Mail blocked by some domains

[mark]

Some domains have decided we're spam and are no longer accepting mail from us. This is a temporary situation, and I am working on getting in touch with the right people to make sure we can get unblocked and deliver mail in a timely fashion.

Domains known to be blocking at least some of our mail:

sbcglobal.net
att.net
earthlink.net

It's kind of hit and miss. We have four IPs that we send mail through and they blocked two of them. The other two remain unaffected. Of the two blocked, I have managed to get one unblocked through their automated system, but the other is still blacklisted.

I'll post again when I know more. In the meantime, if you use one of these providers and are having trouble getting mail, you may wish to consider temporarily using a different email address for now.

Comments

[idlerat]

If we're customers, does it help for us to contact them?

[mark]

Absolutely! If you want to contact them, it's usually best to provide them the list of IP addresses we use. Something like:

Dreamwidth.org sends mail on one of four IPs:

174.143.24.133 dfw-jobs01.dreamwidth.org
174.143.252.249 dfw-jobs02.dreamwidth.org
67.23.34.143 dfw-jobs03.dreamwidth.org
67.23.34.144 dfw-jobs04.dreamwidth.org

[idlerat]

Will do!

[onyxlynx]

Well. That would explain the invite code problem. Although everything before May 1 got through OK. ("Mypacks" is Earthlink.)

Will switch and see what happens.

[trixtah]

You don't appear to be on the usual RBLs, and I'd accept mail from you on my domains. Gmail gives you an SPF pass, although I'm a little unsure on what grounds - I can't find a TXT record for your domain.

However, your DNS records are held by dyndns.org. I have heard of mail administrators refusing to accept mail from hosts whose name records are at a publicly-accessible dynamic provider. Perhaps that's an avenue you could explore.

The rejection messages in your logs should give you some clue (although knowing some domains, maybe not - I don't understand when administrators get coy about their reasons for rejecting mail).

[lastscorpion]

I got a notification from you about somebody subscribing to my journal, and AOL put it in the spam folder. (Yes, AOL, go ahead and laugh; I'm old.) Fortunately they frequently put my aunt's e-mail in the spam folder, so I look in it all the time. I checked the "this is not spam" box on it; hopefully that will help.

[throbadelic]

That's why I hardly give out my own AOLame address anyomore. If it wasn't for T-Bird, I'd never know what's in there since I log-on via another person's screen name just to check on her mail.

[sunfell]

Happily, Comcast seems to like you. I have had no problems getting my DW mail.

[allanh]

As someone who spends much time being paid unreasonable sums of money for unblocking email systems, I figured it might be prudent to present a few basic suggestions, in the event that the stress and craziness of bringing up the system may have caused skipping of one or more of the steps. :)

The providers you've listed (plus comcast.net) are looking for the following:

1. An "MX" record attached to every mail server, even if it's outbound-only

2. A reverse DNS record attached to every mail server (this is critical!)

3. An "A" record in every "MX" record-e.g., don't put just an IP address in an MX record.

4. Every mail host answers up with its "A" record name. I notice that "mail.dreamwidth.org" answers up as "dfw-mail01". It should answer up as "mail.dreamwidth.org" -OR- you should change the mail server's MX record to "dfw-mail01".

If I can be of further assistance with DNS troubleshooting, please let me know.

[kitsune413]

this is the same for charter.net, or charterinternet.com

I work for that ISP.

Nice to know there are more tech support people out there :)

[allanh]

Oh, we're everywhere. :)

[mark]

Oh, now this is good stuff!

1) Updated DNS as indicated, all outgoing mailservers now have matching MX record that points back at them.

2, 3) These were done already.

4) I changed the MX record to be dfw-mail01.dreamwidth.org, but the mailserver still answers as "dfw-mail01" (without the domain), does it HAVE to have the entire domain?

[allanh]

It doesn't HAVE to have the entire domain...for MANY email servers. Some are really, really picky. Once a client of mine has been blacklisted, often I find the only way to make EVERYone happy (read: "Certain obnoxious ISPs, especially some cable TV companies") is to use the fully qualified domain name.

So my advice--which you are perfectly entitled to not follow if you don't want to--is to use the FQDN.

[ashkitty]

Thanks for the update, will bother earthlink about it. That explains why I tried like 18 times to confirm my OpenID and then couldn't get the invite code and it was such a freaking hassle. :p Have subbed with gmail for now, so will attempt to remember that i HAVE a gmail and should maybe check it until earthlink gets their *$#&*$ together.

[kalidor]

Let me know if you managed to get it cleared.

FYI, I had been dealing with similar last year. SBC uses AT&T stuff, not sure about earthlink; but AT&T maintains active whitelisting. Even if you have everything setup correctly, using the automated method often re-blacklists you every few weeks.

Let me know if you actually manage to get someone on the horn who can permanently whitelist you. I wasn't able to get the blacklisting stopped until we had our colo transfer the ip to us with ICANN.

[kshandra]

That would explain the sporadic messages I've been getting (noted the Mindspring user).

[ex_vexed738]

I have had no trouble with my hotmail.

[delladea]

I've had no trouble at all getting e-mails from you guys with my GMail account.

[groovesinorbit]

Hi. I contacted Earthlink live chat, and they told me the following:

"Please ask the sender to forward the bounce back message he have received along with the header information to the email address falsepositivereport@earthlink.net, and the IP address in the subject line once the sender send email message to the above given address, our Engineers will unblock the email address or domain with in 24 hrs."

I hope this helps.

[izzy]

unrelated bug: i crossposted an entry to Livejournal successfully, went to edit it, and it disappeared from both Dreamwidth and Livejournal. i've crossposted and edited entries successfully before, so i'm not sure what happened.

[lilyleia78]

Just to let you know, yahoo was allowing things through this morning but has now started dumping them in my spam. I checked allow and put the address in my address book. I don't know if this is the same problem, but there's the info if you need it.

[beck_liz]

Hey, I have a friend who just signed up and is using att.net. So she hasn't gotten her validation email yet. Should she open a support ticket, or try and change the email address she's using. I ask because I'm not sure changing the address would work considering that she's only just signed up.

[dejablu]

Yahoo dumped you into my spam folder, a detour not a block unless people on yahoo auto delete anything yahoo sees as spam....just so you know.

[ladyoneill]

I have a feeling mine did as well as I had several posts in my DW inbox that never showed up in my email but I have yahoo dump my spam immediately so I can't check if that's the problem. My last successful receipt of an email from DW was Saturday night sometime.

[dejablu]

It also dumped your reply to spam, I have created a filter, could someone reply to this so I can see if doing this solves it? Thanks

[chichirinoda]

Testing~ Hopefully this doesn't go to spam XD

[dejablu]

Yay!!!!! It works.... so yahoo users can set the following filter:
Filter name: DreamwidthReplies2Comments

If...

From contains "dw_null@dreamwidth.org"
Subject contains "Reply to your comment."
Body contains "replied to a comment you left in a Dreamwidth entry. The comment replied to was:"

Then...

Move message to Inbox folder

[chichirinoda]

Hee. Glad I could help. Thankfully, gmail isn't being a douche.

[alice_montrose]

Yes, Yahoo did the same to me, in spite of me telling them it's not spam eight times now. Hopefully they'll fix that soon.

[doro]

Just FYI, at yahoo.com, both emails I've gotten from DW have ended up in my 'Spam' box. I've marked both 'not spam', so I hope that helps.

stray lj pencil?

[miella]

I'm still getting the lj pencil on login.bml after logging in. Right next to Post to your Journal.

[lee_rowan]

Yahoo put your confirmation in my spam folder, but telling it "not spam" seems to have done the trick.

[hendrikboom]

I once had trouble sending mail to the minister of my church, sho had an ATT account. I did get a message telling me my letter was spam.

Other than that, I've had no problems. All my registration mail showed up promptly, and I'm getting notifications about posts. I thought you might appreciate a letter telling you some things are working properly!

I am glad I'm in control of my own email. I run my own email server on a computer in my basement.

-- hendrik

[ex_axel184]

I wasnt sure where to post suggestions, so you can direct me to the proper place if you need to, but I've noticed that gmail doesnt sort my DW alerts by post. So I'll have just one email group that's "Reply to your comment", but it'll be comments made in different posts.

I'm not sure why this is happening, since LiveJournal email alerts seem to be formatted the same way, but I was wondering if you guys knew about this and why it's happening, or had a fix coming up, or if it's even a problem on DW's end. It's just difficult sorting through comments not knowing where the comment came from because one email has 60 different replies from... pretty much every place I've commented.

Thanks!

[mark]

Yeah, this is a known issue. It's something not on our end, as we use the exact same code and format that LiveJournal uses. We haven't figured out the best way to solve it yet. :(

[ex_axel184]

I am glad to hear you guys are looking into it!! I wonder what gmail reads differently...

Thank you!!