Web hosting Email Questions - Eudora

June 14, 2004 1:29 PM

My web host has been making some changes to the control panel and AWstats package. I've used Eudora for a year to send a receive pop3 emails via my site's mail server. Today, I can receive emails, but when I try to send them, Eudora tells me "550 Dynamic IP Address, see http://dnsbl.sorbs.net/cgi-bin/lookup?IP=82.36.30.80" - which goes here and baffles me. I've made no changes to my email account either on the site or in Eudora. They say they can't help. Can anyone?
posted by Pericles to computers & internet (9 comments total)

Your web host is using a blacklist to stop spammers. For some reason your IP address is blacklisted. Some of the more agressive black lists will block lots of innocent people.

>They say they can't help

That's bullshit. They don't want to help. They could tell the blacklist people, namely sorbs.net, to unblock you. Or, knowing you are a customer and a non-spammer, they should drop the list until they can find a better one or fix it.

I suggest you start looking for a better web host because these people sound like incompetent or apathetic assess.

In the meantime, you can (and probably should from now on) use your ISP's SMTP server.
posted by skallas at 1:39 PM on June 14, 2004

sorbs wont unblock you btw, which is a pretty draconian policy if you ask me.

however, it is the opinion of SORBS that anyone competent should be allowed to run their own mailserver, but all outgoing mail from dynamic address space (and in a few cases static space) should be made to flow through their ISP's mailserver.

posted by skallas at 1:41 PM on June 14, 2004

Ermm .. is it possible I've been hijacked and am accidentally sending spam? NAV, ZoneAlarm, SpyBot and AdAware all say my XP Pro box is clean.

(I login via cable, so I guess that I don't have the same IP address from day to day, tho this is well out of my depth)
posted by Pericles at 1:48 PM on June 14, 2004

It looks like you're being blocked simply because of some nerds' hatred of dynamic addresses. False positives make anti-spam tools a cure that's worse than the problem, but militant anti-spammer types tend not to see that. More than the actual spammers, people who run blacklists are the scourge of the internet.
posted by reklaw at 2:04 PM on June 14, 2004

Pericles, your web host sucks. It is trivial for them to unblock you on their own mail server but for some reason they are not doing it. Their mail filters are blocking their own customers. This is clearly their problem, and the solution should take about 30 seconds for them to whitelist you.

All SORBs is providing is a list of dial-up, cable, and other residential IP space. There is nothing wrong with your machine. In the past a lot of spam came from cheap disposable dial-up accounts, so mail admins like myself use lists like those provided by SORBS to as policy not accept mail directly from dial-up systems.

skallas: Why is it "draconian" that SORBS would not poke holes in their pefectly good list of dial-up space for customers of 3rd parties? Their job is to provide the list so mail admins like myself can make use of it. Blocklists rock.

reklaw: Is that the best troll you got? Come on man, you can do better... I can feel your anger, but there's no originality. :-)
posted by Voivod at 2:50 PM on June 14, 2004

i don't think anyone has explained things very clearly, so i'll have a go. i'm assuming that the person who provides your web service isn't the person who provides your connection to the internet (your isp).

if i understand correctly you're using the smtp server of your web hosting people to send email (the "mail server" or "smtp server" in eudora's config). that's an odd thing to do, and it's not surprising that it's been blocked, because otherwise spammers could also connect to it and send spam.

they could, if they wanted to, configure their email system to accept you either by your address or by you giving a password. however, the address option is a bad idea because it will change (cable modem addresses are dynamic and change typically when you have a power cut or otherwise unplug the modem; they can change more often in theory; if you're using dial-up that changes each connection).

a better solution is to use the mail server supplied by your isp (eg the cable company). typically this is smtp.cablecompany.com. they will let you connect because they know your address (they gave you it...) but they may also require a password - try connecting without and seeing what error message you get.

note that even though you send via your isp, you can still set your return address to be your website address. there is no need to change your email address.

for years i ran a mail server on my own server on dhcp, but eventually i gave up because of filtering. i put it down to the second generation of web users. people who admin sites these days probably grew up with spam and filtering and a totally different idea of what the internet is - they just want an easy solution to stopping junk email and don't give a damn about hackers (what finally beat me was one place that would only unlist me if i had a mx dns record (which is totally unnecessary because everyone falls back to the a record)). in the end, there's nothing you can do...
posted by andrew cooke at 7:21 PM on June 14, 2004

>Why is it "draconian" that SORBS would not poke holes in their pefectly good list of dial-up space for customers of 3rd parties?

Because they are not known spammers and some users use multiple SMTPs or run their own mailserver. Assuming all dynamic IPs are spammers is just too many false positives. There are more mature and conservative blacklists out there like Spamcop.

I find it to be extremely heavy handed and counter-productive to the spam fight. I'm sure spammers are having a big laugh over people like Pericles and his sorbs blacklist and uber-Nerds taking the wrong approach to spam blocking.
posted by skallas at 9:34 PM on June 14, 2004

An email to the web host, and a link to this question, seems to have got it sorted. Once they realised it was their problem rather than mine (eg, incorrectly configured email client ) they were on it faster than Lynndie England over a naked prisoner).

I humbly thank you all.
posted by Pericles at 12:21 AM on June 15, 2004

andrew cooke--

I also have a web host that is separate from my ISP. I use my web host's SMTP server. Why? Because my ISP (SW Bell) won't let me send through their server using my vanity domain as a return address--unless they host my domain.
posted by adamrice at 8:21 AM on June 15, 2004