22...
Connected to 222.22.222.22.
Escape character is '^]'.
220 hostname.domain.local Microsoft ESMTP MAIL Service, Version: 6.0.3790.3959 ready at Thu, 25 Sep 2008 16:41:26 +1200
helo mail
250 hostname.domain.local Hello [222.22.222.22]

In this case it’s incorrect, and would need to be altered.

3) The reputation of your IP address and domain.

This is the most complicated of the three. The reputation of domain and IP address are treated separately, however both come in to play. When Yahoo!Xtra receives mail from your mail server/IP address or domain it marks the message a score on how likely that message is to be spam. If the message is suspected spam, your overall 'reputation' is lowered. When a certain threshold of reputation is reached (say for example a score of 5/10) all mail from your domain and IP address will be forwarded to the Bulk email folder. If mail continues to be transmitted in the same fashion and that reputation drops again (say below a score of 2/10) then mail from your domain, IP and server will be ignored and rejected completely.

In terms of legitimate non-bulk senders Yahoo!Xtra postmasters are happy to review this at any stage. As long as the administrator of that mail server has taken enough care to make sure the configuration is correct, and they've protected themselves it won't be an issue what-so-ever. They have the ability to reset the reputation on a trial period for 2 weeks, where mail is monitored. If the mail is clean, the reputation is reset (back to 10/10 for example) again and the process starts once more.

Hang on a moment. Is there anything else I can do?

Yes. Yahoo!Xtra utilises the DomainKeys system. This is similar to SPF in the sense it provides authentication for your domain name. It's stored as an entry on your domain and is made available for other mail servers receiving mail FROM your domain to check. The entry defines which IP addresses legitimate mail from your domain is expected to come from (for example the ones you specify e.g. your mail server and the Xtra mail servers). Depending on configuration, if these entries do not match (for example someone spoofed an email to come from you) the message will be dropped and your reputation will not be affected.
More information on DomainKeys is available here (http://dkim.org) however it's not officially supported by us, and if you wish to use this you are required to supply us with the relevant information to add to your domain.

Having an SPF (http://openspf.org) record is a great idea as well. This isn't used by the Yahoo!Xtra mail server but is used by a number of others, Gmail inclusive.

So, in conlusion the Yahoo!Xtra sender best policy page is available for your review here
Once you're satisfied the criteria is met, and you wish to apply for review the whitelisting forms you'll need are here

Please note: Any posts, comments, or contributions in this forum are posted by me as an individual acting in my own right and do not necessarily reflect the views of any company I work for, clients I've consulted for, or anyone else.

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