oblivio
@atlanticbb.net
| AT&T abuse block 550
Maybe someone here knows someone at AT&T who we can contacted directly.
We are a very small hosting company located in Florida that happens to have quite a few customers who uses bellsouth.net email addresses. Now, many of those people have their email forwarded from their domain. We never had problems with Bellsouth until the merger with AT&T. Now, our customers can't seem to get their forwarded email because of AT&T keeps annoyingly blocking our mail servers. We have followed their instructions at »www.att.net/bls_rbl/ to get our ip unblocked but after a week or so we seem to be back on this list.
We have implemented spam controls on our server. We have even blocked ips from connecting that are on any of the standard block list servers.
We have no problems with any other provider (comcast, aol, msn etc) because we simply do not spam and we limit each customer to only send 300 messages per day through our servers.
This is very frustration and we are literally reaching out every where for help. |
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janrey4
join:2004-04-05
Greer, SC | Try this email address abuse_rbl@abuse-att.net. |
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anonyjane
join:2008-02-10
Billingsley, AL
| reply to oblivio
So when people try to forward their mail from their domain which is hosted by your company, bellsouth.net rejects it for abuse? Recently, this seems to be happening to a number of people who forward their mail from a hosted domain to bs.net addresses, but I could not tell you why it happens. Since they remove you and you are blocked again, then there may be something that is flagging you for abuse. There is no way to directly contact the people responsible for unblocking email. Only via the webiste form or email (posted below).
Try these:
»support.att.net/bellsouth/asp/co···b7ad189a
and
try contacting bellsouth_unblock@abuse-att.net with the subject of Block. (you can try asking for info as to why you are being blocked, but I cannot guarantee you'll get a response beyond being unblocked again)
Please include the following information in the e-mail:
Exact error message
Throttle 450 NDR (Non Delivery Report) error reasons:
Too many connection attempts too often
Connection attempts made too frequently
Blocking 550 NDR (Non Delivery Report) error reasons:
Blocked for abuse - high levels of spam
Blocked for status - no identifying information has been entered into the DNS (Domain Name System) for this sending system.
Blocking 521 NDR (Non Delivery Report) error reasons:
Blocked for abuse - high levels of spam
The originating e-mail domain name (e.g. - otherisp.net)
IP address of the sending mail server (if available)
Company name
Contact Phone number
Contact email address
The time when the problem began or was first noticed (please record all times as Eastern time zone) (Optional)
Full headers from the e-mail(s) that bounced (Optional)
Is there an alternate way for them to access their domain email instead of forwarding it to bellsouth? If the problem cannot be resolved then they may have to find an alternate way of getting their mail, be it through webmail offered by you OR forwarding the messages to email provider like yahoo or gmail.
Personally, I would not associate important emails with an ISP b/c if you change ISPs or something, you either have to pay to keep the email address or you cannot keep it at all. Plus any billing issues can interrupt your service AND email. Not blaming your customers or anything, but through all the ISPs I've ever had, I never used the email addresses provided with the account (aside from AOL and even then, nothing important) and thus, I've never had my email interrupted. Ultimately, all AT&T can do is unblock you when you are being blocked. |
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homenode
Premium
join:2007-11-18
Bullhead City, AZ
| reply to oblivio
There is a lot of chatter here at DSLReports and elsewhere about this problem. So far it appears to concentrate on small ISPs and domain hosts, especially those that provide dynamic IP to domain mapping and mail forwarding services. My domain host (Deerfield.com) requested release of their /24 block on Friday, but has not heard a response yet.
There is an article in The Register about this:
»www.theregister.co.uk/2008/03/24···filters/
and several threads here:
»Where did my spam go?
»Email Problems?
»Bellsouth blocking my legit email server
The last one is from an earlier event, but matches the problem you're reporting almost exactly.
What makes this latest spate of RBL blocks interesting is that the individual mail addressee is first presented with an error message asking them to register for unblocking with at&t. The message will then escalate to an IP address block message, and finally no bounce messages at all.
The bad news is that a majority of at&t customers are supporing the new filtering, not realizing that anyone outside of at&t, Comcast, TWC, Google, etc. is having problems reaching them. So don't expect much help from at&t initially...at least until someone has a big financial loss that can be laid directly on at&t's doorstep.
Sadly, I grudgingly support at&t in their efforts. I've been self-hosted for nearly 20 years and currently spend about an hour a day dealing with filtering and bounces at my domains - and I only have 6 total users! Reliable filtering is impossible to achieve: either you let a large volume of spam through and have each user manually validate the message, or you reduce the spam to an acceptable low level and risk bouncing legitimate mail. With malware and redirection so prevalent today I can't even establish a "white list" of known associates to simply accept, as even they have been hit with email exploits at least once in the past year inside major corporate IT firewalls. After Trend and Symantec were hacked with hijacked support links two weeks ago, I, literally, can't trust anyone.
We're at a point that email is used primarily as a document transport, with all "real" communications being done via telephone - simply because the reliability of email delivery has become unacceptably poor. I wish it weren't like this, but until some overarching reforms occur in the email RFCs, there isn't much any of us can do but complain. |
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graysonf
Premium,MVM
join:1999-07-16
Fort Lauderdale, FL
| I agree with you; email is essentially a lost medium - lost to abuse.
But it really depends on your setting as to how effective and how easy it can be to massively reduce SPAM with no work beyond the initial setup.
I have one client who isn't really all that unusual, IMHO. They have no need to get mail from or send mail to anyone outside the US. So, on their mail server, I use country code RBLs to drop everything coming in from all non-US IP addresses.
I also use the CBL RBL to reject mail from trojan infected botnets and zombie spamming machines.
These two steps are all I do and I haven't touched the setup since implementing it.
It routinely rejects up to 98% of all the mail trying to get in. So far, they have not had even a single lost mail due to a false positive. This setup is rejecting 10,000 or more messages a day. |
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oblivio
@atlanticbb.net
| i think the blocking international ip addresses is a good idea. Allot of this stuff seems to be coming from overseas. I will try that and see how much complaints i get. Thanks for the suggestion. For now, the unblock from bellsouth has been holding so i will see how it goes. This spam issue i guess is very frustrating for everyone but i don't think bellsouth blocking legitimate hosts like me is going to solve their problems. They are most likely going to get more complaints than solved problems. |
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graysonf
Premium,MVM
join:1999-07-16
Fort Lauderdale, FL
| Rejecting everything that can't be appropriate is a good starting place.
It's also a good ending place.
But not having your own control over this is asking to fail.
My approach is best described as brutal. But none of my clients are complaining, and they aren't losing any legitimate mail. |
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Frohike
Premium
join:2000-07-23
Waxahachie, TX | reply to oblivio
Forward your bounceback to removeme@sbc.sbcglobal.net to get unblocked. |
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rdkerns
join:2000-04-28
Nesconset, NY
| reply to oblivio
I am the network administrator for a company in FL. We run our own mail servers and have a Static IP Block from Covad. In the past few weeks Bellsouth.net\ATT.net has started blocking mail from my mail servers. In checking logs and computers here, I have no issues. My Mail servers properly resolve with reverse DNS. My IP's are not on any RBL's. My mail server is not an open relay. When I first contacted them at their abuse email address i got a replay saying that my IP's are not blocked and my mail should go thru. But still i get messages back from their mailservers saying email from my domain are blocked.
I think I am going to start notifying my Vendors that use their service that we are unable to email them due to their ISP. Hopefully if ATT gets enough business customers angry at them they will rethink their email security policies. |
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Frohike
Premium
join:2000-07-23
Waxahachie, TX
| AT&T won't rethink the policies - but something is broke. I've dealt with a few Admins today with same issues. They get bouncebacks then contact AT&T Policy via the email address and get reply stating the IP isn't blocked. I explained to them email them back with a recent bounceback showing that is indeed blocked. Some database somewhere in our systems aren't matching up somewhere - showing nothing when something is indeed there.... |
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angry_at_att
@atlanticbb.net
| reply to oblivio
I am feeling the pain as well, and i do believe if enough people complain they will change their policy. AOL use to have a stupid policy like this where they would just block your ip if you send a certain volume of messages to their server no matter if the messages are ligidiment or spam and they seem to have corrected this policy.
small ISPs and individuals needs to get together and challenge att/bellsouth on this issue. This is ridiculous! |
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joako
Premium
join:2000-09-07
/dev/null | reply to oblivio
I think everyone needs to figure out... 8 years later.. AT&T/Bellsouth email servers are crap. Don't use them.
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09:F9:11:02:9D:74:E3:5B:D8:41:56:C5:63:56:88:C0 |
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mikes60
My Paradise
Premium
join:2001-07-31
Boynton Beach, FL
 ·AT&T Southeast
 ·Vonage
| said by joako  :I think everyone needs to figure out... 8 years later.. AT&T/Bellsouth email servers are crap. Don't use them. Well said.
If you depend on email, and can't afford tthe constant problems with AT&T/BellSouth email...move on.
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No good deed goes unpunished. |
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