Delays to email coming from PHP on Hostopia

[#1]

Link to ticket system can be found below... 

[#2]

Thanks David, I didn't have the SMTP localhost bit quite right, but have tested with that now, sends successfully - but now I think the issue could be related to the spam filters.
I sent a few test mails (with SMTP) and one got through but was bounced as spam (I've changed my F9 spam choices to not black hole).
My test mail had a simple one line message.
Copy of 'returned' mail (replaced my name with xxx for forum):
The original message was received at Sat, 11 Apr 2015 16:38:36 +0100 from [10.130.1.78]
  ----- The following addresses had permanent fatal errors ----- <ag@xxx.f9.co.uk>
    (reason: 552 Spam Message Rejected )
  ----- Transcript of session follows -----
... while talking to mx.avasin.plus.net.:
DATA
<<< 552 Spam Message Rejected
554 5.0.0 Service unavailable
Reporting-MTA: dns; mailrelay2c50.megamailservers.eu
Arrival-Date: Sat, 11 Apr 2015 16:38:36 +0100
Final-Recipient: RFC822; ag@xxx.f9.co.uk
Action: failed
Status: 5.2.2
Remote-MTA: DNS; mx.avasin.plus.net
Diagnostic-Code: SMTP; 552 Spam Message Rejected
Last-Attempt-Date: Sat, 11 Apr 2015 16:43:11 +0100
Am I blacklisted somehow from Hostopia into plusnet?

[#3]

Well progress of sorts I guess.
Since every message I send to one of my Force9 mailboxes goes into the respective spam folder I don't think you, as an individual, are being blacklisted. I suspect the problem will affect everyone.
All my messages have come via mailrelay1c50.megamailservers.eu ([91.136.8.227]) so I wondered if just that MTA was affected. However yours seems to be via mailrelay2c50.megamailservers.eu ([91.136.8.228]) so it's both of them. I expect something has caused those Hostopia MTAs to be given a poor reputation on the Cloudmarks.
Hopefully with Bob's help we can get this resolved on Monday. In the meantime I'm going to try whitelisting my "sender" address in my spam settings.
David

[#4]

Quote from: spraxyt

In the meantime I'm going to try whitelisting my "sender" address in my spam settings.

Whitelisting the "sender" address (or the "From" address if a specific sender is not given) works OK. The message is still scored as spam but not tagged and it is delivered to Inbox.
Note that whitelisting doesn't work with catch-all mailboxes. *
*  Edit: Whilst that catch-all restriction is stated in the MMM spam setting tool, as long as the return-path address matches the whitelist entry (full email address or just the domain) whitelisting appears to work even for catch-all addresses.
David

[#5]

My PHP contact form has recently stopped emailing me the results.
If I change the destination email address, it sends the results elsewhere (e.g. to a gmail address), but not to either my force9 email address nor my ccgi hosted domain address.
The sending command is:
mail($sendaddress, $subject, $messageblock, $emailheaders, "-f $emailaddress");
where the variables contain the appropriate contents.
As it has been working correctly for the best part of 10 years, I am a little concerned.
Is this a 'me-too' or are we talking something different here.
Any help appreciated.
Tony

[#6]

For emails sent to a Plusnet/Force9 address your problem is likely to be "me too". The emails will be scored as spam by the Cloudmark spam protection appliances and what happens then depends on the spam settings in your account. I don't have "discard obvious spam" selected and my messages go into the spam folder. I suspect if "discard obvious spam" had been selected (I think it is the default) they'd simply have vanished.
Assuming you have "discard obvious spam" selected your messages will be vanishing. If you deselect it your messages should go into the spam folder. However if you also add whatever $emailaddress represents to your whitelist the messages will go into Inbox.
It looks like the Hostopia email servers have been given a poor reputation by the Cloudmarks. I hope Bob will be able to get this reset on Monday.
David

[#7]

Quote from: spraxyt

It looks like the Hostopia email servers have been given a poor reputation by the Cloudmarks. I hope Bob will be able to get this reset on Monday.

I'll see what I can do. Are people happy for me to close the Hostopia ticket in the interim whilst we look into it?
Edit: It's the hostname web1c50.megawebservers.eu in the headers that's doing it. It's matching a Cloudmark spam fingerprint. I've raised an internal problem to have somebody take a look (ref: 85535).

[#8]

Well I won't jump up and down just yet .. but it looks like mails are getting through now.
So If the Cloudmark spam has been updated then that could be it 

[#9]

Yes, it looks like the problem is fixed.

Quote

Received: from mailrelay1c50.megamailservers.eu ([91.136.8.227]) by avasin09.plus.net with Plusnet Cloudmark Gateway id FQp41q00A4tuC0T01Qp64h; Mon, 13 Apr 2015 13:49:06 +0100 X-CM-Score: 0.00 X-CNFS-Analysis: v=2.1 cv=De+Zq5dW c=1 sm=1 tr=0 a=3aT398u7Ko4WoiXFanXEpg==:117 a=3aT398u7Ko4WoiXFanXEpg==:17 a=w9BpNiG0AAAA:8 a=0Bzu9jTXAAAA:8 a=7vtFykjVAAAA:8 a=LiQttqQpAAAA:8 a=Glt8_wKpAAAA:8 a=e9J7MTPGsLIA:10 a=6d3Lqsafku5JIbBfHmoA:9 a=CjuIK1q_8ugA:10 a=MIx-YCofsGEA:10 a=ApLdEE-6nssA:10 a=Q_x4iuBb6xUA:10 a=CM7CTpSh7ogqtxQNdRgA:9 a=2AxPVhGC_UwA:10 a=7w8gOqyzHk0A:10 a=RCP3fybNsL0A:10 Received: from web7c50.megawebservers.eu ([10.130.1.56]) by mailrelay1c50.megamailservers.eu (8.13.6/8.13.1) with ESMTP id t3DCn3e2019472; Mon, 13 Apr 2015 13:49:03 +0100

Previously the red text spam score was 100%. (This test came from web7c50.megawebservers.eu, but I don't think the webserver number is significant - I got spam failures from several of them).
David
Edit: The quote above was from a message sent using phpmailer and localhost SMTP. I have now confirmed sending using the PHP mail function also works.

[#10]

Hi folks,
Our mail started flowing again on the 13th, BUT it has failed again today nothing since 9pm yesterday evening. Same problem web orders being placed by clients but no email confirmations being recied from PHP
Is anyone else experiencing problems?
Cheers
Mike

[#11]

Cloudmark is spamming messages again.

[#12]

Yes, test messages being marked as spam again, though getting through to my inbox because I have "discard obvious spam" NOT selected and the sender address (Return-path header content) is whitelisted.
Interestingly a "lorem ipsum" test page (albeit with broken CSS and images) was spammed by gmail too. It's accepted this before.
David

[#13]

It looks like mail should be arriving again now. Just tried a test message "Message sent: date Mon, 20 Apr 2015 19:42:08 BST" and it's no longer scored as spam. (it was still scored as spam when I checked at 13:15.)
David

[#14]

We've been trying to identify the source of the spam so we can get Hostopia to take action. I didn't think we'd reset anything TBH, so maybe it's cleared up on its own accord.

[#15]

I reported two different messages as 'not spam'. Perhaps cloudmark responded to those.
David