Bob, I will get the info you need but will be tomorrow.
But..... what do we do about those emails we know nothing about?
We only know about the problem if people ring us.

That I understand and the idea behind this is certainly not to block legitimate mail. I'd be lying if I said I wasn't concerned by this thread but I do need some examples as at the moment things do appear to be doing what they should.

No, things are not doing what they they should! You are clearly blocking email from legitimate sources such as major health care providers and leading private schools. In so doing you are impacting the operations and potentially the finances of small businesses, not to mention the correspondence of countless individuals. As already stated, how can we know about the emails which have been bounced but either we cannot be advised or the sender doesn't know?

The complaints in this thread must be enough to convince you that something is seriously amiss, and until we know what it is you have an obligation to remedy the situation by removing this 'feature'. Failure to do so could be construed in the future as negligence.

In terms of the further information about Zen - I will try and find out. However I am (as others will be) reliant on our client being willing and able to send us the full information in a form which is useful.

So far I only have:
>     SMTP error from remote mail server after initial connection:
>     host mx.last.plus.net [212.159.11.64]: 550-REJECTED:
>     We do not accept email from dynamic IP's. If you think we have
>     550 something wrong please report to abuse@plus.net

Not very informative.

My client I hope will report it directly to abuse and forward whatever he can.

In retrospect, would it not have been better to flag mail with the advice that it came from a dynamic IP address and may therefore be suspect? Given notice of impending change like this, one could then have investigated the potential impact and acted accordingly - like move ISP...

Brian

i totally agree a lot of my clients in private healthcare are not email savvy, it's proving very difficult for me to get the information from them that plusnet need, or to get them to forward bounced mails to plusnet, rightly so it's not their problem, it's mine and plusnets and as Brian says there will be more clients that i don't know about yet that haven't bothered contacting me yet to say emails are bouncing, I was planning a days holiday tomorrow, now it looks like i'm firefighting here.

ok trying to help get this resolved from my point of view you are blocking mails from this company who are the  mail server host for some of my clients http://www.icm-computer.co.uk/ can you whitelist them so i save losing a major client? many thanks in annticipation - alan

What's the IP address in the rejection notification Alan (the one that's been refused). Have you got a copy of one of these emails? We need the IP in order to whitelist.

Tagging the emails wasn't an option I'm afraid. Re-writing subject lines in this way creates a huge amount of load on the mail delivery platform, and that's what often causes delays (The Spam system is hard enough to keep under control as it is)

This is pretty common practice for ISPs now (More so in other countries), but I suspect it will become common as new and better ways to cope with Spam are sought. I'm surprised these folks don't have a lot more issues with emailing people from various providers.

Anyway, this will be looked at further tomorrow - We certainly don't want to inconvenience anyone unnecessarily,  but at the same time moves like this are important if we are to effectively combat spam.

Ian

Hi Bob, The contact at my clients got all flustered when i asked her to quote me numbers of a bounced email (bless her she's retiring next week) ICM-computers (the host) techie guy has forwarded a bounced mail to abuse@plus.net, i would really appreciate it if it could be done as soon as possible to try and limit time down as much as possible (same old story i'm a day down in hitting deadlines with this client) regards alan

OK. Just received another email from a hotel with which I have been in dialogue:

"thank you for your email. We are sending the email once again. We hope that you will get it. (it was once rejected by your server)."

So what is the Slovenian for "please forward the bounced email as an attachmennt"?

And how much evidence do you want Bob that you have caused more problems than you are solving?

Brian

I admire your patience, for me this was unfortunately the last straw and I have now requested my MAC code. Might go to Be Unlimited, not sure yet...

Matt

I have had no emails via the Plusnet account today, including 3 which should be automatically generated by a cron job running on the PN servers, so that I know if the job has run successfully. When I do the lookup on an earlier email I get this:

>nslookup 212.159.7.165
Server:  ptn-cdns02.plus.net
Address:  212.159.6.10
Name:    cshell01.plus.net
Address:  212.159.7.165

>nslookup cshell01.plus.net
Server:  ptn-cdns02.plus.net
Address:  212.159.6.10
Non-authoritative answer:
Name:    cshell01.plus.net
Address:  212.159.7.158

Does that mean that PN are rejecting mail from their own cgi servers? What can I do to fix it?

I'm having problems sending mail to my own PN account from my work.  The bounces don't have headers attached (they're generated by the internal relay) so I can't PM them to you Bob, but here's the text of the bounce:


Message from Sys Admin. DO NOT reply to this message.

Your message did not reach some or all of the intended recipients.

      Subject: Mail Parse
      Sent:   21/09/2007 07:20

The following recipient(s) could not be reached:

      paul@xxxxxx.plus.com on 21/09/2007 07:20
            There was a SMTP communication problem with the recipient's email server.  Please contact your system administrator.
            < smtp1.selex-sas.com #5.5.0 SMTP; 550-REJECTED: We do not accept email from dynamic IP's. Connection from the IP>

I work for a major defence contractor which is part of the Finmeccanica group. I only have this problem e-mailing PN addresses.

Would it be useful to forward mail headers from a mail that reached its destination (I have another account hosted by 1&1)? If so, I can do this later when I get home.

Hi Plusnet team, please treat this problem as a matter of urgency, i am only a small business, and if my clients can't contact me they will use people they can, this is very worrying, the client i know that is having problems has forwarded to abuse @ plus.net, when can i expect mails, i fear if it's not today i'm in some trouble - regards alan

I had a call late yesterday from a prospective client who works for a private healthcare hospital. Her emails to me weren't going thru, luckily she has called to sort out the quote and subsequently faxed the info thru. How many of my clients aren't doing this, and simply going to a source where they can get emails thru. C'mon PlusNet, sort it out, it's your problem not the people sending emails! We've just got past the problem of emails being delivered up to a day late, now this!! 

I am now affected by this from my own web server running on my ADSL line.  It is also affecting another system I maintain on a BT line which sends out system status emails to one of my PN addresses.

This is no longer an acceptable situation for me!!! 

Yes it would. The rejection message should contain the originating IP but in your case it appears that the MTA that handled the rejection has truncated the message meaning the IP isn't visible


Peter we can whitelist specific hosts but if you yourself are maintaining these lines then the email will be getting sent from the IP address assigned by the ISP (which are likely to be assigned from dynamic address space). Can the emails not be sent via our relays (in our case) and via BT's SMTP server?

Edit: Just to add to this Peter, by smarthosting the mail through the ISP you will undoubtedly find that you'll encounter fewer problems over time as more and more admins lock down on dynamic IP's. We are not the and will definitely not be the last. It's what the industry has to do, as we have to become responsible for the spam being generated by our users. When we end up on blacklists and RBL's then to say it's not our fault it's our end users just doesn't cut the mustard.