topic Re: Mailinator being blocked? in Tech Help - Software/Hardware etc

Mailinator being blocked?

NorthPole — Wed, 04 Feb 2015 15:49:53 GMT

Not quite sure if this is the right place to post this; but can anyone else get through to Mailinator (http://www.mailinator.com/index.jsp), the disposable email address service? The site times out when trying to reach it from either my desktop PC or tablet via my Plusnet connection, and a traceroute gives 'no response' messages even when using the IP address (so it's not a DNS issue). Websitedown (http://www.websitedown.info/) shows the site as up, so I can't think where else the problem could lie.

Re: Mailinator being blocked?

dvorak — Wed, 04 Feb 2015 16:00:21 GMT

it's working fine here.

Re: Mailinator being blocked?

spraxyt — Wed, 04 Feb 2015 16:02:07 GMT

... and here.
Tracert gives

C:>tracert www.mailinator.com
Tracing route to www.mailinator.com [23.239.11.30]
over a maximum of 30 hops:
  1    <1 ms    <1 ms    <1 ms  192.168.1.254
  2    51 ms    26 ms    28 ms  lo0-central10.ptn-ag03.plus.net [195.166.128.192]
  3    26 ms    26 ms    25 ms  link-a-central10.ptn-gw01.plus.net [212.159.2.136]
  4    26 ms    26 ms    26 ms  xe-5-3-0.ptw-cr01.plus.net [212.159.0.108]
  5   107 ms   116 ms   106 ms  linx.peer.nac.net [195.66.224.94]
  6   119 ms   107 ms   117 ms  0.e3-2.tbr2.tl9.nac.net [209.123.11.145]
  7   112 ms   108 ms   115 ms  0.e1-4.tbr2.mmu.nac.net [209.123.10.77]
  8   107 ms   109 ms   107 ms  207.99.53.46
  9   108 ms   108 ms   107 ms  li688-30.members.linode.com [23.239.11.30]
Trace complete.

Re: Mailinator being blocked?

NorthPole — Wed, 04 Feb 2015 20:34:41 GMT

Thanks guys, but I'm convinced it's somehow a Plusnet issue; I've just been able to reach the Mailinator site via a proxy server, so something's blocking it along the normal route.

Re: Mailinator being blocked?

Anonymous — Wed, 04 Feb 2015 21:14:15 GMT

http://www.mailinator.com/index.jsp also works for me via tunneled IPv6 -

$ mtr -r -c 10 www.mailinator.com
HOST:My-Laptop                    Loss%   Snt   Last   Avg  Best  Wrst StDev
  1. My-Home-Gateway               0.0%    10    4.9   4.5   3.7   6.6   1.0
  2. purleigh-tunnel.tserv5.lon    0.0%    10   41.9  42.1  39.9  45.3   1.5
  3. v316.core1.lon1.he.net        0.0%    10   76.0  53.8  35.7  76.0  15.6
  4. 10ge5-2.core1.lon2.he.net     0.0%    10   45.1  42.9  36.1  51.4   6.2
  5. 2001:7f8:4::1f41:1            0.0%    10  116.9 118.6 113.0 123.7   3.7
  6. 2001:518:5001:f::1            0.0%    10  116.9 119.1 112.0 123.3   4.1
  7. e1.4.tbr1.mmu.nac.net         0.0%    10  120.5 112.8 107.7 120.5   3.5
  8. 2001:518:2800:3::2            0.0%    10  112.0 112.5 110.0 115.9   1.9
  9. 2600:3c03::f03c:91ff:fe50:ca 10.0%    10  113.1 112.1 109.4 115.5   2.0

Re: Mailinator being blocked?

Anonymous — Wed, 04 Feb 2015 21:26:21 GMT

You say it doesn't work using the IPv4 address - http://23.239.11.30 ? - which does work for me.

Re: Mailinator being blocked?

NorthPole — Thu, 05 Feb 2015 11:24:41 GMT

purleigh, yes that's the case. I'm on Plusnet gateway ptn-bng01, and wonder if for some reason Mailinator or their host has blocked it (possibly for spam mail?)

Re: Mailinator being blocked?

Chris — Thu, 05 Feb 2015 16:37:42 GMT

What does a tracert to the site look like for you? Are you just getting the standard 'page not found' error?

Re: Mailinator being blocked?

billnotben — Thu, 05 Feb 2015 17:11:27 GMT

Personally for a disposable email site I always use YOPmail.
http://www.yopmail.com/en/
I find it seems to be more accepted as a legit email address when others are not.

Re: Mailinator being blocked?

NorthPole — Fri, 06 Feb 2015 11:15:38 GMT

Chris, traceroute screenshots attached - all show 'no response'. The browser (Firefox) shows 'The connection was reset'.
billnotben, thanks for the tip about YOPmail - that does seem to work!

Re: Mailinator being blocked?

Oldjim — Fri, 06 Feb 2015 11:20:19 GMT

The tracert failed because you didn't remove the http://

Re: Mailinator being blocked?

NorthPole — Fri, 06 Feb 2015 15:08:31 GMT

Oldjim, thanks, but makes no difference.

Re: Mailinator being blocked?

Chris — Fri, 06 Feb 2015 15:12:02 GMT

Those traceroutes aren't even getting from your PC to your router, it's very unlikely this issue is due to a problem on our side.
Can you try a traceroute to bbc.co.uk and see whether that works?

Re: Mailinator being blocked?

NorthPole — Fri, 06 Feb 2015 16:42:43 GMT

Chris, this is getting odder and odder! Although I'm absolutely certain traceroute was working the other day with other sites, I now find that both ping and traceroute won't work at all, whether via a GUI program or from the command prompt. However, if I disable my firewall (part of BullGuard Internet Security), I can successfully ping and traceroute (for example) www.bbc.co.uk, but not www.mailinator.com which still times out. I'm going to chase up the ping/traceroute issue with BullGuard support, but it seems there's still a problem getting to the Mailinator site even with the firewall off.

Re: Mailinator being blocked?

chrcoluk — Fri, 06 Feb 2015 17:00:04 GMT

Quote from: NorthPole
Thanks guys, but I'm convinced it's somehow a Plusnet issue; I've just been able to reach the Mailinator site via a proxy server, so something's blocking it along the normal route.

loads for me, not using a proxy.

Re: Mailinator being blocked?

NorthPole — Sun, 08 Feb 2015 10:59:19 GMT

To get round the issues with the firewall on my desktop PC, I ran some diagnostics from my Android tablet last night. You will see from the attachments that a traceroute to Mailinator fails at IP 207.99.53.42, which a whois reveals is Net Access Corporation in New Jersey, USA. So it seems to me that my own IP (or a whole group of Plusnet IP's which include it) are being blocked by that company. I'm now going to contact Mailinator and ask them if they can investigate further.

Re: Mailinator being blocked?

NorthPole — Sun, 08 Feb 2015 13:07:01 GMT

Now this is interesting - the emails I sent to Mailinator and Net Access Corporation both bounced. Here is part of the error message I received for the Mailinator one:
"Delivery to the following recipient failed permanently:
support@manybrain.com
Technical details of permanent failure:
Message rejected by Google Groups. Please visit http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=188131 to review our Bulk Email Senders Guidelines."
So it definitely looks as if my Plusnet IP (at least) is blacklisted as a spammer - I assure you I'm not!

Re: Mailinator being blocked?

NorthPole — Mon, 09 Feb 2015 10:36:22 GMT

Well, having followed this through it appears that my own IP is on a Spamhaus blacklist (see attachment). I've also checked the IP's at both ends of the range and they are too, so it appears that a whole block of Plusnet IP addresses have been blacklisted. As an individual, Spamhaus won't enter into any correspondence with me, but I wonder if Plusnet should chase this up with them? I'm worried I may start to find that I can't access other sites as well which check against the blacklist.

Re: Mailinator being blocked?

spraxyt — Mon, 09 Feb 2015 12:31:05 GMT

Since the 146.200.*.* IP range is a dynamic one the whole range appearing on the Spamhaus policy blocklist (PBL) is to be expected. Note this is a policy blocklist and *not* a blacklist.
Such IPs are not expected to send emails directly out on to the internet. For this range emails should be sent via relay.plus.net which provides the necessary authentication and *shouldn't* appear on the PBL (nor any other Spamhaus list). Are you using relay.plus.net?

Re: Mailinator being blocked?

NorthPole — Mon, 09 Feb 2015 15:32:31 GMT

spraxyt, not sure what you mean by relay.plus.net, but I'm using Windows Live Mail set up as per the guide issued by Plusnet Support, and have password authentification switched on. Also bear in mind that my IP seems to be the reason I can't browse to the Mailinator site.