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  1. #1

    Unhappy Senior needs help - My host is being blocked by AT&T

    First I would like to apologize if posting in the wrong place or using wrong terms........I am 67 and handling a problem such as this, is way over my head.

    Situation: I use a web host that is based in Canada. I live in Canada for 6 months and Florida for 6 months. ATT has blocked my
    host and my host won't do anything about it. The President says AT&T has no number to call and that AT&T ignores all his emails, therefore his hands are tied.

    He ignores my emails, and I always have to phone - have spoken to him several times, and he doesn't seem to care, he always says to give him a few days, but I never hear back and I am tired of calling him. I believe he is not bothered, because my server is shared by Canadians who don't need to access AT&T as I know if there were complaints from others he would act. When it happened with Yahoo and Rogers (big in Toronto) he got numerous complaints and acted quickly. When I first arrived in Florida the same problem existed with Comcast, but he did straighten it out with them, (he stated Comcast made it easy to do.)

    I do not feel that just because AT&T has no phone number and chooses to ignore his emails that he should just ignore my problem. I have spent hours and hours trying to come up with a phone number or email address for the right dept. at AT&T to try to work with them directly, but have had no luck.

    So I am turning to the younger generation on this forum to please give me some assistance. thanks in advance.

  2. #2
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    Quote Originally Posted by RozF View Post
    and my host won't do anything about it..
    Sounds like you need a new host. Who is the current one?
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  3. #3
    Quote Originally Posted by kpmedia View Post
    Sounds like you need a new host. Who is the current one?
    I do not mind sending you the host privately but I am scared if I post it on the site, they will drop me as a customer. They already don't seem concerned whether I stay with them or not.

    I don't want to switch hosts as they are tied to my email address which I just changed recently and don't want to change again. My old ISP had no forwarding service and it was a pain. I do not use Yahoo or gmail etc., because I have a small business and need to send out a lot of emails at a time (not spam) and that is why I use a Web Host. Sorry I should have mentioned that in my post.

  4. #4
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    Quote Originally Posted by RozF View Post
    I don't want to switch hosts as they are tied to my email address which I just changed recently and don't want to change again. My old ISP had no forwarding service and it was a pain. I do not use Yahoo or gmail etc., because I have a small business and need to send out a lot of emails at a time (not spam) and that is why I use a Web Host. Sorry I should have mentioned that in my post.
    If you switch your web host, you'll be able to keep your email address as long as it is an email at your domain. You also won't lose any of the emails that you already had.

    Unfortunately, if your web host is not compromising when it comes to the AT&T issue, you'll need to either see if you can solve it yourself or try a new web host. There are a lot of great providers here who would be able to help you.

  5. #5
    Unfortunately, if your web host is not compromising when it comes to the AT&T issue, you'll need to either see if you can solve it yourself [/QUOTE]

    Hi thanks for replying, that's why I wrote to this forum. I want to try to solve it myself, but cannot find (after trying and trying ) a phone number or email addy for the correct dept.

  6. #6
    Join Date
    Oct 2013
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    Are emails not delivering to AT&T email addresses? Are you getting bounced? What exactly is the issue? I'm not sure if I understood it completely from your first post.

  7. #7
    Quote Originally Posted by AcclaimedHost Alan View Post
    Are emails not delivering to AT&T email addresses? Are you getting bounced? What exactly is the issue? I'm not sure if I understood it completely from your first post.
    Here is the bounce message I get:
    host aln-mailrelay.att.net [12.102.252.75]: 521-67.223.100.194 blocked by sbc:blacklist.mailrelay.att.net.
    521 DNSRBL: Blocked for abuse.
    See
    http:
    //att.net
    /blocks
    Sorry had to do it that way or couldn't post

  8. #8
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    Arrow

    Quote Originally Posted by RozF View Post
    Hi thanks for replying, that's why I wrote to this forum. I want to try to solve it myself, but cannot find (after trying and trying ) a phone number or email addy for the correct dept.
    Dear Sir,

    With due respect, I feel that YOU MUST change your Old web Host.
    Leaving the Technical aspects aside, If you don't trust them what's point in continuing ?

    And WHT is all about Freedom And the "Right to Speech" , Your Data is Your Right & No one can simply DELETE it for no reason.

    Regarding the Email issue, You Just need to Get a Mail Host ( Zoho.com Offers you@yourdomain.com , 5+15 Ids FREE ) , Change MX Records and Done !

    PS : Weather you change hosts or not, do backup your full data , you may need it.
    Last edited by XiNiX; 02-02-2014 at 12:22 PM.
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  9. #9
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    Quote Originally Posted by RozF View Post
    Here is the bounce message I get:
    host aln-mailrelay.att.net [12.102.252.75]: 521-67.223.100.194 blocked by sbc:blacklist.mailrelay.att.net.
    521 DNSRBL: Blocked for abuse.
    See
    http:
    //att.net
    /blocks
    Sorry had to do it that way or couldn't post
    Ok, I think I know the issue that you're having. Let me try to explain it. When you send out emails on a cPanel server, what happens is that the emails all send from the same IP address. The problem, here, is that the IP address where emails are being sent from is that it has been blocked for abuse. This means that there have been clients (not necessarily you) who have been sending spam.

    To keep the AT&T systems cleaner, what they're doing is blocking all emails from this IP address. My recommended action would be to get a dedicated IP address and to ask your host to set up email to send from this address. I know that you said that switching web hosts isn't something that you'd like to do, so this would be one of the last options that you have.

    Another option would be to try to get the IP reputation cleaned up. You can do this without a ton of technical knowledge or advanced server access. This blog post is pretty useful - http://sebduggan.com/blog/tip-make-s...ips-are-clean/

  10. #10
    Join Date
    Oct 2010
    Posts
    5,079
    It means that the IP address 67.223.100.194 is on ATT's blacklist - in short, that IP has been sending a lot of spam, so they've blocked it for the time being.

    I don't know whether that IP is the IP address of your host or not. If it is, they'll need to find out what the spam is and deal with the source of it, then work with ATT to show them that they've done that and get the blacklisting lifted.

    This can happen to any host - but a good host will deal with spammers on their network fairly quickly and make sure that the volumes of spam are low and blacklisting doesn't happen. But, like I say, we can't be sure that this is your host's IP.
    Not as active on WHT as I used to be, but still drop in and receive email notifications from here.
    My personal blog site: https://www.oakleys.org.uk/blog

  11. #11
    Hi,

    I don't think you'll be able to solve this by yourself. If they mention DNSRBL, most probably att is using an external database to verify blacklisted IP's.
    It has to be the systema administrator to handle this, not the end user (in this case you)

    Assuming you're really not spamming or sending unsolicited email, the best thing you can do is move your service to another provider.
    From your description I can't understand if you have a hosting account, domain or just email. Solutions vary according to your needs.

    cheers,
    Antonio

  12. #12
    Join Date
    May 2007
    Posts
    2,745
    You need to inform your host that they are on the SPAMhaus your host should be able to clear it up unfortunately web hosting providers are not immune to these problems - and they can be removed and/or your IP can be changed into a new block until they clean the current block.

    You just need to inform your provider who will make the necessary steps to fix this problem for you.
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  13. #13
    Join Date
    Mar 2003
    Location
    Canada
    Posts
    9,072
    AT&T are blocking a massive, absolutely massive amount of IP addresses in the 67.222.*.* and 67.223.*.* ranges with most being 100% innocent and no relation to the original spam complaints. I know that for a fact... so it's (probably) not really the providers fault. They are caught in the middle of overzealous AT&T spam filtering.

    It's a blanket ban and it took us a week+ to get them to whitelist our IP addresses. All the OP has to do, is tell her hosting provider to request a whitelisting from AT&T. It's really not that hard, so it sounds more like the OP's provider is just being lazy... not that I can blame them, dealing with spam issues makes me want to put my fist through the monitor.

    http://rbl.att.net/cgi-bin/rbl/block_admin.cgi

    ^- Link to request whitelisting.
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  14. #14
    I've actually checked some of the tools to check blacklisting status (spamhaus included) and that IP doesn't come up in any of them. It seems clean.

    So maybe you're being caught by heuristics and not for the IP itself. Meaning that the content of your emails may "look like" spam.
    You can test this by sending an email from your address to an att address with a very simple text content. Just a few regular text sentences.
    If this one passes it means you just have to work on your emails content (links, attached files, capital letters, supsicious words, stuff like that...)

    hope it helps.

    cheers,
    Antonio

  15. #15
    Join Date
    Nov 2002
    Location
    Portland, Oregon
    Posts
    2,992
    I've got the ATT Realtime Blacklist Removal page bookmarked on ... one of my systems here. I'm looking for it now. I'm sure some of the team here would be more than happy to walk you through completing it, though this is absolutely the responsibility of the hosting provider and I have little respect for providers who neglect a core industry function like this, and from your description and based on some older threads here I already have an idea who it is. My counterpart is checking his bookmarks as well. Get back with you soon!


    EDIT: http://rbl.att.net/cgi-bin/rbl/block_admin.cgi

  16. #16
    well one other option is that mentioned by Patrick.
    It didn't come to mind that an operator could ban such a huge range of addresses....

    cheers,
    Antonio.

  17. #17
    Join Date
    Nov 2002
    Location
    Portland, Oregon
    Posts
    2,992
    I completely missed @Patrick's URL. Leave it to him.
    Suppose I could have Googled. Hah.

    I think I once got a reply back in under a day. That's all it takes.

  18. #18
    Join Date
    May 2007
    Posts
    2,745
    sooo I did some more research and its wierd they have been blacklisted as the IP seems clean...
    Result for 67.223.100.194 in LHSBL Blocklists (Alphabetic order):

    0spam.fusionzero.com OK
    aspews.ext.sorbs.net OK
    b.barracudacentral.org OK
    bl.mailspike.net OK
    bl.spameatingmonkey.net OK
    bl.spamcop.net OK
    bl.spamcannibal.org OK
    bl.tiopan.com No Result (REFUSED)
    blackholes.five-ten-sg.com OK
    blackholes.intersil.net OK
    bogons.cymru.com OK
    cbl.abuseat.org OK
    combined.njabl.org No Result (REFUSED)
    db.wpbl.info OK
    dnsbl.ahbl.org OK
    dnsbl.inps.de OK
    dnsbl.justspam.org OK
    dnsbl.mags.net OK
    dnsbl.sorbs.net OK
    dnsbl.rangers.eu.org OK
    dnsbl-0.uceprotect.net OK
    dnsbl-1.uceprotect.net OK
    dnsbl-2.uceprotect.net OK
    dnsbl-3.uceprotect.net OK
    dyna.spamrats.com OK
    ip.v4bl.org OK
    ips.backscatterer.org OK
    ix.dnsbl.manitu.net OK
    l2.apews.org OK
    no-more-funn.moensted.dk OK
    noptr.spamrats.com OK
    psbl.surriel.com OK
    rbl.efnet.org OK
    spam.abuse.ch OK
    spam.dnsbl.anonmails.de OK
    spam.spamrats.com OK
    spamguard.leadmon.net OK
    t1.dnsbl.net.au OK
    tor.dan.me.uk OK
    tor.dnsbl.sectoor.de OK
    ubl.unsubscore.com OK
    virbl.dnsbl.bit.nl OK
    zen.spamhaus.org OK
    Result for 67.223.100.194 in LHSBL Whitelists (Alphabetic order):

    accredit.habeas.com NOT WHITELISTED
    iadb2.isipp.com NOT WHITELISTED
    ips.whitelisted.org NOT WHITELISTED Read about this way to exclude an IP from UCEPROTECT Level2/3
    list.dnswl.org NOT WHITELISTED
    wl.mailspike.net NOT WHITELISTED
    RHSBL-Test for 67.223.100.194's PTR web194.iteraweb.com (Alphabetic order):

    abuse.rfc-ignorant.org OK
    bogusmx.rfc-ignorant.org OK
    dbl.spamhaus.org OK
    dsn.rfc-ignorant.org OK
    dynamic.rhs.mailpolice.com OK
    l1.apews.org OK
    list.anonwhois.net OK
    multi.surbl.org OK
    multi.uribl.com OK
    postmaster.rfc-ignorant.org OK
    rddn.dnsbl.net.au OK
    rhsbl.ahbl.org OK
    rhsbl.sorbs.net OK
    webmail.rhs.mailpolice.com OK
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  19. #19
    Quote Originally Posted by antonio230 View Post
    I've actually checked some of the tools to check blacklisting status (spamhaus included) and that IP doesn't come up in any of them. It seems clean.

    So maybe you're being caught by heuristics and not for the IP itself. Meaning that the content of your emails may "look like" spam.
    You can test this by sending an email from your address to an att address with a very simple text content. Just a few regular text sentences.
    If this one passes it means you just have to work on your emails content (links, attached files, capital letters, supsicious words, stuff like that...)

    hope it helps.cheers,
    Antonio
    I don't use AT&T for my business, all my business is done with Canadian addresses, AT&T is strictly social while I snowbird in Florida!!

  20. #20
    Ok I am getting a little confused by some of your replies, again being 67 that is not surprising!! I will reread them all to make them sink in, but I want to remind people that, yes, I know my server is shared and I know someone using the server is probably responsible for the IP address being blocked. But does anyone have a phone number for AT&T or an email address for them that would connect me to the dept. that handles this. As mentioned in my first post, the same problem existed with Comcast, but they got that straightened out, so my Host knows exactly what the problem is, but is saying there is no phone number they can call and that AT&T is ignoring their emails so there is nothing they can do. I want to try to handle this myself, and I do not want to change hosts at this time. My current email addy is roz@xxx.webhost.com so if I switch I lose that email addy.
    Last edited by RozF; 02-02-2014 at 12:50 PM.

  21. #21
    Join Date
    Nov 2002
    Location
    Portland, Oregon
    Posts
    2,992
    [COLOR=Gray]Besides the obnoxious phone number in WHOIS, The others are worth a shot.
    It's been ages since I last had to deal with this, but I'm pretty sure I heard back
    within a couple of days.

    The numbers for the Global Network Management Center.
    Maybe you'll have some luck - that's the closest I can find just now.


    Registrant Email: rm-hostmaster@EMS.ATT.COM
    Registry Admin ID:
    Admin Name: GNMC
    Admin Organization: GNMC
    Admin Street: 424 S. Woodsmill Rd
    Admin City: Chesterfield
    Admin State/Province: MO
    Admin Postal Code: 63037
    Admin Country: US
    Admin Phone: 800-325-1898
    Admin Phone Ext:
    Admin Fax: 281-664-9975
    Admin Fax Ext:
    Admin Email: rm-hostmaster@ems.att.com

    Registry Tech ID:
    Tech Name: GNMC
    Tech Organization: GNMC
    Tech Street: 424 S. Woodsmill Rd
    Tech City: Chesterfield
    Tech State/Province: MO
    Tech Postal Code: 63037
    Tech Country: US
    Tech Phone: 800-325-1898
    Tech Phone Ext:
    Tech Fax: 281-664-9975
    Tech Fax Ext:
    Tech Email: rm-hostmaster@ems.att.com
    Last edited by Johnny Cache; 02-02-2014 at 01:15 PM.

  22. #22
    Join Date
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    Quote Originally Posted by RozF View Post
    I do not mind sending you the host privately
    Then do that. I'll look at it, see what I know.
    || Need a good host?
    || See my Suggested Hosts List || Editorial: EIG/Site5/Arvixe/Hostgator Alternatives
    ||

  23. #23
    Join Date
    Jan 2013
    Posts
    71

    ATT unblock request

    This link from ATT is for blocked end users according to ATT website. It says fill it out and ATT will send unblock information to your hosting provider.

    http://rbl.att.net/end_user_request2.html

    If you own your domain name anythingcompany.com you can move to another web host and keep your website and email address easily. I can recommend hawkhost.com for a small company's site. The one time i was blocked by Verizon they politely resolved the problem in a couple of hours after I opened just one ticket.

  24. #24
    Join Date
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    Canada
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    Quote Originally Posted by Patrick View Post
    AT&T are blocking a massive, absolutely massive amount of IP addresses in the 67.222.*.* and 67.223.*.* ranges with most being 100% innocent and no relation to the original spam complaints. I know that for a fact... so it's (probably) not really the providers fault. They are caught in the middle of overzealous AT&T spam filtering.

    It's a blanket ban and it took us a week+ to get them to whitelist our IP addresses. All the OP has to do, is tell her hosting provider to request a whitelisting from AT&T. It's really not that hard, so it sounds more like the OP's provider is just being lazy... not that I can blame them, dealing with spam issues makes me want to put my fist through the monitor.

    http://rbl.att.net/cgi-bin/rbl/block_admin.cgi

    ^- Link to request whitelisting.

    Yep can confirm this and the ridiculousness of it. We've had our own internal servers blocked by them. As to why we have no idea and their total lack of responsiveness just adds to it. We opted to start relaying our emails through something that was not 67.22* rather than deal with them at all. It's not just those IP ranges though. We have been seeing a ton of weird blocks from them lately outside that as well. IP blocks that weren't even routing were pre blocked.

    What I'd like to see is ISP's such as att who operate RBL's to stop if they don't have the resources to run one. The total lack of information, lack of response and mass blockings is just irresponsible.

    Quote Originally Posted by Theseeker View Post
    This link from ATT is for blocked end users according to ATT website. It says fill it out and ATT will send unblock information to your hosting provider.

    http://rbl.att.net/end_user_request2.html

    If you own your domain name anythingcompany.com you can move to another web host and keep your website and email address easily. I can recommend hawkhost.com for a small company's site. The one time i was blocked by Verizon they politely resolved the problem in a couple of hours after I opened just one ticket.

    We've also changed how we do emailing now. With us relaying email and scanning for spam we've cut down blocks significantly. If there is a block it's just as easy for us to remove the single IP blocked and instantly have delivery returning to normal.
    Tony B. - Chief Executive Officer
    Hawk Host Inc. Proudly serving websites since 2004
    Quality Shared and Cloud Hosting
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  25. #25
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    Patrick is 100% correct. AT&T is blocking IP's for no reason. And with that it also includes Bellsouth, SWBell, Prodigy and a few other emails systems under their control.

    Using the URL that Patrick provided just submit to have your IP's removed from their list. Its usually painless to get removed.

    Eart***** is another one that does this but you can get removed from that one by sending an email to openrelay@abuse.eart*****.net with BLOCKED xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx (IP Address that has been blocked) in the subject and they will remove you.

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