Ask MetaFilter posts tagged with smtp

gmail through SMTP without showing local IP to recipient?

nolnar — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 03:24:31 -0800

when emailing from the gmail web interface then the users local IP is not included in the message source. But when emailing from gmail via SMTP ( smtp.gmail.com ) then the local IP is included in the source. Can I somehow stop that from happening? Scenario: Someone wants to run a blog anonymously but still use a gmail adress for receiving email from readers and replying to such emails.

Can that be done using gmail through SMTP (using thunderbird or some similar program on the local computer) WITHOUT the email recipient getting the IP number of the local computer?

I did some testing. When emailing from the gmail web interface then the users local IP is not included in the message source. But When emailing from gmail via SMTP ( smtp.gmail.com ) then the local IP is included in the source. Can I somehow stop that from happening?

(note: in this thread http://ask.metafilter.com/30539/anonymize-email someone claims that gmail through SMTP strips identifying IP adresses but when testing I found that to not be the case)

(note2: I'm only asking for some way go achieve weak anonymity. If something illegal is done then authorities can probably still request the sender ip from gmail. But that is no problem because the actual scenario involves nothing illegal)

You down with S-M-T-P? Yeah, you know me!

ThFullEffect — Sat, 20 Sep 2008 19:48:14 -0800

How do I set up an outbound SMTP server on MS Server 2003? My team at work has been given the task of getting our MS Server 2003 box to send out emails. I have no idea how to do this.

All of my googling gives me instructions on how to set up SMTP with exchange, or some variance thereof. I don't need to receive emails, just send them. We're intending to use python and smtplib to create and send the email using variables from a database that we are creating. We toyed with the idea of using godaddy's SMTP relay, but it only gives you 250 relays per day for obvious reasons.

The question is how does a non-spammer send out between 250-700 emails per day using what I have at my disposal?

Note: Every email sent is opt-in and offers the recipient a coupon targeted towards an item that they have expressed interest in.

You haven't got mail

special-k — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 12:29:02 -0800

How do I find a working smtp server when I am at a coffee shop? I use Thunderbird for all my work email and need the useable smtp server to send mail. Every time I visit a new coffee shop, I have to first look up the IP on whatsmyip.com, then figure out who the ISP is and guess the smtp server. I usually try a couple (mail.whatever.com or smtp.whatever.com) and if I am lucky it will just work.

But more often than not, I am asked for a username/password. This is very frustrating because I don't subscribe to that ISP. I have tried using gmail as my smtp server (using my google username/pass) and it works for a little while before google throws up error messages (smtp server did not respond or denied access). Same with my work smtp server (even when I check the username box, it still throws up an error after 2-3 emails).

I understand that these are safeguards against spammers but it's very annoying (especially since I will be working remotely from coffee shops for the next two months). Does anyone have a workaround?

Why would email and MSN Messenger work, but web browsing not?

lukeo05 — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 13:24:04 -0800

Why would email and MSN Messenger work, but web browsing not? I got a phone call from a disgruntled mother, wondering why her colleagues home computer will access her email (via Outlook) and be able to use MSN Messenger, but cannot connect to the internet to browse. I'm sure if I sat down at the computer I would figure it out with trial and error, but that's not possible, so I am trying to think of a load of different suggestions of what to try to fix this issue...

Microsoft Exchange Server for Epsilon Semi-Morons?

loquacious — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 09:39:04 -0800

How do I set up Microsoft Exchange (or Outlook) Server for a small office? I'm providing basic knuckle-dragger tech support for a small office, and one of the things they want to implement and that I want to provide eventually is an Exchange or Outlook server.

Where do I begin? What should I watch out for? What about security issues?

I will be using Server 2003 and a primarily XP client base.

Solution May Take Patience

B(oYo)BIES — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 12:44:23 -0800

Our company has been using Gmail’s SMTP servers without issue for the last couple years for sending our ecommerce clients emails that read “A customer has placed an online order on your web site. To access it go to https://www.sometime.com/.” - Well, this week Gmail started blocking our outgoing messages as spam. Every time we send one of these emails, or anything similar to it, we get the following response from Gmail:
This is an automatically generated Delivery Status Notification

Delivery to the following recipient failed permanently:

clientsemailaddress@isp.com

Technical details of permanent failure:
PERM_FAILURE: Message rejected. See http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=69585 for more information.

This has been an issue for a lot of people as of late. We don’t have time to hope Gmail fixes their false positives issue, and need another solution ASAP. We send roughly 200 to 250 emails a day, to one recipient per email. We need a solution that isn’t going to blacklist us as spam before the message even leaves (Gmail) and isn’t going to be hit as spam when it hits the client’s inbox.

We have started looking into other solutions like Send Blaster and
Secure SMTP - any thoughts on these services, or perhaps a better service?

Ideas? Suggestions? Anything useful that may help us? Thank you in advanced.

Postfix/Altermime vs. Google Apps

doomtop — Fri, 02 May 2008 15:43:04 -0800

E-mail disclaimers: Postfix/Altermime setup works great except when used as an SMTP outbound gateway for Google Apps it strips the HTML version of the disclaimer. So I have finally got Postfix running the way I'd like. I'm using Altermime to automatically attach a disclaimer to the footer of every e-mail sent through it.

Altermime includes a plaintext and an html version of the disclaimer.

Whenever I send an e-mail through Postfix using a mail client (such as Outlook, etc.) the disclaimer works perfectly. It includes the plaintext version and if you view the message in html it includes the html version.

However, when I set up my Google Apps for Domains system to use the Postfix server as the "Outbound Gateway" it somehow causes the html version of the disclaimer to be stripped from the message. So the recipient gets the disclaimer in plaintext view, but if they view it in html there is no disclaimer whatsoever.

I can't seem to figure out where why how this is happening?!@?!

Automatically attach a footer to e-mail sent through Sendmail SMTP?

doomtop — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 13:12:11 -0800

Automatically attach a footer to e-mail sent through Sendmail SMTP? Looking documentation on how to automatically attach a customized footer to any e-mail relayed through my Sendmail server. Or any other SMTP server for that matter. Please help!

Automatically attach footer advertising to e-mail via SMTP gateway

doomtop — Sun, 30 Mar 2008 11:09:40 -0800

Automatically attach footer advertising to e-mail via SMTP gateway I'm looking for a way to automatically attach some copy to the footer of e-mail that gets sent out from our e-mail hosting service. We use Google Apps for ISP and give Google Apps accounts to our customers under our own domain name. I'd like to pay for a service that lets me set an SMTP gateway for our Google Apps account that automatically attaches the footer text to any e-mail sent out from within our system.

Does anyone know of a service that offers this or anything like this??

Why won't IIS send my email?

derbs — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 06:50:54 -0800

Seemingly random undeliverable email using IIS's built in SMTP server. Please hope me! Hello everyone
I have a windows server 2003 dedicated machine, which randomly fails to send email. I've been using CDO for years now, and have never come across such an annoying problem, i've literally spent days trying to fix this problem!!

Basically i have a website hosted there, with a really simple CDO send script. It look like this:

--------------------------------------------



for x = 1 to Request.Form.count()

  themessage=themessage & Request.Form.key(x) & vbcrlf

  themessage=themessage & Request.Form.item(x) & vbcrlf & vbcrlf

next





Set MailMessage = server.createobject("CDO.message")

MailMessage.to = "info@flexytron.com"

MailMessage.from = "info@flexytron.com"

MailMessage.subject = "RFQ from website"

MailMessage.textbody = themessage

MailMessage.send

--------------------------------------------

Now about 50% of these emails come through.

The rest give me a 5.3.5 "Delivery to the following recipients failed (info@flexytron.com)

The from address in the bounce email is given as postmaster@DSVR003430.livemail.co.uk

Reporting-MTA: dns;flexyweb.co.uk
Received-From-MTA: dns;DSVR003430
Arrival-Date: Tue, 5 Feb 2008 14:29:42 +0000
Final-Recipient: rfc822;info@flexytron.com
Action: failed
Status: 5.3.5

I can't understand why this is happening. Can anyone work out why my email won't send? It's driving me completely spare, especially as one minute it works, and the next it doesn't!
Thanks a lot

How to forward email to a script

TimeTravelSpeed — Sun, 09 Dec 2007 14:53:29 -0800

How can I set up a system that forwards email to a script given that port 25 is Cox-blocked on my home connection? Use a web host? Bypass Cox somehow? I'm developing an app which requires email-to-script forwarding. My thoughts are either to get an account with a web host that has that capability, or to set up my own SMTP server.

To do it at home, I'd need a way to bypass my ISP's port 25 block. If I need to use a web host, I'd like it to be cheap, free, or with 1and1.com since I have an account with them already.

I'd prefer not to use cron jobs since I want the forwarding to be immediate. Any recommendations?

UK Text Messaging to US E-Mail?

Dreama — Sun, 04 Nov 2007 22:53:52 -0800

Do UK wireless phone providers generally permit text messaging to an e-mail address, rather than another wireless phone? I'm in the US, and my brother and my friend have both relocated to the UK. Both have taken to sending me text messages; unfortunately, international messages are more than three times as costly for me (both to send and receive) as it is for them. And worse, cell reception is very spotty in my house, so when I'm home (as I most often am) a text message might not come through for an hour or two after its sent, just depending on when my phone decides to pick up a signal. E-mail is a much more reliable way to reach me quickly. For me, text-to-email is as simple as putting an e-mail address rather than phone number in the "to" field. Is this functionality common amongst UK carriers?

Barring that, is there any service like K7 that will provide a phone number that can receive text messages and deliver them to my e-mail, that I can use as a go-between service?

(Why am I asking here rather than asking my brother or my friend? Because they're both allergic to RTFM and only understand the very basics of how their very fancy "foreign" phones work. If I can go to them and say "do this" they'll do it, but I don't want to bother if it'll "break" something, as far as they're concerned.)

Can I safely block port 25 on my server?

ajbattrick — Fri, 26 Oct 2007 00:55:34 -0800

Can I block port 25 or not? I'm working on the firewall of a public facing webserver at the moment, and want to block TCP port 25 (SMTP) to incoming traffic as I'm seeing many connections that I just don't want to accept. The server does not handle any incoming email so this would usually be a no-brainer, just block and forget about it.

However, the server is sending around 25000 emails to a distribution list, two or three times a week. I am sure that AOL, or some other big email providers will block emails coming from servers that do not have port 25 open.

I don't want to just block it to test this and have a load of failed emails to deal with.

Do you know if I need to leave port 25 open or not?

Mobile users can't send mail through Postfix on my XServe.

odinsdream — Tue, 02 Oct 2007 15:33:48 -0800

XServe Postfix: How can I disable hostname verification so that mobile users can send mail successfully through my server? One of our mail users cannot send messages through our server from her BlackJack phone. Checking the SMTP logs, I see lots of this:

Oct 2 18:15:11 rammserve postfix/smtpd[12253]: warning: 32.161.215.131: hostname mobile-032-161-215-131.mycingular.net verification failed: Host not found

Googling indicates that this is because the hostname has no PTR record. Nothing I can do about that, so I'm looking to disable this check. It's apparently due to the reject_unknown_client_hostname configuration directive, and/or something in smtpd_helo_restrictions.

However, I can't find where any of this stuff is enabled on the server. It's a default configuration XServe. I've looked over the output from postconf -d, but can't find anything that's causing this warning. Where else should I look? Is this even the problem? If not, what else?

Responsible mail server use on a residential network?

Wild_Eep — Fri, 06 Jul 2007 13:51:14 -0800

How do I send email from a linux box from my residential cable modem connection? I've got a box running CentOS that fires a shell script every day. (The script backs up a friend's webserver via rsync) The log from the script is a text file that I turn into an email message. I want to send the message to my friend (at a gmail address).

When I send the messages, I get replies from gmail reading "The IP you're using to send email is not authorized."

It's implied that they want me to use my ISP's (TimeWarner) SMTP server, but I can't use that directly, mail relay restrictions and all.

I figured I could solve this problem by setting up Sender Policy Framework information for my domain. So I used I set up a TXT record for my domain with the appropriate SPF string.

Still, a few hours later, no go with GMail. Tried sending to another email address and found that my IP was listed with SpamHaus. Jumped through the requisite hoops there to attempt to remove my IP from their list.

I'm sure there's an obvious solution I'm overlooking.

Could someone tell my if my door is wide open?

doctorpiorno — Tue, 15 May 2007 02:12:12 -0800

I believe the mail server associated with my domain name is acting as an open relay. Hosting company claims everything's good. How can I double-check? I'm building a website to advertise my services as a freelance translator, and to that effect I recently bought a domain name and one year's worth of web hosting at a well-known hosting company. My website is not up yet, but I have now switched all my work-related e-mail to the address associated with my new domain name.

A few days ago, a couple of my clients reported that their spam filters had mistakenly filtered out some of my messages, which worried me enough that I decided to look into possible reasons. It was then that I discovered that the SMTP server provided by my hosting company is apparently accepting all incoming connections without even requesting an username and password. I'm no expert in e-mail protocols, but if I'm not mistaken that's what's commonly called an open relay, which I understand is a very bad thing.

I immediately contacted tech support at my hosting company about this. They insisted that everything is hunky-dory and referred me to this site, which says my mail servers seem to be closed to relaying. I'm not convinced, though: right now, using PopCorn (a lightweight e-mail client), I'm consistently able to send e-mail without an username or password and using whatever "From:" and "Reply-to:" address I care to give. Again, I'm not an expert, but this doesn't look right to me.

For the record, the SMTP server will take my username and password if I bother to give one - it just seems to send the e-mail just as well if I don't. If I try to login with SSL, Outlook does warn me that "The certificate's CN name doesn't match its passed value", but it behaves normally if I choose to ignore it.

Right now I'm quite concerned about my mail server being blacklisted, used to relay spam, used to spoof my e-mail address or any combination thereof. Could the networking experts in the Hive Mind confirm whether the symptoms I have described are indeed something to be concerned about?

If this is as worrying as I have so far assumed it is, what are my options apart from switching to a different hosting provider?

Thanks in advance everyone!

What free SMTP service could I use to send emails using Yahoo and Thunderbird

sk381 — Thu, 19 Apr 2007 11:02:00 -0800

I would like to use the new release of Thunderbird (2.0) with my Yahoo account and am looking for a free SMTP service. I know Gmail lets you use its servers but apparently changes the 'From' field of the message to username@gmail.com for all messages. Is there any other service that I can use, apart from my ISP's (I shuffle between work, school and home). Also, I was looking at a few free STMP server programs like Free SMTP Server and PostCast Server. Are they any good? My understanding is that a lot of times, email doesn't end up going through to the receiver if one uses such 'free' programs, due to spam filters at the receiver's end.

Spamassassin has failed me; what do I do?

Nelson — Fri, 10 Nov 2006 01:04:56 -0800

What's the state of the art in installable spam filters for Unix mail hosts? Spamassassin has failed me. A year ago you guys convinced me not to use a challenge-response system for spam filtering. In the meantime my spamassassin setup has failed to the point that 80% of the mail that makes it through my filter is still spam. It's intolerable. What can I do?

I'm running postfix and dovecot on a Debian Linux box. I've got spamassassin set up with bayesian filtering, razor, pyzor, and am running sa-update regularly. 85% of my incoming mail is filtered as spam immediately, but 80% of the remainder is still spam. I'm a software engineer and capable of doing all sorts of hacks, but I'm just looking for something simple that I can just install and be done with it.

Are your tubes clogged, too?

popechunk — Sat, 21 Oct 2006 10:16:14 -0800

Mail Administrators: are you seeing a huge increase in the amount of e-mail? I track lots of things on my small mail server, and one of them is the
number of times my mail server accepts a connection on TCP/25 from a
remote server. This number has steadily risen from around 9,000 times
per week (several years ago) to about 14,000 times per week (this summer).

Recently, however, I've seen an explosion in the number of machines that
are connecting to me. Like double. Also, I am getting an astounding
amount of spam. I've done some analysis of my logs using perl, but
can't find anything obvious. Buddies that also run their own mail servers
are seeing similar jumps in volume. What's going on?

Wot no SMTP?!

freston — Mon, 14 Aug 2006 16:31:14 -0800

How do employees of a new start-up send email (from their home PCs) which appears to come from employee@companyxyz.com? Trying to help a friend who's just started up a new, erm, start-up company. We bought a domain name plus webspace, and that deal included more than enough POP3 mailboxes for his handful of employees. I can figure out how to define these so his people can receive their new email into their existing Outlook inboxes, say.

However, the web deal provides no outgoing email facility, and instead says to use "Your dial up provider's SMTP server". But his people will be using their home PCs, and he'd obviously like their outgoing mail to appear as if it came from their start-up, not their personal mail address.

What do people do in these situations? Even if we set up a new Outlook profile, won't your typical ISP prevent outgoing email that appears to come from a different address? Isn't this just like spam? Are there paid-for SMTP services out there that allow this kind of thing?

Your advice, please, people.

Mark as Not Junk

Eater — Mon, 10 Jul 2006 09:24:25 -0800

Any tips for keeping email I send out of the recipients' spam folders? I have my own domain name, and my home machine uses qmail, with the domain's web host's SMTP server as a smarthost. This setup has worked beautifully for quite a few years, just recently a number of messages I send seem to be getting tagged as junk by the recipients -- Apple's Mail client in particular seems to have it in for me.

The home machine is on a cable connection with a dynamic IP address (which never actually changes), and that seems to be at the root of the problem. SpamAssassin complains in particular about RCVD_IN_NJABL_DUL, RCVD_IN_WHOIS_INVALID. I have a valid SPF record but I wonder what else I can do to make my outgoing mail seem less spammy.

Vanishing emails

bricoleur — Thu, 26 Jan 2006 06:44:29 -0800

Email stumper (for me, anyway): A site I consult on uses the IIS ASPMail module to send email confirmations for e-purchases. The customers seem to get their confirmations okay, but the site owners get theirs only intermittently... The script CCs me on the confirmations that go to the site owners, and I get my copy for every transaction, so I know the script fires every time. The techs at the host say that the outgoing SMTP logs show no failures. The sysadmin for the site owners swears that the missing emails do not show up in his logs. Where the heck are those emails going? Much obliged if you can shed any light on this.

Is Comcast controlling my email?

BradNelson — Thu, 17 Nov 2005 22:32:42 -0800

Why do I have to use Comcast as my SMTP? I own my own domain and use it for email. So, up until today, my SMTP in Microsoft Outlook has been set to "email.bradnelson.com" and worked like a charm. All of a sudden today, I couldn't send any emails from ANY of my email accounts in Outlook (personal and work). Turns out, I have to change my SMTP to smtp.comcast.net in order to send any emails.

Why do I have to do this? I don't really like the idea. What difference does this make?

Need help finding a bulk email solution.

afroblanca — Mon, 14 Nov 2005 07:39:57 -0800

I need to send out bulk emails to an opt-in-only list of over 200,000 people. Can you help me find good software to do this with? Thus far, I've been using an SMTP server called MDaemon in combination with a bulk emailing program. I have tried two bulk emailing programs - E-Campaign and GroupMail Pro.

For some reason, I keep having this problem where the bulk emailing program will randomly stop sending out emails, and the SMTP server's UI becomes unresponsive.

The computer that I'm using is a brand new, very powerful machine with lots of RAM.

I'm starting to give up on the software that we've been using. Do you have any reccomendations?

(Oh, and I should mention that the software needs to be relatively inexpensive. All told, I'd like to spend $500 or less. As much as I'd love to use Port25 or LSoft, that's just not an option for me.)

thunderbird and gmail.

craniac — Tue, 27 Sep 2005 11:23:16 -0800

I need a little help with Thunderbird/OSX/Gmail. Specifically, I can't get T-bird to work with Gmail's smtp server. Using these instructions from gmail for configuring netscape, I've got the outgoing mail server set up using port 587, etc. but keep getting the error:

blah blah can't connect to server %S.

I have deleted the outgoing server accounts, replaced them, and tried other ports as well. I have selected TLS rather than SSL, and have tried SSL as well. Postfix is enabled on my pre-tiger machine, and using localhost doesn't work either. Is this a case of corrupted preferences, or is something else wacky going on?