AOL list member not receiving list traffic
Hi,
Yesterday I received a report from an AOL user that she's not receiving traffic from one of my lists. The problem here is that my server logs show outgoing mail being accepted by AOL's incoming mail servers, and of course after that it's anyone's guess what happens to them. She says she's checked her junkmail folder and the messages aren't there. Does anyone have any thoughts on this? Is AOL known to silently discard mail they think is spam for some reason? I replied to her message from the same server and she did receive that reply, so they haven't outright blocked my IP or something. Even if I could contact someone who knows what they're doing at AOL, there are no error logs for me to show.
Jayson
Jayson Smith writes:
Is AOL known to silently discard mail they think is spam for some reason?
I hope someone with actual experience will speak up, but my take is that it's entirely possible. (Footnotes are of historical interest, but not directly relevant to solutions.)
The last time I had any insight into AOL was 2014, during the DMARC development process. The freemail providers lobbied to make their use case eligible.[1] Gmail didn't have an issue AFAIK, but both AOL and Yahoo! were groaning from a mind-boggling flood of spam. Gmail and Yahoo! techs were very competent and helpful, and contributed a lot of useful statistics and protocol ideas. OTOH, the AOL representatives clearly were dramatically under-resourced, and basically just pleading for relief.
AOL was later acquired by Yahoo, which is now 90% owned by private equity (ie, may be presumed completely unethical) and 10% by Verizon (one of the most irresponsible ISPs). I really doubt they invest in best-practice email services :-(. On the other hand, the extremely competent tech from Yahoo is still there, managing all Yahoo/AOL email services (AFAIK that means all freemail services provided by Verizon). *sigh* *I* doooon't knooow... :-(
I replied to her message from the same server and she did receive that reply, so they haven't outright blocked my IP or something. Even if I could contact someone who knows what they're doing at AOL, there are no error logs for me to show.
The big freemail providers are deliberately opaque about their operations, so the following is generic advice -- I don't have evidence that it will help. But it's good advice! ;-)
First, you should check that your DNS records for DKIM and SPF are up-to-date, and outgoing mail is being signed. If you haven't done this recently, you should do it anyway. Over the years, stuff happens, as they say. :-)
"Friends don't let friends use AOL." I understand the pain of moving your email to a new address, so I completely respect anyone's decision to stick to their current one. That's the easiest solution from your point of view, so I mention it. Gmail has historically been the easiest of the big (opaque) providers to work with because they conform to current best practices and don't negotiate anything else. :-þ
The third suggestion is most burdensome for you: set up ARC processing. The Authenticated Received Chain protocol creates a chain of custody, where each domain that alters the message in ways that invalidate signatures testifies that in the received message the sending IP was an authorized sender for the domain and/or the DKIM signature validated. This is good enough for most recipients, so it should help with AOL if broken DKIM signatures or failed SPF authorization are the problem. I trust the OpenArc implementation https://github.com/trusteddomainproject/OpenARC because I've worked with Murray Kucherawy since the 2014 DMARC travesty. I'm pretty sure it's not so difficult on a single host, but if you're working with an email provider with a complex MX system, they may balk. (Of course you may already have ARC if you're working with a major hosting service.)
I'm not in a position to use ARC on my own host and have never needed it, but I'll help as much as I can if you have problems with setup. Mark will be back online in mid-September, I think he has some experience.
HTH
Regards, Steve
Footnotes: [1] The original idea of DMARC was to protect "transactional mail flows", ie, sensitive direct business mail such as conversations between a bank and an account holder. Freemail providers were out of scope, because of mailing lists and other such usage. Then in 2013-2014 there was a huge increase in spam flows of the particularly pernicious "referred by a friend" kind based on theft of huge numbers of contact lists from Yahoo and AOL. The big 3 freemail providers (with Gmail) got references to transactional flows purged from the drafts, and in April 2014, Yahoo and AOL proceeded to protect their "From" domain with p=reject. Yahoo's representative claimed that several tests showed that this would stop literally millions of spam mails per *minute* during spam campaigns. This is not inconceivable, given that there were already botnets with millions of bots at that time: multicast a spam to 100,000 waiting bots each with a list of 10 victims, there's your million in well under 1 minute.
Less than a year ago, AOL started silently dumping dozens of emails on a list. We reduced the number of emails per connection and the problem ceased. Yes, AOL is obtuse, and once mail is accepted by AOL, only internal AOL logs are going to tell the story. You could send logs to list members individually and have them contact AOL.
On 2022/08/27 01:36 AM, Jayson Smith wrote:
Hi,
Yesterday I received a report from an AOL user that she's not receiving traffic from one of my lists. The problem here is that my server logs show outgoing mail being accepted by AOL's incoming mail servers, and of course after that it's anyone's guess what happens to them. She says she's checked her junkmail folder and the messages aren't there. Does anyone have any thoughts on this? Is AOL known to silently discard mail they think is spam for some reason? I replied to her message from the same server and she did receive that reply, so they haven't outright blocked my IP or something. Even if I could contact someone who knows what they're doing at AOL, there are no error logs for me to show.
Jayson
Mailman-Users mailing list -- mailman-users@python.org To unsubscribe send an email to mailman-users-leave@python.org https://mail.python.org/mailman3/lists/mailman-users.python.org/ Mailman FAQ: http://wiki.list.org/x/AgA3 Security Policy: http://wiki.list.org/x/QIA9 Searchable Archives: https://www.mail-archive.com/mailman-users@python.org/ https://mail.python.org/archives/list/mailman-users@python.org/
At Sat, 27 Aug 2022 01:36:26 -0400 Jayson Smith jaybird@bluegrasspals.com wrote:
Hi,
Yesterday I received a report from an AOL user that she's not receiving traffic from one of my lists. The problem here is that my server logs show outgoing mail being accepted by AOL's incoming mail servers, and of course after that it's anyone's guess what happens to them. She says she's checked her junkmail folder and the messages aren't there. Does anyone have any thoughts on this? Is AOL known to silently discard mail they think is spam for some reason? I replied to her message from the same server and she did receive that reply, so they haven't outright blocked my IP or something. Even if I could contact someone who knows what they're doing at AOL, there are no error logs for me to show.
AOL got absorbed into Yahoo, which in turn got absorbed into Verizon, which in turn split off Yahoo mail to a holding company. So, yeah, it is anyone's guess what is happening off in Yahoo-mail land. *Yahoo* is known to greylist mailling list posts, either because Yahoo thinks they are spam or simply because it is getting too many messages from a given source. If the latter, configuring mailman to send fewer messages at a time might help.
Question: are there other people on your list with any of these addresses:
@yahoo.com
@verizon.net
@aol.com
@netscape.com??
Are they getting posts from the mailling list?
Have you been getting spam reports from Yahoo?
What do you get when you use the mailq command to check the mail queue on your E-Mail server (eg Postfix or Sendmail)?
Jayson
Mailman-Users mailing list -- mailman-users@python.org To unsubscribe send an email to mailman-users-leave@python.org https://mail.python.org/mailman3/lists/mailman-users.python.org/ Mailman FAQ: http://wiki.list.org/x/AgA3 Security Policy: http://wiki.list.org/x/QIA9 Searchable Archives: https://www.mail-archive.com/mailman-users@python.org/ https://mail.python.org/archives/list/mailman-users@python.org/
-- Robert Heller -- Cell: 413-658-7953 GV: 978-633-5364 Deepwoods Software -- Custom Software Services http://www.deepsoft.com/ -- Linux Administration Services heller@deepsoft.com -- Webhosting Services
On 08/27/22 08:38, Robert Heller wrote:
At Sat, 27 Aug 2022 01:36:26 -0400 Jayson Smith jaybird@bluegrasspals.com wrote:
Hi,
Yesterday I received a report from an AOL user that she's not receiving traffic from one of my lists. The problem here is that my server logs show outgoing mail being accepted by AOL's incoming mail servers, and of course after that it's anyone's guess what happens to them. She says she's checked her junkmail folder and the messages aren't there. Does anyone have any thoughts on this? Is AOL known to silently discard mail they think is spam for some reason? I replied to her message from the same server and she did receive that reply, so they haven't outright blocked my IP or something. Even if I could contact someone who knows what they're doing at AOL, there are no error logs for me to show.
AOL got absorbed into Yahoo, which in turn got absorbed into Verizon, which in turn split off Yahoo mail to a holding company. So, yeah, it is anyone's guess what is happening off in Yahoo-mail land. *Yahoo* is known to greylist mailling list posts, either because Yahoo thinks they are spam or simply because it is getting too many messages from a given source. If the latter, configuring mailman to send fewer messages at a time might help.
Question: are there other people on your list with any of these addresses:
@yahoo.com @verizon.net @aol.com @netscape.com
FWIW, I have 99 yahoo.com members on my largest list (4300 total), 13 aol.com, and 3 verizon.net. I never have problems with these, not even gray listing (which is not terrible when it happens, since the post is eventually delivered). I do have SMTP_MAX_RCPTS set to 5, which may help. I also have dkim and spf set up properly.
That said, my problems with all Microsoft addresses (outlook, hotmail, live, ssn) were so bad that finally I just abolished them from the list. But this was not a problem specific to Mailman.
Jon
Jonathan Baron, Professor of Psychology, University of Pennsylvania Home page: https://www.sas.upenn.edu/~baron Founding Editor: Judgment and Decision Making (http://journal.sjdm.org) Associate webmaster: sjdm.org
I'm having a similar struggle with sbcglobal.net & ATT.net addresses - They are rejecting our list mail with a reject notice, but let individual messages through. I have different outgoing server for mailman. My servers are hosted at Dreamhost, who generally has very helpful support, but in the past 3 weeks they are not able to convince sbcglobal & att to let our mail through because they banned our IP block.
I did set Mailman to give me notice for each bounce notification so I could see what was going on, and when the bounce counters were incremented. That helped me be more aware.
Immensely frustrating, as almost half of our list members have sbcglobal or ATT & are losing contact with our group.
Best, Dave Nathanson Mac Medix
On Aug 26, 2022, at 10:36 PM, Jayson Smith jaybird@bluegrasspals.com wrote:
Hi,
Yesterday I received a report from an AOL user that she's not receiving traffic from one of my lists. The problem here is that my server logs show outgoing mail being accepted by AOL's incoming mail servers, and of course after that it's anyone's guess what happens to them. She says she's checked her junkmail folder and the messages aren't there. Does anyone have any thoughts on this? Is AOL known to silently discard mail they think is spam for some reason? I replied to her message from the same server and she did receive that reply, so they haven't outright blocked my IP or something. Even if I could contact someone who knows what they're doing at AOL, there are no error logs for me to show.
Jayson
Mailman-Users mailing list -- mailman-users@python.org To unsubscribe send an email to mailman-users-leave@python.org https://mail.python.org/mailman3/lists/mailman-users.python.org/ Mailman FAQ: http://wiki.list.org/x/AgA3 Security Policy: http://wiki.list.org/x/QIA9 Searchable Archives: https://www.mail-archive.com/mailman-users@python.org/ https://mail.python.org/archives/list/mailman-users@python.org/
Dave Nathanson wrote: /"I'm having a similar struggle with sbcglobal.net & ATT.net addresses - They are rejecting our list mail with a reject notice"/
I can second this. I believe AT&T has been blocking for months or years, but with Dream Host rebuilding their discussion list servers in July, it gave AT&T a new opportunity to reblock us anew and a new opportunity for list administrators of GNU Mailman lists hosted at Dream Host to notice.
I have 36 list users all blocked from AT&T managed accounts at the following domains: sbcglobal.net, att.net, flash.net, bellsouth.net, optonline.net, worldnet.att, and ameritech.net
Almost all of these flow through email servers at the prodigy.net domain, but please notice that this also includes att.net domains managed for AT&T by Yahoo (no Prodigy servers involved).
AT&T has ignored my (very polite) screams for months, and this week Dream Host support reported back that AT&T is no longer answering their inquiries. According to Dream Host, AT&T recently blocked 8 additional IP blocks (or just IP addresses?). For one of them, AT&T responded saying it was in error (and unblocking it) and saying something to the effect that they block any IP block sending too many email. For the other 7, crickets.
I do observe that my IP block is on the UCEPROTECTL3 blacklist, although I don't know that AT&T is using it. UCEPROTECTL3 would, however, be happy to "express delist" my particular IP address as its doing nothing wrong for the low, low price of only $25 per month. Jerks!
I have (temporarily?) fixed this by creating nine or so auto-forward email addresses that auto-forward to 5 AT&T accounts each. (Dream Host users: you can't just create one auto-forward address to send to everyone because Dream Host themselves limit email addresses to about 30 emails sent per hour. Also -- with Dream Host auto-forward only email addresses you won't see bounce traffic when AT&T starts blocking again.)
What a mess.
-- Michael
*Michael Reeder, LCPC * *Hygeia Counseling Services : Baltimore / Mt. Washington Village location* *410-871-TALK / michael(at)hygeiacounseling.com*
On 8/27/2022 4:09 PM, Dave Nathanson wrote:
I'm having a similar struggle with sbcglobal.net & ATT.net addresses - They are rejecting our list mail with a reject notice, but let individual messages through. I have different outgoing server for mailman. My servers are hosted at Dreamhost, who generally has very helpful support, but in the past 3 weeks they are not able to convince sbcglobal & att to let our mail through because they banned our IP block.
I did set Mailman to give me notice for each bounce notification so I could see what was going on, and when the bounce counters were incremented. That helped me be more aware.
Immensely frustrating, as almost half of our list members have sbcglobal or ATT & are losing contact with our group.
Best, Dave Nathanson Mac Medix
On Aug 26, 2022, at 10:36 PM, Jayson Smithjaybird@bluegrasspals.com wrote:
Hi,
Yesterday I received a report from an AOL user that she's not receiving traffic from one of my lists. The problem here is that my server logs show outgoing mail being accepted by AOL's incoming mail servers, and of course after that it's anyone's guess what happens to them. She says she's checked her junkmail folder and the messages aren't there. Does anyone have any thoughts on this? Is AOL known to silently discard mail they think is spam for some reason? I replied to her message from the same server and she did receive that reply, so they haven't outright blocked my IP or something. Even if I could contact someone who knows what they're doing at AOL, there are no error logs for me to show.
Jayson
Mailman-Users mailing list --mailman-users@python.org To unsubscribe send an email tomailman-users-leave@python.org https://mail.python.org/mailman3/lists/mailman-users.python.org/ Mailman FAQ:http://wiki.list.org/x/AgA3 Security Policy:http://wiki.list.org/x/QIA9 Searchable Archives:https://www.mail-archive.com/mailman-users@python.org/ https://mail.python.org/archives/list/mailman-users@python.org/
Mailman-Users mailing list --mailman-users@python.org To unsubscribe send an email tomailman-users-leave@python.org https://mail.python.org/mailman3/lists/mailman-users.python.org/ Mailman FAQ:http://wiki.list.org/x/AgA3 Security Policy:http://wiki.list.org/x/QIA9 Searchable Archives:https://www.mail-archive.com/mailman-users@python.org/ https://mail.python.org/archives/list/mailman-users@python.org/
I should mention that for the free att.net account I set up (managed by Yahoo) that as the end user I received *NO* notifications of any sort. List emails were not even sent to a Spam folder!
*Michael Reeder, LCPC * *Hygeia Counseling Services : Baltimore / Mt. Washington Village location* *410-871-TALK / michael(at)hygeiacounseling.com*
On 8/28/2022 4:08 PM, Michael Reeder -- Hygeia MS wrote:
Dave Nathanson wrote: /"I'm having a similar struggle with sbcglobal.net & ATT.net addresses - They are rejecting our list mail with a reject notice"/
I can second this. I believe AT&T has been blocking for months or years, but with Dream Host rebuilding their discussion list servers in July, it gave AT&T a new opportunity to reblock us anew and a new opportunity for list administrators of GNU Mailman lists hosted at Dream Host to notice.
I have 36 list users all blocked from AT&T managed accounts at the following domains: sbcglobal.net, att.net, flash.net, bellsouth.net, optonline.net, worldnet.att, and ameritech.net
Almost all of these flow through email servers at the prodigy.net domain, but please notice that this also includes att.net domains managed for AT&T by Yahoo (no Prodigy servers involved).
AT&T has ignored my (very polite) screams for months, and this week Dream Host support reported back that AT&T is no longer answering their inquiries. According to Dream Host, AT&T recently blocked 8 additional IP blocks (or just IP addresses?). For one of them, AT&T responded saying it was in error (and unblocking it) and saying something to the effect that they block any IP block sending too many email. For the other 7, crickets.
I do observe that my IP block is on the UCEPROTECTL3 blacklist, although I don't know that AT&T is using it. UCEPROTECTL3 would, however, be happy to "express delist" my particular IP address as its doing nothing wrong for the low, low price of only $25 per month. Jerks!
I have (temporarily?) fixed this by creating nine or so auto-forward email addresses that auto-forward to 5 AT&T accounts each. (Dream Host users: you can't just create one auto-forward address to send to everyone because Dream Host themselves limit email addresses to about 30 emails sent per hour. Also -- with Dream Host auto-forward only email addresses you won't see bounce traffic when AT&T starts blocking again.)
What a mess.
-- Michael
*Michael Reeder, LCPC * *Hygeia Counseling Services : Baltimore / Mt. Washington Village location* *410-871-TALK / michael(at)hygeiacounseling.com*
On 8/27/2022 4:09 PM, Dave Nathanson wrote:
I'm having a similar struggle with sbcglobal.net & ATT.net addresses
- They are rejecting our list mail with a reject notice, but let individual messages through. I have different outgoing server for mailman. My servers are hosted at Dreamhost, who generally has very helpful support, but in the past 3 weeks they are not able to convince sbcglobal & att to let our mail through because they banned our IP block.
I did set Mailman to give me notice for each bounce notification so I could see what was going on, and when the bounce counters were incremented. That helped me be more aware.
Immensely frustrating, as almost half of our list members have sbcglobal or ATT & are losing contact with our group.
Best, Dave Nathanson Mac Medix
On Aug 26, 2022, at 10:36 PM, Jayson Smithjaybird@bluegrasspals.com wrote:
Hi,
Yesterday I received a report from an AOL user that she's not receiving traffic from one of my lists. The problem here is that my server logs show outgoing mail being accepted by AOL's incoming mail servers, and of course after that it's anyone's guess what happens to them. She says she's checked her junkmail folder and the messages aren't there. Does anyone have any thoughts on this? Is AOL known to silently discard mail they think is spam for some reason? I replied to her message from the same server and she did receive that reply, so they haven't outright blocked my IP or something. Even if I could contact someone who knows what they're doing at AOL, there are no error logs for me to show.
Jayson
Mailman-Users mailing list --mailman-users@python.org To unsubscribe send an email tomailman-users-leave@python.org https://mail.python.org/mailman3/lists/mailman-users.python.org/ Mailman FAQ:http://wiki.list.org/x/AgA3 Security Policy:http://wiki.list.org/x/QIA9 Searchable Archives:https://www.mail-archive.com/mailman-users@python.org/ https://mail.python.org/archives/list/mailman-users@python.org/
Mailman-Users mailing list --mailman-users@python.org To unsubscribe send an email tomailman-users-leave@python.org https://mail.python.org/mailman3/lists/mailman-users.python.org/ Mailman FAQ:http://wiki.list.org/x/AgA3 Security Policy:http://wiki.list.org/x/QIA9 Searchable Archives:https://www.mail-archive.com/mailman-users@python.org/ https://mail.python.org/archives/list/mailman-users@python.org/
Mailman-Users mailing list -- mailman-users@python.org To unsubscribe send an email to mailman-users-leave@python.org https://mail.python.org/mailman3/lists/mailman-users.python.org/ Mailman FAQ: http://wiki.list.org/x/AgA3 Security Policy: http://wiki.list.org/x/QIA9 Searchable Archives: https://www.mail-archive.com/mailman-users@python.org/ https://mail.python.org/archives/list/mailman-users@python.org/
Oh bloody heck -- I see I had about 8 aol.com addresses bounce on 8/13/22 -- so I likely have this problem too!
I think I have have dkim and spf set up properly, but who knows. I have seen the tutorals on this list (thanks). Also the munge settings. I'll go look for SMTP_MAX_RCPTS and set it to 5.
My yahoo.com members are receiving email just fine (lots of older people on my list). Gmail is no longer getting yellow boxes after Dream Host made an spf change for me.
*Michael Reeder, LCPC * *Hygeia Counseling Services : Baltimore / Mt. Washington Village location* *410-871-TALK / michael(at)hygeiacounseling.com*
On 8/27/2022 9:16 AM, Jon Baron wrote:
On 08/27/22 08:38, Robert Heller wrote:
At Sat, 27 Aug 2022 01:36:26 -0400 Jayson Smithjaybird@bluegrasspals.com wrote:
Hi,
Yesterday I received a report from an AOL user that she's not receiving traffic from one of my lists. The problem here is that my server logs show outgoing mail being accepted by AOL's incoming mail servers, and of course after that it's anyone's guess what happens to them. She says she's checked her junkmail folder and the messages aren't there. Does anyone have any thoughts on this? Is AOL known to silently discard mail they think is spam for some reason? I replied to her message from the same server and she did receive that reply, so they haven't outright blocked my IP or something. Even if I could contact someone who knows what they're doing at AOL, there are no error logs for me to show. AOL got absorbed into Yahoo, which in turn got absorbed into Verizon, which in turn split off Yahoo mail to a holding company. So, yeah, it is anyone's guess what is happening off in Yahoo-mail land. *Yahoo* is known to greylist mailling list posts, either because Yahoo thinks they are spam or simply because it is getting too many messages from a given source. If the latter, configuring mailman to send fewer messages at a time might help.
Question: are there other people on your list with any of these addresses:
@yahoo.com @verizon.net @aol.com @netscape.comFWIW, I have 99 yahoo.com members on my largest list (4300 total), 13 aol.com, and 3 verizon.net. I never have problems with these, not even gray listing (which is not terrible when it happens, since the post is eventually delivered). I do have SMTP_MAX_RCPTS set to 5, which may help. I also have dkim and spf set up properly.
That said, my problems with all Microsoft addresses (outlook, hotmail, live, ssn) were so bad that finally I just abolished them from the list. But this was not a problem specific to Mailman.
Jon
On 08/28/22 16:22, Michael Reeder -- Hygeia MS wrote:
Oh bloody heck -- I see I had about 8 aol.com addresses bounce on 8/13/22 -- so I likely have this problem too!
I think I have have dkim and spf set up properly, but who knows. I have seen the tutorals on this list (thanks). Also the munge settings. I'll go look for SMTP_MAX_RCPTS and set it to 5.
A few sites will test dkim and spf. Here is one:
https://www.mail-tester.com/spf-dkim-check
But it sounds like the problem is elsewhere.
-- Jonathan Baron, Professor of Psychology, University of Pennsylvania Home page: https://www.sas.upenn.edu/~baron Founding Editor: Judgment and Decision Making (http://journal.sjdm.org)
AT&T has now started blocking the IP address of the multiple auto-forwarding email addresses I set up to get around them blocking the IP address of my GNU Mailman list. So even that labor-intensive strategy won't work. You'd have to be sending from multiple different IP addresses.
Dream Host to their credit jumped right on this and also tried to resolve the problem with AT&T. No responses from AT&T. This includes sbcglobal.net, att.net, flash.net, bellsouth.net, optonline.net, worldnet.att, and ameritech.net .
37 list members at risk unless they change their email addresses. We started 20+ years ago with a different list program and hosting provider, so we have lots of legacy members suddenly getting cut off.
*Michael Reeder, LCPC * *Hygeia Counseling Services : Baltimore / Mt. Washington Village location* *410-871-TALK / michael(at)hygeiacounseling.com*
On 8/28/2022 4:17 PM, Michael Reeder -- Hygeia MS wrote:
I should mention that for the free att.net account I set up (managed by Yahoo) that as the end user I received *NO* notifications of any sort. List emails were not even sent to a Spam folder!
*Michael Reeder, LCPC * *Hygeia Counseling Services : Baltimore / Mt. Washington Village location* *410-871-TALK / michael(at)hygeiacounseling.com*
On 8/28/2022 4:08 PM, Michael Reeder -- Hygeia MS wrote:
Dave Nathanson wrote: /"I'm having a similar struggle with sbcglobal.net & ATT.net addresses - They are rejecting our list mail with a reject notice"/
I can second this. I believe AT&T has been blocking for months or years, but with Dream Host rebuilding their discussion list servers in July, it gave AT&T a new opportunity to reblock us anew and a new opportunity for list administrators of GNU Mailman lists hosted at Dream Host to notice.
I have 36 list users all blocked from AT&T managed accounts at the following domains: sbcglobal.net, att.net, flash.net, bellsouth.net, optonline.net, worldnet.att, and ameritech.net
Almost all of these flow through email servers at the prodigy.net domain, but please notice that this also includes att.net domains managed for AT&T by Yahoo (no Prodigy servers involved).
AT&T has ignored my (very polite) screams for months, and this week Dream Host support reported back that AT&T is no longer answering their inquiries. According to Dream Host, AT&T recently blocked 8 additional IP blocks (or just IP addresses?). For one of them, AT&T responded saying it was in error (and unblocking it) and saying something to the effect that they block any IP block sending too many email. For the other 7, crickets.
I do observe that my IP block is on the UCEPROTECTL3 blacklist, although I don't know that AT&T is using it. UCEPROTECTL3 would, however, be happy to "express delist" my particular IP address as its doing nothing wrong for the low, low price of only $25 per month. Jerks!
I have (temporarily?) fixed this by creating nine or so auto-forward email addresses that auto-forward to 5 AT&T accounts each. (Dream Host users: you can't just create one auto-forward address to send to everyone because Dream Host themselves limit email addresses to about 30 emails sent per hour. Also -- with Dream Host auto-forward only email addresses you won't see bounce traffic when AT&T starts blocking again.)
What a mess.
-- Michael
*Michael Reeder, LCPC * *Hygeia Counseling Services : Baltimore / Mt. Washington Village location* *410-871-TALK / michael(at)hygeiacounseling.com*
On 8/27/2022 4:09 PM, Dave Nathanson wrote:
I'm having a similar struggle with sbcglobal.net & ATT.net addresses
- They are rejecting our list mail with a reject notice, but let individual messages through. I have different outgoing server for mailman. My servers are hosted at Dreamhost, who generally has very helpful support, but in the past 3 weeks they are not able to convince sbcglobal & att to let our mail through because they banned our IP block.
I did set Mailman to give me notice for each bounce notification so I could see what was going on, and when the bounce counters were incremented. That helped me be more aware.
Immensely frustrating, as almost half of our list members have sbcglobal or ATT & are losing contact with our group.
Best, Dave Nathanson Mac Medix
On Aug 26, 2022, at 10:36 PM, Jayson Smithjaybird@bluegrasspals.com wrote:
Hi,
Yesterday I received a report from an AOL user that she's not receiving traffic from one of my lists. The problem here is that my server logs show outgoing mail being accepted by AOL's incoming mail servers, and of course after that it's anyone's guess what happens to them. She says she's checked her junkmail folder and the messages aren't there. Does anyone have any thoughts on this? Is AOL known to silently discard mail they think is spam for some reason? I replied to her message from the same server and she did receive that reply, so they haven't outright blocked my IP or something. Even if I could contact someone who knows what they're doing at AOL, there are no error logs for me to show.
Jayson
Michael Reeder -- Hygeia MS writes:
AT&T has now started blocking the IP address of the multiple auto-forwarding email addresses I set up to get around them blocking the IP address of my GNU Mailman list.
I have to conclude AT&T wants to get rid of their email provision activity.
Is there possibly something somebody could consider spammy in your content, such as frequent or repeated announcements of new services or invitations to events? Do members ever report the list traffic being marked as (potential) spam? Are these discussion lists among the members, or is it all announcements from your side?
37 list members at risk unless they change their email addresses.
AT&T hates them, so I recommend they get an alternative address for list mail and eventually get off AT&T altogether. It's not going to get better, I imagine. But most likely they won't change until they get sued for nonpayment of bills invoiced to their AT&T address. :-/
We started 20+ years ago with a different list program and hosting provider, so we have lots of legacy members suddenly getting cut off.
Do you keep archives? If so, an RSS feed might be the way to communicate to them in somewhat less than real time. Similarly, moving to Mailman 3 + HyperKitty allows use of the archives in a way quite similar to dedicated web forum software like Discourse. Finally (though I hate to recommend it) you could move to forum software or Google Groups.
I'm sorry to be putting all the work on you, but I don't think there's anything Mailman can do. It seems AT&T just doesn't want your list traffic.
Steve
Responding in purple for those who have colors and fonts on.
Michael Reeder -- Hygeia MS writes:
AT&T has now started blocking the IP address of the multiple auto-forwarding email addresses I set up to get around them blocking the IP address of my GNU Mailman list.
I have to conclude AT&T wants to get rid of their email provision activity.
Is there possibly something somebody could consider spammy in your content, such as frequent or repeated announcements of new services or invitations to events? Do members ever report the list traffic being marked as (potential) spam? Are these discussion lists among the members, or is it all announcements from your side? Few frequent or repeated announcements or event invitations (we don't allow paid event ads). I suppose the list headers and footers
On 9/5/2022 9:19 PM, Stephen J. Turnbull wrote: themselves could look too frequent.
No known instances of members reporting us as spam.
There is lots of ongoing discussion amongst members -- not an announcement list.
37 list members at risk unless they change their email addresses.
AT&T hates them, so I recommend they get an alternative address for list mail and eventually get off AT&T altogether. It's not going to get better, I imagine. But most likely they won't change until they get sued for nonpayment of bills invoiced to their AT&T address. :-/ We are now requiring them to get non-AT&T addresses. A shame really.
We started 20+ years ago with a different list program and hosting provider, so we have lots of legacy members suddenly getting cut off.
Do you keep archives? If so, an RSS feed might be the way to communicate to them in somewhat less than real time. Similarly, moving to Mailman 3 + HyperKitty allows use of the archives in a way quite similar to dedicated web forum software like Discourse. Finally (though I hate to recommend it) you could move to forum software or Google Groups. Mailman 3 and HyperKitty may be an option if we port away from Dream Host management of GNU Mailman where we don't have command line access. That said, Dream Host is responsive to concerns so I do not intend to throw them under the bus for having some restrictions.
I'll look into RSS feeds...
I have considered forum software (like phpBB) and Google Groups. This becomes more attractive the more large players give us problems. I am dumping AT&T users, have special directions in place for Microsoft/Hotmail users, and am wondering if we are about to have further problems with AOL and Gmail. At some point this gets unsustainable.
I'm sorry to be putting all the work on you, but I don't think there's anything Mailman can do. It seems AT&T just doesn't want your list traffic.
Steve Steve -- I agree there is not much Mailman can do. I need some combination of more admin knowledge of DMARC/SPF, command line access, different software, and/or hosting the group at a larger industry player like Google Groups that I suspect is not given so much guff simply because they are Google.
-- Michael
Michael Reeder -- Hygeia MS writes:
Is there possibly something somebody could consider spammy in your content, such as frequent or repeated announcements of new services or invitations to events? Do members ever report the list traffic being marked as (potential) spam? Are these discussion lists among the members, or is it all announcements from your side?
Few frequent or repeated announcements or event invitations (we don't allow paid event ads). I suppose the list headers and footers themselves could look too frequent.
I guess, but .signatures and legal disclaimers are very common. I would think that triggering on headers and footers would get Very Important Stuff from vendors and customers spam-trapped.
There is lots of ongoing discussion amongst members -- not an announcement list.
I would think that build up a list's credibility.
We are now requiring them to get non-AT&T addresses. A shame really.
That really is.
Mailman 3 and HyperKitty may be an option if we port away from Dream Host management of GNU Mailman where we don't have command line access. That said, Dream Host is responsive to concerns so I do not intend to throw them under the bus for having some restrictions.
A lot of people seem to like Dream Host. They eventually have to move to Mailman 3 unless they want to support both Mailman 2 and Python 2, though.
like Google Groups that I suspect is not given so much guff simply because they are Google.
I have to say that I learned to have a lot of respect for the senior technical staff at Google and Yahoo! during the DMARC and ARC design processes. They really did know what they were doing. I don't have an active Yahoo! account, but Google does quite a good job of trapping spam and tracking trends in spam. Yes, they're that big, but they're also good at what they do.
Anyway, let us know if we can help. I don't know anything about Dream Host's dashboard etc, but sometimes we can help with advice on settings that seem to work for our Mailman lists and for other admins who report their status occasionally.
No known instances of members reporting us as spam.
Un-realised reports are worse, where you only later discover your domain name or an IP number has been falsely listed.
I searched for a tool to periodically run, to automatically scan with a list of RBL providers, whether any RBL has silently listed your domain names or numbers: http://www.anti-abuse.org/multi-rbl-check/ https://mxtoolbox.com/blacklists.aspx https://rspamd.com/doc/modules/rbl.html Any recommendations ?
Opinion: Bad enough that some commercial companies profit by dumping their admin problems on the innocent far end. Worse that the far end may be an unpaid organisation, so companies steal time from volunteer admins. Worst are fake RBL lists, criminal libelling for profit http://berklix.org/~jhs/mail/sorbs/
I have list members who admitted incompetence to unsubscribe majordomo, less with mailman. Worse were the lazy who refused to learn, demanding to waste volunteer admin time for manual help. Procmail rules discarded their noise. Worst were malicious faked reports to black listers.
Cheers,
Julian Stacey http://berklix.com/jhs/ http://StolenVotes.UK Arm Ukraine, Zap killer Putin. http://berklix.eu/ferries/#dover_solution
Hi
Just another RBL testing site: https://multirbl.valli.org/lookup/
Kind regards, Christian Mack
Am 10.09.22 um 15:37 schrieb Julian H. Stacey:
No known instances of members reporting us as spam.
Un-realised reports are worse, where you only later discover your domain name or an IP number has been falsely listed.
I searched for a tool to periodically run, to automatically scan with a list of RBL providers, whether any RBL has silently listed your domain names or numbers: http://www.anti-abuse.org/multi-rbl-check/ https://mxtoolbox.com/blacklists.aspx https://rspamd.com/doc/modules/rbl.html Any recommendations ?
Opinion: Bad enough that some commercial companies profit by dumping their admin problems on the innocent far end. Worse that the far end may be an unpaid organisation, so companies steal time from volunteer admins. Worst are fake RBL lists, criminal libelling for profit http://berklix.org/~jhs/mail/sorbs/
I have list members who admitted incompetence to unsubscribe majordomo, less with mailman. Worse were the lazy who refused to learn, demanding to waste volunteer admin time for manual help. Procmail rules discarded their noise. Worst were malicious faked reports to black listers.
Cheers,
On 9/10/2022 8:37 AM, Julian H. Stacey wrote:
No known instances of members reporting us as spam.
Un-realised reports are worse, where you only later discover your domain name or an IP number has been falsely listed.
I searched for a tool to periodically run, to automatically scan with a list of RBL providers, whether any RBL has silently listed your domain names or numbers: http://www.anti-abuse.org/multi-rbl-check/ https://mxtoolbox.com/blacklists.aspx https://rspamd.com/doc/modules/rbl.html Any recommendations ?
Opinion: Bad enough that some commercial companies profit by dumping their admin problems on the innocent far end. Worse that the far end may be an unpaid organisation, so companies steal time from volunteer admins. Worst are fake RBL lists, criminal libelling for profit http://berklix.org/~jhs/mail/sorbs/
I have list members who admitted incompetence to unsubscribe majordomo, less with mailman. Worse were the lazy who refused to learn, demanding to waste volunteer admin time for manual help. Procmail rules discarded their noise. Worst were malicious faked reports to black listers.
Cheers,
I do not have the entire thread here, but I have had an experience with at&t. My e-mail address is @att.net, and I login to the web a few times a month - once to see my bill, and maybe two times to look at my spam folder. More than half of the time, the web site does not accept my password, and I cannot use the "change password" link. So I call the 800 support number and get a new temporary password. I am assuming that one or more persons is/are trying to login to my account, and thus my account is getting "frozen". Last Saturday night it happened, and I called support. I was told that they could not give me a new password over the phone; they would have to put a temporary password in the USPS mail. This is a new policy that started a few days before mu call. The support person to whom I talked said that at&t was trying to block IP addresses from where these login attempts are coming. I have no idea if this is related to the problem that started this thread.
--Barry Finkel
participants (10)
-
Barry S. Finkel -
Dave Nathanson -
Jayson Smith -
Jon Baron -
Julian H. Stacey -
Mailman Admin -
Michael Reeder -- Hygeia MS -
Robert Heller -
Stephen J. Turnbull -
Vince Heuser