Email delivery failure notification

Forums › 2degrees (including Slingshot, Orcon, Flip, Stuff Fibre, MyRepublic, 2talk and Vocus) › Email delivery failure notification

OldGeek

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#138943 22-Jan-2014 14:14

I have just got an error message:

   ----- The following addresses had permanent fatal errors -----
<target email address>
    (reason: 550-The sender 60.234.4.69 is in a black list at bl.spamcop.net)

The <target email address> is the person I sent an email to using mail.orcon.net.nz as my SMTP server.   The IP address shown is an Orcon host according to ip-lookup.net.

Do Orcon have a black listing problem here?

openmedia

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#972278 22-Jan-2014 14:37

Looks like you've got an issue with your IP address. Someone has flagged some emails from your IP as SPAM

http://www.spamcop.net/w3m?action=checkblock&ip=60.234.4.69

Generally known online as OpenMedia, now working for Red Hat APAC as a Technology Evangelist and Portfolio Architect. Still playing with MythTV and digital media on the side.

xpd

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#972279 22-Jan-2014 14:38

Yup... every few weeks they seem to. We're routing our emails via another ISP at the moment to get around it.

Gavin / xpd / FastRaccoon / Geek of Coastguard New Zealand

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BlakJak

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#972280 22-Jan-2014 14:38

Yup.

http://mxtoolbox.com/SuperTool.aspx?action=blacklist%3a60.234.4.69&run=toolpage

Your recipient is subscribed to Spamcop and Spamcop think that IP is a spam source.

You'd be best to log a proper fault with Orcon support IMHO, to ensure they're addressing it. They may be able to provide an alternative, non-blacklisted SMTP relay option too.

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trig42

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#972283 22-Jan-2014 14:41

I think they do.

One of our suppliers on Monday who obviously also use Orcon as a mail host/SMTP server.

The IP was the same (60.234.4.69) and our host (Firstwave.com.au) reported their email to us was rejected because of that IP addresses poor reputation.

Looks like one of Orcon's servers has been used as a relay, or someone has been sending lots of Spam.

xpd

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#972285 22-Jan-2014 14:44

Weve already been in touch with Prem Support a couple of times.... takes time tho...

Gavin / xpd / FastRaccoon / Geek of Coastguard New Zealand

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mattwnz

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#972289 22-Jan-2014 14:49

Yap, had clients who have had the same problem. I tell them not to use the ISP for sending out email, as it is now a common occurrence for ISPs to get their IPs blacklisted, and it is frustrating to get them to fox it because their front one call centre staff often don't know about this type of problem unless you escalate it

TheKitchen

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#972290 22-Jan-2014 14:49

Hi Guys,

Unfortunately some of our mail clusters have been black listed, there should be something on the network status page now. Sorry about the delay.

Sharesies

Trade NZ and US shares and funds with Sharesies (affiliate link).

OldGeek

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#972340 22-Jan-2014 16:15

openmedia: Looks like you've got an issue with your IP address. Someone has flagged some emails from your IP as SPAM

http://www.spamcop.net/w3m?action=checkblock&ip=60.234.4.69

Just to clarify - 60.234.4.69 is not my ip address but it is reportedly owned by Orcon.

BlakJak

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#972386 22-Jan-2014 17:25

mattwnz: Yap, had clients who have had the same problem. I tell them not to use the ISP for sending out email, as it is now a common occurrence for ISPs to get their IPs blacklisted, and it is frustrating to get them to fox it because their front one call centre staff often don't know about this type of problem unless you escalate it

If you have a reliable ISP you should be able to generally rely on using their SMTP smarthost, with the caveat that obviously all email sent by all of that ISP's customers is likely to pass through the same set of IP addresses, exposing you to the reputational risk that their aggregate customer base also shares. The ISP won't want their IP's blocked, so one hopes they would pay attention to any reports of this, and act quickly to deal to it and get themselves delisted.

Direct SMTP from your own connection, to bypass your ISP's blacklist situation, is an option, but only for static IP customers (realistically, dynamic IP blocks are frequently blocked simply because that's what they are, and probability analysis would indicate that you're going to be more generally reliable sending email thru your smarthost than directly). Many ISP's block outbound connections on Port 25 from their customers in acknowledgement that for the most part, these are spam emails that they don't want leaving.

The alternative is to find a service provider that has SMTP-AUTH capability and that you can talk to over Port 587 (bypassing any Port 25 blocks). There's third-party email service providers that offer this. They may also support allowing unauth'd relay from you based on a fixed IP.

Opinion entirely personal.

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mattwnz

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#972397 22-Jan-2014 17:52

BlakJak:
mattwnz: Yap, had clients who have had the same problem. I tell them not to use the ISP for sending out email, as it is now a common occurrence for ISPs to get their IPs blacklisted, and it is frustrating to get them to fox it because their front one call centre staff often don't know about this type of problem unless you escalate it

If you have a reliable ISP you should be able to generally rely on using their SMTP smarthost, with the caveat that obviously all email sent by all of that ISP's customers is likely to pass through the same set of IP addresses, exposing you to the reputational risk that their aggregate customer base also shares. The ISP won't want their IP's blocked, so one hopes they would pay attention to any reports of this, and act quickly to deal to it and get themselves delisted.

Opinion entirely personal.

I agree that in the ideal world that would occur. But I think some ISPs don't consider email a core service these days, as it is something they provide for free, so they may not have the resources to be continually monitoring their IPs reputations. I am not sure how an ISP would find out that thier IP is blacklisted without checking it in a website like MXtoolbox, or a customer reporting it to them. Or does the IP owner get emailed when there is a problem? If a cusomter has to manually report it, that would result in a lot of wasted staff time I am sure, which would make it expensive for an ISP to deal with.

I have had so many problems with clients over the last year, with their ISPs SMTP server IPs getting blocked due to poor reputation, and this has included many of the large ISPs in NZ. The solution for businesses, is to use a domain email address, and use the SMTP server of their email provider, and not host the email address with an ISP. Basically you use an email provider, where email is one of their core services where they provide immediate support, and they will fix any reputation problems immediately if they do occur. I haven't had any problems with non ISP email providers and web hosts. Even gmails IPs never seem to get blacklisted.

I have found that with ISPs, the problem is really getting through to the right person to fix it. If you contact an ISPs helpdesk , the front line staff don't really know what to do. They say they have to escalate it in their system but won't put you in direct contact with the person who it is being escalated to. It is certainly a frustrating problem to deal with, and I mainly find it is restricted to ISP mail servers and seems to be an across the board problem with NZ ISPs from time to time. There really needs to be an easier way to replort blacklisting problems to an ISP such as a simple form that can be filled in

Nebbie

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#972460 22-Jan-2014 19:57

And this is why I use own box to do SMTP behind my static IP address..... More users you get the more spam you still start to deliver...

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Nebukadnessar

FireEngine

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#972466 22-Jan-2014 20:06

mattwnz: There really needs to be an easier way to replort blacklisting problems to an ISP such as a simple form that can be filled in

Try emailing the notification you receive to [blacklisted at orcon.net.nz] (changing at to @ and removing the spaces)....

Regards FireEngine

MurrayM

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#972642 23-Jan-2014 09:41

FireEngine:
mattwnz: There really needs to be an easier way to replort blacklisting problems to an ISP such as a simple form that can be filled in

Try emailing the notification you receive to [blacklisted at orcon.net.nz] (changing at to @ and removing the spaces)....

Will this work for blacklisted iServe servers too?

Over Christmas I found several messages that had been sent via my iServe hosted websites (i.e. forms on my websites which PHP emailed me the form contents) had been marked as spam by Gmail (I use Gmail for all my own email). Gmail usually gives a reason as to why it thinks messages are spam, and in these cases it said it had encountered a high amount of spam messages from iserve.co.nz (sorry I didn't keep a copy of the exact message).

FireEngine

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#972670 23-Jan-2014 10:35

MurrayM: Will this work for blacklisted iServe servers too?

Yes

Regards FireEngine