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Date:	Sat, 22 Feb 2003 20:37:05 PST8
From:	Peter Skye <pskye@peterskye.com >
Reply-To:	scoug-help@scoug.com
To:	scoug-help@scoug.com
Subject:	SCOUG-Help: earthlink blocked email ?

Content Type: text/plain

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Gary Granat wrote me off-list asking for a status on Earthlink blocking
my email. And I sent him an off-list reply -- which bounced. Silly me,
I forgot to look at Gary's ISP, which is Earthlink.

Following is the current status for Gary and anyone else who wants to
know.
_____

Gary Granat wrote:
>
> Have you figured out what was going on with
> [your blocked email] problem? I haven't heard
> anything on the Helpdesk about it for a while.

Well hi there Gary,

There seems to be several things going on, but I haven't had time to
chase down which of them is the culprit.

-- 1. For some reason, some of my domains (specifically peterskye.com
and losangmeth.com) are linked to a spammer's IP address (thanks to
Jeffrey Race for pointing this out), but *not* for email. Technically,
a Domain Name Server (DNS) keeps several different records for each
domain name; one of them is called the "MX" record and that's for email
(Mail eXchanger), and one is called the "A" record and that's for
general web stuff (http, ftp, etc). My "MX" record is correct but my
"A" record isn't, and I have to find the time to update my master "A"
record and then let the change filter through all the other Domain Name
Servers out there (which these days should only take a few hours).

-- 2. Earthlink wrote back to Steven Levine (who uses them) that they
block incoming email for a whole bunch of reasons. One of those reasons
is if the IP address for the sender's domain and the actual IP address
which the message is coming from don't match. That's my case for sure;
I use Verizon (DSL) or Cox (cable) to send my email but my domain name
isn't hosted by either of them and thus has a different IP address.
Apparently Earthlink does a reverse lookup on the sender's domain and
blocks the email (this supposedly stops a lot of spam from entering
Earthlink's system). I have to do some testing with this problem to see
if I can come up with a workaround; I use ZoneEdit to host my domains
but all they do is act as a DNS to send my email to my Verizon and
1stNetUSA accounts so I can't simply change the IP address.

-- 3. FreeNet sent a message to George Boyd (who uses them) that they
were blocking my messages because my server was an "open relay". That's
impossible because my firewall keeps anyone from connecting to my email
server *and* my server is configured for outgoing email only and won't
accept messages from another SMTP server (and my logs confirm that
nobody else is using my server). But I haven't had a chance to follow
up with George and trade some test messages to see exactly what is
really causing the problem.

Basically, since I'm using a mail server in an unusual way (for outgoing
mail only) I've run into a seldom-seen problem. I'm aware that this
problem started at the same time that I moved my main workstation to San
Diego and hooked it up to Cox instead of Verizon (ZoneEdit forwards my
email to Verizon so maybe the DNS for peterskye.com and verizon.net are
on the same IP address cluster; I think Verizon is 4.x.x.x). The
problem may go away as soon as I move the machine back to Los Angeles
and plug back into Verizon.

Thanks for asking -- answering you helped me organize my thoughts.

- Peter

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