email forwarding from domain host UK2.net not working with Plusnet

[#1]

Well, I have nothing to do with uk2.net at all, and my account [gronk] is set to just have Postini's headers added so that my client-side filters can deal with the mail, and I've noticed an increase in the amount of spam that's been coming in since the changes were made.
I assume Postini drops some of the really blatant spam on the floor before it ever reaches me: if so, something in the changes seems to have reduced the effectiveness of this, and I'd quite like it back the way it was 

[#2]

As per the most recent Service Status post, the changes we made will have reduced the volume of messages blocked by the Edge Protection.

[#3]

Although my domain forwarding is not with UKnet but with Netnames - I was having the same problems - but now seems to be sorted.

[#4]

Quote from: Bob

As per the most recent Service Status post, the changes we made will have reduced the volume of messages blocked by the Edge Protection.

Yes, but it doesn't say if this is going to be a temporary thing or not.
I'm not really keen on having the volume of spam delivered to me increased, especially if my bandwidth allowance doesn't go up to compensate! (And especially when you consider that I never used to get any until the webmail servers got hacked...)

[#5]

Quote from: somerandomguy

Yes, but it doesn't say if this is going to be a temporary thing or not.

Right, we've relaxed the filtering but we now have a problem. Our reporting since we made this change suggests that this spam condition is now blocking zero emails (before it was blocking tens of thousands). That is not good, as it will be having a significant impact across the wider customer base.
We're going to try using an intermediate setting (I'll post an announcement about this before we do it) and see how that goes. If it doesn't work though, then we're going to have to start looking at alternative solutions to this problem.
Edit: The change has now been made. Once again, any feedback is appreciated.

[#6]

I'm now getting some innocent emails bounced back as spam rejected by Postini 

[#7]

Hi
new here but as a UK2/PN customer for a very long time (and getting mightily pissed off with this intermittent email blocking, as my correspondents are also) just wanted you to know that yesterday we were getting lots of spam but as of this morning test mails via UK2 domains are coming through fairly instantly.
I don't know if this is related but we normally get 40 or so messages a day from a local 'freecycle@yahoo' group but have not had any for about a day-ish.
On a couple of general points picked up from this thread, I also find that PN problems are late in being recognised; traffic lights don't change quickly enough and support tickets often don't mention a current issue (like the UK2 one) even though the problem described is identical. As a UK2 customer of old they used to be extemely customer unfriendly and as an 'amateur' in all this I very nearly moved all my domains but recently they have a comletely new support set-up with a good ticket system and any problem I've had has been rresolved quickly.
Best wishes

[#8]

the earliest status was 28th Aug http://usertools.plus.net/status/archive/1219920198.htm  the same day as this thread started

[#9]

Quote from: mush

I don't know if this is related but we normally get 40 or so messages a day from a local 'freecycle@yahoo' group but have not had any for about a day-ish.

I'm getting messages from our local freecycle group as normal. I suggest you check that you have not been set as bouncing on yahoo.

[#10]

Quote from: pphillips

I'm now getting some innocent emails bounced back as spam rejected by Postini

Are they getting bounced with a 571 error? If so, then try turning off Edge Protection under the Spam tab of the Manage My Mail tool in the Member Centre.

Quote from: mush

I don't know if this is related but we normally get 40 or so messages a day from a local 'freecycle@yahoo' group but have not had any for about a day-ish.

You might also want to try what I've suggested above.

Quote from: mush

As a UK2 customer of old they used to be extemely customer unfriendly and as an 'amateur' in all this I very nearly moved all my domains but recently they have a comletely new support set-up with a good ticket system and any problem I've had has been rresolved quickly.

The last ticket I raised with them is still awaiting a response after 7 days!

[#11]

Is Plusnet going to do anything to identify its subscribers with an active UK2net domain address, and then individually email each subscriber (1) to apologise and (2) to survey them????
I suspect a large number of the UK2net domain name subscribers turned off 'catchall' at UK2net over a year ago, when UK2net started charging for it.  This must have massively reduced the possibility of spam being forwarded by the UK2net servers.  It would be really interesting to find out which UK2net domain names actually contributed to the alleged massive increase in spam volumes perceived by Postini.  I suspect that the overwhelming majority of UK2net domain names were and are completely innocent bystanders caught up in Postini's knee jerk and blunderbuss response.
As regards responses from UK2net's helpdesk, mine was virtually instantaneous.  Ticket lodged at 16:45 on 2nd September and meaningful reply received at 22:44.  Maybe it helps if one doesn't start off by blaming others for the actions of ones own subcontractor. 
 

[#12]

Quote from: JamesG

Is Plusnet going to do anything to identify its subscribers with an active UK2net domain address, and then individually email each subscriber (1) to apologise and (2) to survey them????

Not sure what you mean by survey them? Neither can I see a plausible way of establishing which of our customers has an externally hosted domain with a third party that we have no affiliation with? If the domains were hosted with us then it would be pretty easy, but they're not.

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I suspect a large number of the UK2net domain name subscribers turned off 'catchall' at UK2net over a year ago, when UK2net started charging for it.  This must have massively reduced the possibility of spam being forwarded by the UK2net servers.  It would be really interesting to find out which UK2net domain names actually contributed to the alleged massive increase in spam volumes perceived by Postini.  I suspect that the overwhelming majority of UK2net domain names were and are completely innocent bystanders caught up in Postini's knee jerk and blunderbuss response.

Postini have had these thresholds in place for as long as we have used them so this wasn't really a knee-jerk 'response' as such. What happened is that mail from uk2.net's servers began breaching the thresholds. The reasons why that started happening I do not know.

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As regards responses from UK2net's helpdesk, mine was virtually instantaneous.  Ticket lodged at 16:45 on 2nd September and meaningful reply received at 22:44.   Maybe it helps if one doesn't start off by blaming others for the actions of ones own subcontractor.

I'm sorry, but I find that completely unreasonable. How could you possibly know how I approached uk2.net? To satisfy your curiosity though I've attached the contents of my most recent ticket query which now remains unanswered for the best part of a week. If you have any constructive feedback on how I could have approached it better then I'm happy to hear it. I guess it's quite plausible that my ticket has just got 'stuck' in their systems somewhere.
Whether uk2.net responded to my ticket or not though, I'd like to stress the point that I am not pointing the blame. I have already stated elsewhere in this thread:

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I don't think it's explicity any parties fault, and some of the blame definitely has to lie with us. With better cooperation from the parties involved though (Postini included), I reckon we could have nailed this a little sooner.

   
That about sums up my take on last week's problems.

[#13]

Quote from: Bob

What happened is that mail from uk2.net's servers began breaching the thresholds. The reasons why that started happening I do not know.

I'm only an interested bystander, but I'm a bit confused by this whole saga.  Isn't it the case that mail from plusnet's own servers have been breaching these thresholds since we first joined Postini?  Isn't that why the domain plus.com had to be whitelisted to allow plusnet mail through to customers protected by Postini?  I thought it was the volume of traffic from the plusnet relays -- not the volume of spam -- that caused the problem.  Unless I'm all to c0ck about this (always a good possibility!), it would simply take a build up of traffic from uk2.net hitting Postini to trigger their reaction.
Would it have been silly to simply org whitelist uk2.net?
Chris

[#14]

Quote from: ChrisL

Quote from: Bob What happened is that mail from uk2.net's servers began breaching the thresholds. The reasons why that started happening I do not know. I'm only an interested bystander, but I'm a bit confused by this whole saga.  Isn't it the case that mail from plusnet's own servers have been breaching these thresholds since we first joined Postini?  Isn't that why the domain plus.com had to be whitelisted to allow plusnet mail through to customers protected by Postini?  I thought it was the volume of traffic from the plusnet relays -- not the volume of spam -- that caused the problem.  Unless I'm all to c0ck about this (always a good possibility!), it would simply take a build up of traffic from uk2.net hitting Postini to trigger their reaction.

Perhaps, but the mail from plus.com was getting rejected with a 5.x.x error, not getting absolutely refused like was the case with uk2.net.

Quote

Would it have been silly to simply org whitelist uk2.net?

That would have probably been our next scenario, but it's not desirable.

[#15]

Now that this problem appears to have been solved, I was wondering whether we might have a breakdown of what happened, why it happened and what was done to resolve the issue? We were informed that nothing had changed with Postini and it appears that the solution came from action by PlusNet.
I say 'appears to have been solved' because I have no personal experience. As soon as it became obvious what was happening, my forwarding was modified. Following past 'hiccups' with PlusNet mail I have twice switched my mail forwarding back to PlusNet. There will not be a third time.
People rely on e-mail for both business and private purposes, so it's no longer a 'toy'; reliability is essential. For a 'core' service there have been too many hiccups at PlusNet.
Thank you.