Dynamic IP Blacklisted - mail to @btinternet.com disappears

[#1]

Thanks.  I think for £5, if it will guarantee a cure then it is worth it.

[#2]

This is an interesting discussion.  I too have had issues sending emails to BTinternet addresses from a personal domain over the last few weeks.  They are not identified as spam, nor are they bounced back to me - they just get thrown into a black hole somewhere.  🙄

There are some notable similarities with our configurations: I'm also with Plusnet (rebranded as John Lewis), and my hosting company was taken over by Tsohost last year.

I spent the weekend reading up on SPF, and eventually by modifying my SPF record to include tsohost's mail servers, everything now appears to be OK.  Thankfully I don't appear to be on any spam list.

It seems that BT have tightened up on email authentication recently.  It would have be nice if they'd made this more public, or at least given us some diagnostics to work with...

[#3]

I have no idea what the problem was, or what fixed it but mine now seems to be working - for now!

How exactly do you go about modifying your spf record?  all I do is point my domain name to tsohost nameservers.

[#4]

Do Tsohost provide you with a cpanel interface?  You should be able to modify your DNS records from there (as opposed to setting your name servers, as you've already done).

I've just realised there's an added complication, in that my email domain is not the same as my hosted domain.  I just forward emails from one to the other.  So when I changed my DNS records I actually had to do it with the domain registrar rather than with Tsohost.

The "SPF record" is actually a TXT record, with "v=spf1" as the first part of the data.

[#5]

Some points that seem relevant to this thread:

1. I also had problems with emails sent from a Tsohost domain to a BT email being marked as spam and bounced.

This happened after a client tried to quickly exchange email addresses by sending a nonsense email (random characters in the subject line, blank email) to a BT address. Unfortunately, this resulted in my domain being permanently blocked to all BT addresses.

It was fixed by following the link to BT in the bounced email. They had to make some manual tweaks to their spam filter to unblock my domain.

If you're not even receiving a bounced email, it might be worth checking the spam box on the server via webmail to see if it's been caught there.

2. If you're using Tsohost's email servers and are adding an SPF record, be aware they have recently introduced a new Cloudmark spam-catching system which needs to be included in the SPF record. Best contact Tsohost tech support for details.

3. To check everything is working well, this mail checker is useful:
http://www.mail-tester.com/

[#6]

Thanks @j123 

I'm using Tsohost's email servers, but the SPF record I've modified is on my own (redirected) domain.  I do faintly recall seeing something from Tsohost recently, but decided I didn't need to do anything.

The mail-tester link is very handy, thanks.  I just got a 9/10 score, so that can't be bad. 😎  Better learn about DKIM next...

[#7]

Might be worth rechecking your emails using mailtester every now and again as I'm not sure if Tsohost have turned on Cloudmark yet.

Here's the email I received from Tsohost. The example they give uses a different ip4 address to the one I use in my SPF record, but I added "include:secureserver.net" to the end as they advise.

All seems to be working. I'm using Tsohost's name servers.


QUOTE:
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An important task for you
To ensure the transition to Cloudmark goes smoothly, we need to ensure all customers who use external DNS services make a small change to their SPF records.

If you use an external DNS, you need to:

Add "include:secureserver.net" to your current SPF records, if you have one.

Super important: Don't remove the current SPF data - this needs to work up until the changeover.

Example;

tsoHost's SPF is: "v=spf1 ip4:185.24.99.18"

To ensure that we can still send outbound mail when we connect our servers to Cloudmark, we have added "include:secureserver.net" to the end of our SPF record.

So our SPF record now looks like this: "v=spf1 ip4:185.24.99.18 include:secureserver.net"

What to do if you use an independent DNS provider...
If you use an independent DNS provider, you'll need to make this change with them.

If you only use tsoHost's name servers, you don't need to lift a finger. We'll update the SPF records for you.

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