Why don't you use Plusnets relay server, that's what I use and I have never had a problem.

Because the box in question is on a BT Business Broadband line, and you need to be on a PlusNet connection to use relay (or RIN).

Rejecting email from dynamic IPs will work for a while until the spammers realise that using basic email servers on each PC doesn't work as dynamic IPs are blocked and simply decide to use the ISPs email server as a conduit.

I run 5 domains from one server here pushing out through the plusnet email servers... works fine for me.

Incoming comes via JTN (which at the moment doesn't reject dynamic IPs) and forwards to my plusnet email box (which I have on SMTP forward - which is great because if a cat shuts my server down then my mail pools up on the plusnet servers and I can then just kick it when I get back on line)

Erhm, sort of ... but the work that was actually announced was for IMPROVEMENTS to existing processes and not the widening of the scope of mandatory filtering on receipt to include these new processes.  The associated blog entry contains the comment "We currently reject mail from senders with no reverse DNS ..." (and goes on to discuss the improvements being made) which is the first time I have seen any reference to such a process - although I do accept that I may have missed an announcement or whatever.  However, requests for further details and an approximate date for when the processes were first introduced into service have not received any response to date. 

In fact reports of a number of strange issues over recent days/weeks/months that are perhaps most likely be down to these new processes have received comments implying no changes whatsoever have been made and the issue is almost certainly nothing whatsoever to do with PN.  In addition, the spam data which I have been collecting and analysing over the last several months shows many strange and unexplained deviations from what could reasonably be expected and most (if not all of them) correspond to mail system maintenance and/or periods of complaints of missing mail from other users.  PN repeatedly decline to make sensible comment or answer questions.  Why the need for 'mushroom' treatment from an 'open and honest' service provider if all is above board and there is nothing to hide or no seemingly incessant and largely unannounced tweaking going on behind the scenes ?

Mike,

I've seen similar requests for information across numerous threads. Exactly what information are you after and I'll do my best to get it?

You probably haven't seen an announcement because mx blocking is something we've been doing for years.

Perhaps it's because we're now so 'open and honest' that the conversation is coming to fruition?

Whilst this AOL style blocking is not a problem for me (as a new customer my PlusNet address does not get much usage).

If I were to setup my own SMTP mail server (with a static ip address) and finger it every now and then would this solve the issue of PlusNet blocking email from those not on the approved list? Would I need to purchase a domain?
This would presumably increase the load on the email servers?

Since most PC's are on just a few major ISP's, won't the botnets simply try sending via a shortlist of smart hosts?
Result - user greatly annoyed; Spammer slightly irritated for a short while.

If you setup your mail server to relay mail via relay.plus.net there will be no problem.

Even if you did set it up to use DNS to lookup the destination mail server, PNs webserver would no block your email because PN have added their own IP ranges to the whitelist.

If you set-up your own e-mail server and still used your @username.plus.com it would still go via our servers and be subject to the filtering that we do. If you registered a domain you could point the MX records to your server and be in full control of what filtering is done. If you register a domain and point it towards your server we will not see any of your mail and it will therefore put no load on our servers.

If spammers start to modify their bots to use smarthosts and ISP relays, these will quickly become blacklisted on the RBLs and it will again be the responsibility of the ISP to implement spam protection on their relays.

We are in fact already working towards plans for this, and currently have daily reports produced of top senders through our relays. When we identify these we work with the affected customer to ensure that they do not have a bot or incorrectly configured mail server. Since we've been doing this, we've reduced the load on our outbound relays significantly.

The next thing that ISPs are going to have to do on their outbound relays is likely to implement spam detection rules similar to the inbound ones on un-authenticated SMTP connections. On authenticated ones we could pass these through un-altered. This has the benefit that with authentication, a spammer needs to have a username and password to be able to relay and continue to spam.

We are under no doubt that this is going to be an ongoing war and what we do today to help with the problem of spam will need to change and evolve as the spammers do.

Sitting back and doing nothing to tackle spam is not an option for any ISP these days!

Phil

But us civilians get caught in the cross-fire.

If an ISP is no longer just a service provider but becomes a content provider they will face the prospect of legal challenges on any content (emails).  They cannot say that the emails are simply passed on without examination in the manner of a telephone system.

Beware of what you wish for!

Well, it's automated examination. You can have a bar on your telephone line so that outgoing calls can't be made to certain numbers, so outbound email control is a similar situation (if you want to use the telephone example). They are not filtering specific contents of an e-mail, but rather if the e-mail should be allowed to be sent or not.

War has casualties sadly Although hopefully these will be kept to an absolute minimum!

Not completely true as you can select smtp delivery for @username.plus.com. I have done this and no incoming emails goes through PN servers and I only use PN outgoing servers for AOL and Hotmail accounts.

Hi I contacted abuse@ and got a prompt reply and was told that the ip from my other mail server (on which I host 32 domains) was whitelisted and yet they are still getting rejected.
How many other small business servers are affected in the same way.
Maybe this is not the most effective way of reducing trafic on e-mail servers as you are replying to all failed messages how much of a strain is this putting on the e-mail systems

MArk

Bob, re the message below the ip address that is blocked is:  {195.198.93.205}, please help sort urgently i need to have mails from many staff in this company to keep my business going

Bob
PlusNet Staff

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.

It takes about 15-30 minutes for the whitelisting to come into effect. Are the emails still getting rejected now and is it the same IP that's being refused?


Alot less.


Alan, I'm not in the office at the moment. Can you email a bounce to abuse.plus.net asking for it to be whitelisted? It should be done pretty quickly.

You are right yes, and I should have said could hit our mail server rather than would. If you're server or broadband line were offline it would queue on our servers as you cannot remove the secondary records which point at the PlusNet servers.

Phil

Hi Bob, that's the worrying thing it was sent Thursday and an automated reply came back "could take upto 1 week", myself and ICM my clients service provider tried again at lunchtime today and still bouncing, is it likely to be sorted first thing Monday? - regards alan