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  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

Spamhaus sucks.

Mark B.

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Anyone else being blocked from sending email to Red by the Nazi-esque Spamhaus blacklist campaign? I've gotten blocked on and off by Spamhaus for the last few months and it's really getting annoying... two days now and I haven't been able to get an email through to Red from my private email. Not much I can do about it either, since all my past attempts to fix the Spamhaus problem have apparently failed as I have no control over my email provider's IP and whether or not spammers also use it. Red should stop referencing the Spamhaus blacklist and instead find a way to filter spam without filtering legit email too.
 
Woohoo! Finally got my message sent to Red, now that the servers have been reset for the morning. I wonder how many days this will last before I'm blocked again?
 
That didn't take long... I'm blocked again. Can't send any private emails to Red, or even to my web host provider. Probably can't send any email anywhere. Fun fun fun.
 
check your SMTP relay settings

The most appropriate configuration is the following:
- your internal SMTP relay accepts emails from the internal hosts only (IP restriction);
- your internal SMTP relay asks for user authentication, so only existing users could send emails;
- your internal SMTP relay does protect itself from mass-mailing (for example, by allowing no more than X mails at a given time frame) and does logging - that would help you to detect the source of mass-mailing;
- your ISA server does not allow the outbound SMTP to any of your internal hosts, except the designated SMTP relay.
 
check your SMTP relay settings

The most appropriate configuration is the following:
- your internal SMTP relay accepts emails from the internal hosts only (IP restriction);
- your internal SMTP relay asks for user authentication, so only existing users could send emails;
- your internal SMTP relay does protect itself from mass-mailing (for example, by allowing no more than X mails at a given time frame) and does logging - that would help you to detect the source of mass-mailing;
- your ISA server does not allow the outbound SMTP to any of your internal hosts, except the designated SMTP relay.

It's Verizon's server, not mine to configure. Or maybe it's my web hosting provider's server. I don't know, I have no idea what is being targeted anymore.
 
its not good that you cant email red, but I like spamhaus. I have a couple of addresses and one of them is not covered by a spamhaus style filter, it gets around 10,000 spam email a month. the other, by comparison get about 70.
 
its not good that you cant email red, but I like spamhaus. I have a couple of addresses and one of them is not covered by a spamhaus style filter, it gets around 10,000 spam email a month. the other, by comparison get about 70.

Blocking spam is fine, but spamhaus blocks more than spam... do a search and you'll see a lot of people complaining about their legitimate emails not getting through. There are better spam systems that actually approach things logically and don't use a wide paintbrush for what should be pinpoint removal. By using spamhaus, you've probably lost a lot of email that was legitimate but there's no way you'd know unless those senders called you on the phone to tell you their email isn't getting through.

Blocking users from sending mail is like blocking freedom of speech, and if so much as one person can't have freedom of speech then the system needs to be changed.
 
Spam blacklists have a very high rate of false positives. A better option is contextual spam detection which detects spam by message content (and can factor blacklists into their equations if desired).
 
If at all possible, you might consider moving the accounts to Google. Google Apps will happily host mail for your entire domain for free, with a nice admin control panel, and SMTP, POP and IMAP access. While it's not perfect, I've found that (unsurprisingly) Google runs e-mail services much more competently than most web hosts or ISPs.
 
If at all possible, you might consider moving the accounts to Google. Google Apps will happily host mail for your entire domain for free, with a nice admin control panel, and SMTP, POP and IMAP access. While it's not perfect, I've found that (unsurprisingly) Google runs e-mail services much more competently than most web hosts or ISPs.

I'll take that into consideration. I'm definitely going to need some sort of alternative if this blocking keeps up.
 
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