Checking out their plans, looks interesting, just wondering about some customer issues regarding blacklisted servers and possible impact on a reseller account on one or more of those servers, also what would be possible workarounds, thanks in advance,

If you find their IP is blacklisted, you can email their support and they should be able to assist you with that. They are known for their great support, you should not have any troubles.

Simple as that :)

Yes, one would think so, what caught my attention was that impacted customers had been waiting for quite some time...you can checkout their support community,
are you affiliated?

Yes, one would think so, what caught my attention was that impacted customers had been waiting for quite some time...you can checkout their support community,
are you affiliated?Bit confused, can you post what you are reffering too or where you see the prob? Getting an ip delisted is easy and i'm sure there support knows what to do. Please go into detail if you are posting a problem you see and not just vaugue remarks to help keep the forum useful.

Bit confused, can you post what you are reffering too or where you see the prob? Getting an ip delisted is easy
Actually, it is really not that easy in many cases. Organisations such as Spews have been known to list indefinitely or at least for a while. They will also, if the spam was bad enough, put the IP on permanent notice through their system. It can be hell to get it delisted and they are known for pushing the boundaries of acceptability on their newsgroup (where most people go to get delisted). This is the case with many of the anti-spam organisations. Some even charge a per-IP fee for removal, without ever showing you the spam in question.


Simon

The problem with Spews/Sorbs (or any organization that charges for removal or is otherwise uncooperative) isn't with their methods of dealing with spam, it's with the businesses that use their RBLs.

Actually, it is really not that easy in many cases. Organisations such as Spews have been known to list indefinitely or at least for a while. They will also, if the spam was bad enough, put the IP on permanent notice through their system. It can be hell to get it delisted and they are known for pushing the boundaries of acceptability on their newsgroup (where most people go to get delisted). This is the case with many of the anti-spam organisations. Some even charge a per-IP fee for removal, without ever showing you the spam in question.Ya those are not groups you can deal with, they are just blackmail, I'm talking about the real ones like spamcop and so on. Hostgator has said in their forums they won't deal with SORBS and others that charge and not even ev1 or the big names will either.

Ya those are not groups you can deal with, they are just blackmail, I'm talking about the real ones like spamcop and so on. Hostgator has said in their forums they won't deal with SORBS and others that charge and not even ev1 or the big names will either.
As far as I am aware, SPEWS is the biggest, as far as number of subscribers goes (it was the case in 2004, anyway).

I agree with companies that don't like working with them for the reasons previously posted. It can be hell. Unfortunately though, because of the size of these organisations, dealing with them is a necessary evil.

Spamcop isn't much better. Their whole mailer-daemon block in early 2005 was the biggest spam related joke in the past five years.

oliveranch: You could contact the listing party yourself, should you find yourself on a blacklisted server. Check www.dnsstuff.com for listings. CC or BCC the provider on any communication with the listing party and you might be pleasantly surprised.

There are no workarounds, though. If the server is listed, it will remain so until someone takes action. Some providers change their outbound IP but that is nothing more than a bandaid fix.


Simon

I agree with companies that don't like working with them for the reasons previously posted. It can be hell. Unfortunately though, because of the size of these organisations, dealing with them is a necessary evil.
Some you just can't, if a company says you have to pay them to take your site off your list when it was someone who just signed up for 1 day, sent spam, and you removed them that is not right and should be illegal. What you can instead do is explain to your customers and urge them to call their internet provider to complain about sorbs or so on. If enough people complain corrupt companies like sorbs will go out of business.


There are no workarounds, though. If the server is listed, it will remain so until someone takes action. Some providers change their outbound IP but that is nothing more than a bandaid fix.
Spamcop will remove you after 24 hours in most cases as long as no more reports come in. Some of the others have similar setups esp for larger ISPs.

Thanks, Ben

Many thanks for a better understanding. Appears that if a reseller vendor refuses to deal, you just present the IP's to these organizations
and may release. Otherwise one has either deal with the customer complaints / move as it appears to be a showstopper if you have a business on one of these servers, is this an accurate deduction?

bwb:

I was unable to post a detailed link because of insufficient post rule on the forum, here's an attempt, detailing customer requests for help on blacklisted servers :

go to hostgator (dot) com
select support
select online hosting community
select network status

Many thanks for a better understanding. Appears that if a reseller vendor refuses to deal, you just present the IP's to these organizations
and may release. Otherwise one has either deal with the customer complaints / move as it appears to be a showstopper if you have a business on one of these servers, is this an accurate deduction?

bwb:

I was unable to post a detailed link because of insufficient post rule on the forum, here's an attempt, detailing customer requests for help on blacklisted servers :

go to hostgator (dot) com
select support
select online hosting community
select network status
Here you go: http://forums.hostgator.com/showthread.php?t=10746

Looks like it will be back in 7 hours and off that list, or you can submit a ticket to hostgator's support to remove it now.

Does hostgator use boxtrapper? I'm 95% sure there is spammer right now hitting servers with one of spamcops "secret" addresses forged as the return address. I just spent 4 days last week eliminating every other possible reason on one of my servers that was listed repeatedly. The whole week except for maybe a few hours in between re-listings. Turned off boxtrapper, haven't been relisted. If it isn't listed again after tommorrow I'd say that was it.

There are no workarounds, though. If the server is listed, it will remain so until someone takes action. Some providers change their outbound IP but that is nothing more than a bandaid fix.

Funny enough, this is actually spamcops recommendation as far as some of the more recent attacks. First they tell you to remove autoresponders completely - and they are indicating that autoresponders are a way of the past (I wish they could explain that to our clients :) ) - then they say if you are unwilling to remove autoresponders, simply change IP's - which really doesnt solve anything and will keep getting you listed.

Problem: The traditional auto-responder
Description: A message is sent in response to inbound email informing the purported sender that you are on vacation, listing FAQs or otherwise sending a standard message - all too often, to the wrong person.

Solution: Do not use these systems. Inform your normal corespondents of your absence before you depart. Or let a co-worker answer your email in your absence. Publish FAQ information on a web-site. If you wish to dispense information via email, it's easy to reject a message while referring the sender to a FAQ web-page. Using sendmail, this is done in the access.db table like so:

I think customers are inadvertantly being used to cause alot of the problems, and us as providers are not doing a good enough job at educating them - probably because if we take a stand, they will just goto someone else willing to offer them what they want.

The reality is - features like autoresponders, catch all's, mail forwards, etc - especially when used in combination are lethal to a mail server and with the intelligence of attacks now, it will get mail server IP's blacklisted - heck, I see customers reporting mail forwards from THEMSELVES as spam more often then I see malicious users spamming from our servers.

they even suggest a possible spf solution for autoresponders, but, I can tell you - even if you try it, you will get blacklisted by them - and their response - well, we said right on our site:

Using this method, the auto-responder may not always respond to every legitimate email. It will respond to the vast majority, and it will send much less (although not zero) misdirected mail.

Apparently that "although not zero" is not close to enough to zero :)

I really cannot complain, as we only got blacklisted a couple of times and the listing period was brief - less then a couple of hours each time - contrary to what others have posted in this thread - I am a fan of spamcop - I think they do their jobs well and they are quite reasonable to work with - remember the old saying - "dont shoot the messenger" - and frankly - spamcop is just a messenger of the big corporate bodies which sponsor them and are setting the new standards -

Spamcop is good at identifying sources of Spam, and automatic delisting after 24 hours is good. My only complaint is that if it is to fight spam, show a peice of the spam. Or better yet the whole spam without the secret mailbox it landed into divulged. A diligent spammer might figure out the spamtrap mailbox but how hard is it to create more? There's no shortage of email addresses that recieve only spam. I'll even donate one.

We're currently battling with Comcast. They were good about removing a couple of our servers initially, but have yet to identify the cause of their blacklisting. Upon much research, phone calls, etc. - we found out that customers forwarding their domain email address to their Comcast email addresses were causing the problem. Apparently, Comcast can't differentiate between spam that's being forwarded and spam that actually originates from any given server. :rolleyes:

The awful part is that even though we've explained this to them repeatedly, they still say its our job to make sure no spam gets forwarded. Other than make a policy that spam is no longer allowed to be forwarded to Comcast, I'm at my wits end. At this point, they won't even remove a couple of our servers because, in their eyes, they've already removed them once before.

--Tina

As far as I am aware, SPEWS is the biggest, as far as number of subscribers goes (it was the case in 2004, anyway).

I agree with companies that don't like working with them for the reasons previously posted. It can be hell. Unfortunately though, because of the size of these organisations, dealing with them is a necessary evil.

Spamcop isn't much better. Their whole mailer-daemon block in early 2005 was the biggest spam related joke in the past five years.

oliveranch: You could contact the listing party yourself, should you find yourself on a blacklisted server. Check sssss for listings. CC or BCC the provider on any communication with the listing party and you might be pleasantly surprised.

There are no workarounds, though. If the server is listed, it will remain so until someone takes action. Some providers change their outbound IP but that is nothing more than a bandaid fix.


Simon


Bottom line then, if you are a reseller with customers on an impacted server,
if a co. like hostgator doesn't want to deal with blacklister and cc's to the provider don't work -- move the accounts?

Bottom line then, if you are a reseller with customers on an impacted server,
if a co. like hostgator doesn't want to deal with blacklister and cc's to the provider don't work -- move the accounts?

Its attitudes like yours, which I understand, that make me hate a lot of the blacklists that are out there. Its nothing short of blackmail/extortion/denial of service.

--Tina

Its attitudes like yours, which I understand, that make me hate a lot of the blacklists that are out there. Its nothing short of blackmail/extortion/denial of service.
It's the combination of spammers and blacklists, that will make outgoing email from host's servers untenable. Let's just stop all outgoing email from our servers and let Google handle it. :D

It's the combination of spammers and blacklists, that will make outgoing email from host's servers untenable. Let's just stop all outgoing email from our servers and let Google handle it. :D

I really wish Google would create a backend email system to let hosting companies integrate GMail into their services. That way, we can get rid of the neomail, horde etc. and let customers login via gmail through cpanel or whichever control panel you use, or POP3. Not only would we have a great email system, increase Google's users but also stop worrying about spam...

Maybe one day....:pray:

I really wish Google would create a backend email system to let hosting companies integrate GMail into their services. That way, we can get rid of the neomail, horde etc. and let customers login via gmail through cpanel or whichever control panel you use, or POP3. Not only would we have a great email system, increase Google's users but also stop worrying about spam...

Maybe one day....:pray:
Hah are you being ironic as they already have this in beta? I'm using it on my domain.

Hah are you being ironic as they already have this in beta? I'm using it on my domain.

That requires each user to go and sign up for it individually. They way I like it, would be the host has the power to create and authorise those accounts, rather than asking each customer to go sign up for a GMail account...

That requires each user to go and sign up for it individually. They way I like it, would be the host has the power to create and authorise those accounts, rather than asking each customer to go sign up for a GMail account...No no, i believe you can even import a big list of users as well as reset passwords, create accounts, etc. Its really nice to use and includes google talk support off that domain.

https://www.google.com/a/

btw, ive been using it for about 2 weeks

Its attitudes like yours, which I understand, that make me hate a lot of the blacklists that are out there. Its nothing short of blackmail/extortion/denial of service.

--Tina
Ok lets talk about attitude. What would you prefer? Basically trying to learn, research the best way to serve protect customers, rather than slave proxy answering for a wholesaler, with a swarm of accts on impacted servers, who doesn't know how to get out of a difficult situation. Got to have a contingency plan, transparent.

I'm trying to understand the problems, how they are handled. When I see frustration from users who basically have no control over the situation, want to do my best to understand and mitigate it.

Been hosted as end user for years by a company whose customer response is mediocre, pricing is average, features limited, but they've got an ethic about performance...they never go down on whatever server the account's been on and I've never heard about this problem from them. Not having to call in, is itself great service.

You all have years of experience ahead of me, but let's state the obvious: if an intermediary reseller can design a service and find a reliable partner, you know they can spend more time growing the business than taking care of the server providers systems issues --- and pay for the privilege. would not expect a customer to understand this issue, let alone wait for hours for resolution or platitudes. Look at this board, its chock with folks trying to see truth thru the clutter of self promotion, to make a buck on basically the same gig of hard drive and bw, that they can resell ,without being shafted.

Some of you have been hosting for over 10 years and the best prevention is Gmail? ".....but we got firewalls and 99.99 uptime..

yes, I guess you should be upset about attitude, but with people trying understand and avoid the problem?

Ok, now I'll turn on the fan, you all stand in front, and make sure you aim straight for it..

Peace

As far as I am aware, SPEWS is the biggest, as far as number of subscribers goes (it was the case in 2004, anyway).

I agree with companies that don't like working with them for the reasons previously posted. It can be hell. Unfortunately though, because of the size of these organisations, dealing with them is a necessary evil.

Spamcop isn't much better. Their whole mailer-daemon block in early 2005 was the biggest spam related joke in the past five years.

oliveranch: You could contact the listing party yourself, should you find yourself on a blacklisted server. Check www.dnsstuff.com (http://www.dnsstuff.com) for listings. CC or BCC the provider on any communication with the listing party and you might be pleasantly surprised.

There are no workarounds, though. If the server is listed, it will remain so until someone takes action. Some providers change their outbound IP but that is nothing more than a bandaid fix.


Simon

appreciated, thank you!

. . . Some of you have been hosting for over 10 years and the best prevention is Gmail?
lol, the Gmail reference was a joke. I wasn't being serious. Maybe I should type slower for some folks? :)

Ok, now I'll turn on the fan, you all stand in front, and make sure you aim straight for it..



I have no idea what that means at all. What I gather is that you took my comments personally. What I said was "Its attitudes like yours, which I understand, that make me hate a lot of the blacklists that are out there. "

The blacklists have hosts by the short ones. Why? Because they know that when they provide their lists to ISPs, many of these lists which are baseless/incorrect/undisputable, they are crippling the hosts business until he/she complies with whatever unfair hoops they make the host jump through.

Its obvious, as a reseller, that you'd want to jump ship and find a host that has yet to be blacklisted. The problem with that, and I don't see any way around it, is that you're punishing the host for something they might not have any control over.

As I said earlier (this thread?), at least one ISP has blacklisted a couple of our servers INCORRECTLY and there's not a damn thing we can do to get off the list. We can't stop something, to comply with their rules, that we're not even doing in the first place.

We even have 1 server that is listed with SORBS. Guess what? The IP in question was blacklisted 6 months before we even took control of the server. Yes, we can get a clean IP - and that's what we're in the process of doing. But the interruption its going to cause is probably going to lose us a couple of customers along the way. Contacting SORBS and explaining the situation is futile. They want their extortion money to release the IP from the list...and they appear not to care who pays it.

So, again, its attitudes like yours (which I understand) that makes me hate the blacklists that much more.

--Tina

lol, the Gmail reference was a joke. I wasn't being serious. Maybe I should type slower for some folks? :)



Not at all, obviously makes perfect sense for your customers and preserves your cache ;)....

I have no idea what that means at all. What I gather is that you took my comments personally. What I said was "Its attitudes like yours, which I understand, that make me hate a lot of the blacklists that are out there. "

The blacklists have hosts by the short ones. Why? Because they know that when they provide their lists to ISPs, many of these lists which are baseless/incorrect/undisputable, they are crippling the hosts business until he/she complies with whatever unfair hoops they make the host jump through.

Its obvious, as a reseller, that you'd want to jump ship and find a host that has yet to be blacklisted. The problem with that, and I don't see any way around it, is that you're punishing the host for something they might not have any control over.

As I said earlier (this thread?), at least one ISP has blacklisted a couple of our servers INCORRECTLY and there's not a damn thing we can do to get off the list. We can't stop something, to comply with their rules, that we're not even doing in the first place.

We even have 1 server that is listed with SORBS. Guess what? The IP in question was blacklisted 6 months before we even took control of the server. Yes, we can get a clean IP - and that's what we're in the process of doing. But the interruption its going to cause is probably going to lose us a couple of customers along the way. Contacting SORBS and explaining the situation is futile. They want their extortion money to release the IP from the list...and they appear not to care who pays it.

So, again, its attitudes like yours (which I understand) that makes me hate the blacklists that much more.

--Tina



I'm an aspiring olive farmer. Forget the fan thing :dgrin:. Not taken personally.
Your reseller has a duty to protect customers and survive, rather than punishing you.

Interested in this :

"Yes, we can get a clean IP - and that's what we're in the process of doing. But the interruption its going to cause is probably going to lose us a couple of customers along the way."

What is the cost and timing implication of this as part of a routine blacklisting solution. Is there an email / spam triggering alarm to delay transmission of
mass spam broadcasts?

thanks again

We're currently battling with Comcast. They were good about removing a couple of our servers initially, but have yet to identify the cause of their blacklisting. Upon much research, phone calls, etc. - we found out that customers forwarding their domain email address to their Comcast email addresses were causing the problem. Apparently, Comcast can't differentiate between spam that's being forwarded and spam that actually originates from any given server. :rolleyes:

The awful part is that even though we've explained this to them repeatedly, they still say its our job to make sure no spam gets forwarded. Other than make a policy that spam is no longer allowed to be forwarded to Comcast, I'm at my wits end. At this point, they won't even remove a couple of our servers because, in their eyes, they've already removed them once before.

--Tina

Comcast, AOL and the other big ISP's are going to force web hosts to provide adequate Spam protection for their users, whether those users want it or not. We are currently using Reflexion to block Spam and Viruses for hundreds of users. It's better than anything else we've tried, but it's not free. Our hosting customers have to be willing to pay extra for it and that's the problem. In some cases where there are a lot of users, the cost of Spam protection for a domain, more than doubles the cost of the hosting package.

But Comcast and AOL don't seem to consider that. They would rather that everyone was provided this level of protection, regardless of the cost to the hosts. Eventually, it's either going to be raise prices or deny customers from using mail forwarding and auto-responders entirely, just to keep the servers off the blacklists.

But Comcast and AOL don't seem to consider that. They would rather that everyone was provided this level of protection, regardless of the cost to the hosts. Eventually, it's either going to be raise prices or deny customers from using mail forwarding and auto-responders entirely, just to keep the servers off the blacklists.

Todd, completely agree and very well said. However, AOL, GMail, Comcast, etc will all need to face this issue eventually. I dont think there is any option but to delete items like autoresponders, forwarders, etc - and it wont just be hosting providers that are affected - every ISP and every corporation will eventually take on these new standards - Unless there is a DRAMATIC improvement in spf records and technology, I just cannot see how there would be any other option available.

Comcast, AOL and the other big ISP's are going to force web hosts to provide adequate Spam protection for their users, whether those users want it or not.

That's the part that I vehemently protest. I don't think consumers should be forced to have their email censored. As good as some spam filters are, there's always a chance that a legitimate email is going to get junked. Personally, I don't take that chance with my own email. I'd rather delete 100 spam mails to ensure that I get 5 valid ones. I think that should be my choice and not AOL's...an ISP that I don't even use.

--Tina

Going back to your first post here.
Checking out their plans, looks interesting, just wondering about some customer issues regarding blacklisted servers and possible impact on a reseller account on one or more of those servers . . .
If they have a server that's main IP (this is the IP mail would be sent from) is listed on various blacklists, then they need to work to remove that IP from those blacklists. Some lists are harder to get IPs removed from than others.
. . . also what would be possible workarounds . . .
(1). You can request your host work to have that IP removed.

(2). You can route your outgoing mail through your ISP.

That's pretty much it.

We're currently battling with Comcast. They were good about removing a couple of our servers initially, but have yet to identify the cause of their blacklisting. Upon much research, phone calls, etc. - we found out that customers forwarding their domain email address to their Comcast email addresses were causing the problem. Apparently, Comcast can't differentiate between spam that's being forwarded and spam that actually originates from any given server. :rolleyes:

The awful part is that even though we've explained this to them repeatedly, they still say its our job to make sure no spam gets forwarded. Other than make a policy that spam is no longer allowed to be forwarded to Comcast, I'm at my wits end. At this point, they won't even remove a couple of our servers because, in their eyes, they've already removed them once before.

--Tina

This is the most serious problem. Funny thing is, right now BlackBerry is listed on Spamcop. How does THAT happen?

Drew

I dont think there is any option but to delete items like autoresponders, forwarders, etc - and it wont just be hosting providers that are affected - every ISP and every corporation will eventually take on these new standards

This is a solution? Are you serious? We go back in time and eliminate features that were created for a good reason because they are being abused and misused (not by the users mind you)?

Funny enough, this is actually spamcops recommendation as far as some of the more recent attacks. First they tell you to remove autoresponders completely - and they are indicating that autoresponders are a way of the past (I wish they could explain that to our clients :) )

What do we try to explain to clients? That autoresponders are a way of the past? You using an autoresponder as a courtesy of informing customers that you'll be away for awhile is a thing of the past?

And we explain it like SpamCop does and offer their alternatives?

Problem: The traditional auto-responder
Description: A message is sent in response to inbound email informing the purported sender that you are on vacation, listing FAQs or otherwise sending a standard message - all too often, to the wrong person.

Solution: Do not use these systems. Inform your normal corespondents of your absence before you depart. Or let a co-worker answer your email in your absence. Publish FAQ information on a web-site. If you wish to dispense information via email, it's easy to reject a message while referring the sender to a FAQ web-page. Using sendmail, this is done in the access.db table like so:

SpamCop does have a very valid point and they explain it so clearly. But the solution is not to tell customers to change the way they already know how to do things, specially if they're using it for the right reasons and these tools are immensely useful.

The solution is for tech people to wrack their brains out and find a way to fight the spammers and misuse of valid tools by implementing some kind of solutions (firewall, spam protection, etc). Yes, someone did mention that if you paid for commercial anti-spam software, then hosting costs would be too high. I don't have any technical skills to try and brainstorm for a way around it but I definitely won't stop and say "Let's just get rid of autoresponders, forwarders, etc., because they do more harm than good".

I think customers are inadvertantly being used to cause a lot of the problems, and us as providers are not doing a good enough job at educating them - probably because if we take a stand, they will just goto someone else willing to offer them what they want.

That's precisely the point. Educating them by telling them not to use features they already know exist and find useful will definitely make them go and try it out elsewhere. I've had that very experience with BliksemHosting. They have fantastic measures to keep their servers and email services stable and reliable. But for me (not for others though), it came to a point when I said "What's the sense of having rock solid servers and reliable emails when you can't use them the way you want to?" And it's not like I send thousands of emails a day nor do my sites generate any traffic at all (almost all are < 1GB a month). But like what you're saying, if you think the solution is to remove such features, then my solution in turn would be to get out of this reseller hosting business and find something else to do.

The reality is - features like autoresponders, catch all's, mail forwards, etc - especially when used in combination are lethal to a mail server and with the intelligence of attacks now, it will get mail server IP's blacklisted - heck, I see customers reporting mail forwards from THEMSELVES as spam more often then I see malicious users spamming from our servers.

If the "intelligence of protection" exceeds "the intellegince of attacks," then there's always a way to fight it rather than eliminating useful features (autoresponders, mail forwarders). Again the solution is outsmarting the spammer, not removing every useful feature to stop them. Doing that is simply admitting they've won.

I am a fan of spamcop - I think they do their jobs well and they are quite reasonable to work with - remember the old saying - "dont shoot the messenger" - and frankly - spamcop is just a messenger of the big corporate bodies which sponsor them and are setting the new standards -

I am a fan of SpamCop, too. And a lot of the issues about SBL delisting is over exaggerated. I've used several hosting companies and have at one point or the other had servers I'm on listed on SBL's. It's something I've come to accept. Like someone said on another post, if the customer thinks it's a big, big hassle for them to be on SpamCop for 24-48 hours, then there are many available solutions. So long as they are willing to pay the price. But if a customer who pays you $5 or $10 will complain like it's the end of the world and can't wait a couple of days to be delisted, then they really ought to look elsewhere. Remember, being on SpamCop doesn't mean you can't send email to everyone. I pay HostGator $24.95 a month for a reseller hosting plan and have over 30 accounts there. That gives me a cost of < $1 per account. So if the server gets listed, I accept it. But if it takes HG a week to get delisted or have issues of indefinite / permanent delisting with AOL and Comcast (they are truly a big pain in the behind!), then yes, I'll have to look for another hosting provider.

Again, there are better solutions than removing useful features. It does all involve more money -- dedicated servers, commercial anti-spam software, etc -- but that's the more prudent approach.

My conclusion is that if you're truly serious about hosting and so are your customers, you'll spend more and charge your customers accordingly.

I know how hard it is for you guys to try and educate the customers. But that's the case for most everyone else. Customers are like that so we try to find solutions that work for them not conveniences that work for us.

This is a solution? Are you serious? We go back in time and eliminate features that were created for a good reason because they are being abused and misused (not by the users mind you)?



What do we try to explain to clients? That autoresponders are a way of the past? You using an autoresponder as a courtesy of informing customers that you'll be away for awhile is a thing of the past?

And we explain it like SpamCop does and offer their alternatives?



SpamCop does have a very valid point and they explain it so clearly. But the solution is not to tell customers to change the way they already know how to do things, specially if they're using it for the right reasons and these tools are immensely useful.

The solution is for tech people to wrack their brains out and find a way to fight the spammers and misuse of valid tools by implementing some kind of solutions (firewall, spam protection, etc). Yes, someone did mention that if you paid for commercial anti-spam software, then hosting costs would be too high. I don't have any technical skills to try and brainstorm for a way around it but I definitely won't stop and say "Let's just get rid of autoresponders, forwarders, etc., because they do more harm than good".



That's precisely the point. Educating them by telling them not to use features they already know exist and find useful will definitely make them go and try it out elsewhere. I've had that very experience with BliksemHosting. They have fantastic measures to keep their servers and email services stable and reliable. But for me (not for others though), it came to a point when I said "What's the sense of having rock solid servers and reliable emails when you can't use them the way you want to?" And it's not like I send thousands of emails a day nor do my sites generate any traffic at all (almost all are < 1GB a month). But like what you're saying, if you think the solution is to remove such features, then my solution in turn would be to get out of this reseller hosting business and find something else to do.



If the "intelligence of protection" exceeds "the intellegince of attacks," then there's always a way to fight it rather than eliminating useful features (autoresponders, mail forwarders). Again the solution is outsmarting the spammer, not removing every useful feature to stop them. Doing that is simply admitting they've won.



I am a fan of SpamCop, too. And a lot of the issues about SBL delisting is over exaggerated. I've used several hosting companies and have at one point or the other had servers I'm on listed on SBL's. It's something I've come to accept. Like someone said on another post, if the customer thinks it's a big, big hassle for them to be on SpamCop for 24-48 hours, then there are many available solutions. So long as they are willing to pay the price. But if a customer who pays you $5 or $10 will complain like it's the end of the world and can't wait a couple of days to be delisted, then they really ought to look elsewhere. Remember, being on SpamCop doesn't mean you can't send email to everyone. I pay HostGator $24.95 a month for a reseller hosting plan and have over 30 accounts there. That gives me a cost of < $1 per account. So if the server gets listed, I accept it. But if it takes HG a week to get delisted or have issues of indefinite / permanent delisting with AOL and Comcast (they are truly a big pain in the behind!), then yes, I'll have to look for another hosting provider.

Again, there are better solutions than removing useful features. It does all involve more money -- dedicated servers, commercial anti-spam software, etc -- but that's the more prudent approach.

My conclusion is that if you're truly serious about hosting and so are your customers, you'll spend more and charge your customers accordingly.

I know how hard it is for you guys to try and educate the customers. But that's the case for most everyone else. Customers are like that so we try to find solutions that work for them not conveniences that work for us.


I was going to respond to this point by point - but, really, there is no reason to do so.

This attitude you are portraying is exactly why such features still exist. Whether or not you find them useful is really irrelavent.

These features were in existance long before spamming became the problem it now is. The people running the show are starting to set these standards. You want to goto a host that countinues to offer them when no one else does - no one will get your email because your mail server will be blacklisted everywhere...

You can get angry with me if you like - but, agencies like spamcop have already started down the path of weeding out these features and strong arming providers to follow their standards -

I will address one comment specifically:

Again the solution is outsmarting the spammer, not removing every useful feature to stop them. Doing that is simply admitting they've won.

They have won - and everyone knows it - if you choose not to accept that, that is your problem - however, spammers have effectively rendered many corporate mailing systems ineffective. The reality is, email needs to be locked down tightly before it is re-opened with controls. Again, if you dont want to accept this - I understand that - As a provider, we will offer as many features for as long as possible - but, if we want to stay in business, we will need to adapt to the standards the various agencies are laying out for us - and by the looks of it - autoresponders, mail forwards and catch alls will eventually be a thing of the past....

Don't blame me man - I'm just repeating what I have been told by spamcop - and - what they have published on their site no less -

I know how hard it is for you guys to try and educate the customers. But that's the case for most everyone else. Customers are like that so we try to find solutions that work for them not conveniences that work for us.

Didnt you already say you left your provider because they provided rock solid service and tried to take the time to educate you on why certain features were removed?

Imagine how you would feel and how quickly you would run if your emails werent getting to anyone?

Don't blame me man
I'm not blaming you. You do have very valid points. I'm just looking at it from the other side. Doesn't mean I don't agree with you.

Didnt you already say you left your provider because they provided rock solid service and tried to take the time to educate you on why certain features were removed?
Yes, I left BliksemHosting because their idea of educating me was telling me that there are some emails I won't receive because of their strong anti-spam features

Imagine how you would feel and how quickly you would run if your emails werent getting to anyone?
And that's the point. I do hate it when the server I'm on gets listed (SBL). But what's worse is emails not coming in. With Bliksem, that was what happening with me. My own customers and potential clients couldn't reach me because they were being blocked by Bliksem (they weren't being block by anyone else - HostGator, ResellerZoom, JaguarPC, to name a few). You could say that maybe my clients were spammers or they were on very bad IP's or ISP's.

They have won - and everyone knows it - if you choose not to accept that, that is your problem - however, spammers have effectively rendered many corporate mailing systems ineffective.
Ah, there. If you say that they have won already then essentially, after removing all those features, what's left of email may be useless (my point of view only). And if that's the case, I already said:
But like what you're saying, if you think the solution is to remove such features, then my solution in turn would be to get out of this reseller hosting business and find something else to do.

You have years and years more experience than me with regards to web hosting and email servers. So if what you say is a fact and has to be accepted, then I did say I'm getting out of all this.

Most of my clients would rather have some spam trickle through than miss out on emails from customers and potential clients. (Again, that's why I left Bliksem. My clients were complaining that they were not getting emails).

You see, I did try to educate my clients as well. But I didn't succeed. And as much as I do agree with your point, I also agree with the users need for such tools.

Agree with this -- I see Cartika point, but some features like autoresponders are very useful. Would be good to see sort of best practices like securing neomail/ horde whatever -- is that not doable until a better systems refined?

Thanks




Ah, there. If you say that they have won already then essentially, after removing all those features, what's left of email may be useless (my point of view only). And if that's the case, I already said:




Most of my clients would rather have some spam trickle through than miss out on emails from customers and potential clients. (Again, that's why I left Bliksem. My clients were complaining that they were not getting emails).

We're currently battling with Comcast. They were good about removing a couple of our servers initially, but have yet to identify the cause of their blacklisting. Upon much research, phone calls, etc. - we found out that customers forwarding their domain email address to their Comcast email addresses were causing the problem. Apparently, Comcast can't differentiate between spam that's being forwarded and spam that actually originates from any given server. :rolleyes:

The awful part is that even though we've explained this to them repeatedly, they still say its our job to make sure no spam gets forwarded. Other than make a policy that spam is no longer allowed to be forwarded to Comcast, I'm at my wits end. At this point, they won't even remove a couple of our servers because, in their eyes, they've already removed them once before.

--Tina


You might want to check the logs closer. Here's what I found out today with a server that is continually getting blacklisted at comcast. At first I assumed it was users forwading mail to comcast including spam. But the volume of mail sent to comcast's servers was really low. Around 200 in 14 hours, with over 1000 email accounts on the server. I consider that pretty low for the market share comcast has. So I though, it can't be that unless their mail servers have a hair trigger, 200 emails total in 14 hours shouldn't set off any alarms especially since a lot of it wasn't even forwarded spam.

I then checked the error log, and there were literally thousands of spams FROM comcast. And when I say from comcast, I don't mean forged headers, the spam originated from comcast IP's, probably from infected windows machines that they do nothing about. It was hitting mailboxes on our servers and that server happens to have a lot of full mailboxes. Those mailboxes were bouncing the spam back to comcast, and comcast is blocking our IP because of:

mail policy 18628 -> "Our filters have determined that email from your mail server has been sent in patterns which are characteristic of spam"

It all started when I received complaints from customers about my sender verify policy. It was causing problems with proprietary devices they had written that sent them support requests from customers computers. Those programs did not respond to the verification correctly. So I turned it off, and also stopped checking incoming against rbl's.

Long story short - anyone with comcast blacklist problems should check and see if it isn't really because you are bouncing their own spam back to them. And I'm not talking forged headers.