Re: [Mailman-Users] spam, AOL and server names
Thanks for your reply Brad. Yeah, I read and reread the FAQ. Mailman has one of the best faq's I've ever seen. The percentage of our mail that AOL rejects is just huge - around 90% - I was hoping that maybe someone could see something that we were doing wrong. It'd be nice to get the rejection rate down. Dennis Brad Knowles wrote: At 7:59 AM -0500 3/20/07, Dennis Morgan wrote: A persistent problem we've had is a significant amount of our users are AOL - and many are clueless. We're pretty ruthless about deleting AOL users when we get a report that someone is using their spam button - but even so a lot (most) of our mail to AOL gets rejected. We've decided that part of the problem is we're using an older version of majordomo. See also FAQ 3.42. I *think* another part of our problem can be found in this bit of our dns report from dnsstuff.com: ~~~ OK: All of your mailservers have their host name in the greeting: mail.e-aa.org: 220 dedicated.bixbycreek.com ESMTP Sendmail 8.12.10/8.12.10; Tue, 20 Mar 2007 05:44:34 -0800 ~ In other words our mailing domain name is different than our mail server domain name. That shouldn't be an issue. I send e-mail as [EMAIL PROTECTED], although I may use any number of different servers as my outbound mail relay for those messages depending on where I am, what computer I'm using and what network it uses to access the Internet, etc Only really stupid people check the domain name of your envelope sender and require that it be sent from a machine with a matching domain name. I've run into some stupid people like this, but I'm pretty sure they're not doing this at AOL -- we weeded out that kind of stupidity years ago, when I was the Sr. Internet Mail Administrator at AOL. ~ WARNING: One or more of your mailservers is claiming to be a host other than what it really is (the SMTP greeting should be a 3-digit code, followed by a space or a dash, then the host name). If your mailserver sends out E-mail using this domain in its EHLO or HELO, your E-mail might get blocked by anti-spam software. This is also a technical violation of RFC821 4.3 (and RFC2821 4.3.1). Note that the hostname given in the SMTP greeting should have an A record pointing back to the same server. Note that this one test may use a cached DNS record. mail.eaachat.org claims to be non-existent host dedicated.eaachat.org: 220 dedicated.eaachat.org ESMTP I don't think that this is a problem, either. But I'd need to see for myself to be certain. I'm assuming that both of the above problems are part of our AOL problems. Am I correct? And if so - does anyone have a tip or two about what to do to resolve it? We're creating an SPF record to see if that helps - we really want at least some of our mail to get through to AOL. We plan to make the switch next week. Don't use SPF. Don't use it anywhere. It causes way more problems than it can possibly solve. Everything I said back in 2004 on this subject is still applicable today, if not more so. See http://bradknowles.typepad.com/considered_harmful/2004/05/spf.html. -- Mailman-Users mailing list Mailman-Users@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/mailman-users Mailman FAQ: http://www.python.org/cgi-bin/faqw-mm.py Searchable Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/mailman-users%40python.org/ Unsubscribe: http://mail.python.org/mailman/options/mailman-users/archive%40jab.org Security Policy: http://www.python.org/cgi-bin/faqw-mm.py?req=showamp;file=faq01.027.htp
Re: [Mailman-Users] spam, AOL and server names
To reiterate what Brad said, please see FAQ 3.42. It specifically talks about this issue. On 3/22/07, Dennis Morgan [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: The percentage of our mail that AOL rejects is just huge - around 90% - I was hoping that maybe someone could see something that we were doing wrong. It'd be nice to get the rejection rate down. Dennis Brad Knowles wrote: See also FAQ 3.42. -- - Patrick Bogen -- Mailman-Users mailing list Mailman-Users@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/mailman-users Mailman FAQ: http://www.python.org/cgi-bin/faqw-mm.py Searchable Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/mailman-users%40python.org/ Unsubscribe: http://mail.python.org/mailman/options/mailman-users/archive%40jab.org Security Policy: http://www.python.org/cgi-bin/faqw-mm.py?req=showamp;file=faq01.027.htp
Re: [Mailman-Users] spam, AOL and server names
At 9:10 AM -0500 3/22/07, Dennis Morgan wrote: The percentage of our mail that AOL rejects is just huge - around 90% - I was hoping that maybe someone could see something that we were doing wrong. It'd be nice to get the rejection rate down. If you can show us complete copies of the bounces being generated, we might be able to help you figure out what's going wrong and what might be able to be done to fix it. -- Brad Knowles [EMAIL PROTECTED], Consultant Author LinkedIn Profile: http://tinyurl.com/y8kpxu Slides from Invited Talks: http://tinyurl.com/tj6q4 -- Mailman-Users mailing list Mailman-Users@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/mailman-users Mailman FAQ: http://www.python.org/cgi-bin/faqw-mm.py Searchable Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/mailman-users%40python.org/ Unsubscribe: http://mail.python.org/mailman/options/mailman-users/archive%40jab.org Security Policy: http://www.python.org/cgi-bin/faqw-mm.py?req=showamp;file=faq01.027.htp
Re: [Mailman-Users] spam, AOL and server names
The esteemed Patrick Bogen has said: To reiterate what Brad said, please see FAQ 3.42. It specifically talks about this issue. On 3/22/07, Dennis Morgan [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: The percentage of our mail that AOL rejects is just huge - around 90% - I was hoping that maybe someone could see something that we were doing wrong. It'd be nice to get the rejection rate down. Dennis Brad Knowles wrote: See also FAQ 3.42. FAQ 3.42 pretty well covers the issues we see on our installation. One change that I don't see in the FAQ is to put SMTP_MAX_RCPTS = 5 in mm_cfg.py. This may seem absurdly low, compared with the Defaults.py value. I originally set it to 10 and had mails to verizon being deferred until they were time-flushed from the Sendmail queue (five days). Switching to individualized posts for non-digest members made a very obvious difference in deferrals, but the pain persisted for digests. We've simply given up on AOL. We were getting 5.7.1 security bounces with a link to a message that made clear that they were blacklisting us. The pattern we saw doesn't correlate with their claims of users reporting us as spam. We were down to one AOL user, a paraplegic, and ended up having a list member drive to get him set up on another service. Hank -- Mailman-Users mailing list Mailman-Users@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/mailman-users Mailman FAQ: http://www.python.org/cgi-bin/faqw-mm.py Searchable Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/mailman-users%40python.org/ Unsubscribe: http://mail.python.org/mailman/options/mailman-users/archive%40jab.org Security Policy: http://www.python.org/cgi-bin/faqw-mm.py?req=showamp;file=faq01.027.htp
[Mailman-Users] spam, AOL and server names
Hi everyone! First time posting, I've been reading with interest - very friendly helpful mailing list here! Hope I can help some in the future. We have about a dozen mailing lists running on majordomo, and are getting ready to migrate to mailman. We're excited! A persistent problem we've had is a significant amount of our users are AOL - and many are clueless. We're pretty ruthless about deleting AOL users when we get a report that someone is using their spam button - but even so a lot (most) of our mail to AOL gets rejected. We've decided that part of the problem is we're using an older version of majordomo. I *think* another part of our problem can be found in this bit of our dns report from dnsstuff.com: ~~~ OK: All of your mailservers have their host name in the greeting: mail.e-aa.org: 220 dedicated.bixbycreek.com ESMTP Sendmail 8.12.10/8.12.10; Tue, 20 Mar 2007 05:44:34 -0800 ~ In other words our mailing domain name is different than our mail server domain name. As part of our migration we are moving from a shared server to our own dedicated server. The new server is eaachat.org and the same section of the dns report for the new domain on the new server reads: ~ WARNING: One or more of your mailservers is claiming to be a host other than what it really is (the SMTP greeting should be a 3-digit code, followed by a space or a dash, then the host name). If your mailserver sends out E-mail using this domain in its EHLO or HELO, your E-mail might get blocked by anti-spam software. This is also a technical violation of RFC821 4.3 (and RFC2821 4.3.1). Note that the hostname given in the SMTP greeting should have an A record pointing back to the same server. Note that this one test may use a cached DNS record. mail.eaachat.org claims to be non-existent host dedicated.eaachat.org: 220 dedicated.eaachat.org ESMTP I'm assuming that both of the above problems are part of our AOL problems. Am I correct? And if so - does anyone have a tip or two about what to do to resolve it? We're creating an SPF record to see if that helps - we really want at least some of our mail to get through to AOL. We plan to make the switch next week. Thank you, dennis e-aa.org List keeper -- Mailman-Users mailing list Mailman-Users@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/mailman-users Mailman FAQ: http://www.python.org/cgi-bin/faqw-mm.py Searchable Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/mailman-users%40python.org/ Unsubscribe: http://mail.python.org/mailman/options/mailman-users/archive%40jab.org Security Policy: http://www.python.org/cgi-bin/faqw-mm.py?req=showamp;file=faq01.027.htp
Re: [Mailman-Users] spam, AOL and server names
At 7:59 AM -0500 3/20/07, Dennis Morgan wrote: A persistent problem we've had is a significant amount of our users are AOL - and many are clueless. We're pretty ruthless about deleting AOL users when we get a report that someone is using their spam button - but even so a lot (most) of our mail to AOL gets rejected. We've decided that part of the problem is we're using an older version of majordomo. See also FAQ 3.42. I *think* another part of our problem can be found in this bit of our dns report from dnsstuff.com: ~~~ OK: All of your mailservers have their host name in the greeting: mail.e-aa.org: 220 dedicated.bixbycreek.com ESMTP Sendmail 8.12.10/8.12.10; Tue, 20 Mar 2007 05:44:34 -0800 ~ In other words our mailing domain name is different than our mail server domain name. That shouldn't be an issue. I send e-mail as [EMAIL PROTECTED], although I may use any number of different servers as my outbound mail relay for those messages depending on where I am, what computer I'm using and what network it uses to access the Internet, etc Only really stupid people check the domain name of your envelope sender and require that it be sent from a machine with a matching domain name. I've run into some stupid people like this, but I'm pretty sure they're not doing this at AOL -- we weeded out that kind of stupidity years ago, when I was the Sr. Internet Mail Administrator at AOL. ~ WARNING: One or more of your mailservers is claiming to be a host other than what it really is (the SMTP greeting should be a 3-digit code, followed by a space or a dash, then the host name). If your mailserver sends out E-mail using this domain in its EHLO or HELO, your E-mail might get blocked by anti-spam software. This is also a technical violation of RFC821 4.3 (and RFC2821 4.3.1). Note that the hostname given in the SMTP greeting should have an A record pointing back to the same server. Note that this one test may use a cached DNS record. mail.eaachat.org claims to be non-existent host dedicated.eaachat.org: 220 dedicated.eaachat.org ESMTP I don't think that this is a problem, either. But I'd need to see for myself to be certain. I'm assuming that both of the above problems are part of our AOL problems. Am I correct? And if so - does anyone have a tip or two about what to do to resolve it? We're creating an SPF record to see if that helps - we really want at least some of our mail to get through to AOL. We plan to make the switch next week. Don't use SPF. Don't use it anywhere. It causes way more problems than it can possibly solve. Everything I said back in 2004 on this subject is still applicable today, if not more so. See http://bradknowles.typepad.com/considered_harmful/2004/05/spf.html. -- Brad Knowles [EMAIL PROTECTED], Consultant Author LinkedIn Profile: http://tinyurl.com/y8kpxu Slides from Invited Talks: http://tinyurl.com/tj6q4 -- Mailman-Users mailing list Mailman-Users@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/mailman-users Mailman FAQ: http://www.python.org/cgi-bin/faqw-mm.py Searchable Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/mailman-users%40python.org/ Unsubscribe: http://mail.python.org/mailman/options/mailman-users/archive%40jab.org Security Policy: http://www.python.org/cgi-bin/faqw-mm.py?req=showamp;file=faq01.027.htp
