the authors of RFC 2317 have a question for at&t worldnet
(this must be my week for past-sins pennance related to RBL's.) today someone whose e-mail was blocked when they tried to send it to an at&t customer, asked the authors of RFC 2317 to please unblock their address. as the only such author whose e-mail address hasn't changed since RFC publication i pretty much assumed that the other two guys weren't hearing this, and so i investigated. the complainer showed me this text: <foo@att.net>: host gateway2.att.net[12.102.240.23] said: 550-24.248.126.43 blocked by ldap:ou=rblmx,dc=worldnet,dc=att,dc=net 550 Blocked for abuse. See http://www.att.net/general-info/rblinquiry.html" (in reply to MAIL FROM command) i looked at the URL thus indicated, and the link for Information for end-users whose messages have been blocked. is http://www.att.net/general-info/mail_info/block_enduser.html which says: What to do: Ask your system administrator to submit identifying information to the DNS. For more information, your administrator should refer to http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc2317.html In the meantime, you should use a fully registered domain for sending your messages, such as the mail system from an ISP or one of the major free e-mail services. now, i count myself as a master of the obscure reference, but this is over the top. can someone from at&t worldnet please contact me for the purpose of explaining what RFC 2317 could possibly have to do with spam complaints? (and btw, if you're going to block inbound e-mail, you need to give senders some idea of how to get unblocked. not for fairness, just for practicality. and this parenthesized paragraph is why i count this screed as not-off-topic.)
I'm not from AT&T, but that page contains three errors and three "What to do" sections. The section referring to RFC 2317 is for DNS errors: “550 Error. Blocked for status: <unknown sender>”: This error indicates that no identifying information has been entered into the DNS (Domain Name System) for this sending system. The AT&T Worldnet mail system, like many others, does not accept messages from mail systems with no DNS records. The "Spam complaint" section has a different "What to do:" What to do: Ask the administrator of your mail system to contact us through our System Administrators' page and provide the information we need to investigate the problem. Paul Vixie wrote:
What to do: Ask your system administrator to submit identifying information to the DNS. For more information, your administrator should refer to http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc2317.html In the meantime, you should use a fully registered domain for sending your messages, such as the mail system from an ISP or one of the major free e-mail services.
now, i count myself as a master of the obscure reference, but this is over the top. can someone from at&t worldnet please contact me for the purpose of explaining what RFC 2317 could possibly have to do with spam complaints?
On 2/1/07, Paul Vixie <paul@vix.com> wrote:
(and btw, if you're going to block inbound e-mail, you need to give senders some idea of how to get unblocked. not for fairness, just for practicality. and this parenthesized paragraph is why i count this screed as not-off-topic.)
Putting on my sender hat, I see that the URL you link to leads one to: http://www.att.net/general-info/mail_info/block_admin.html I've had some client issues in the past that have necessitated use of that process. I have found that AT&T is fairly responsive regarding sender blocking issues. There are many other ISPs whom I wish were as good at publishing info and offering a contact channel. Al Iverson -- Al Iverson on Spam and Deliverabilty, see http://www.spamresource.com Message copyright 2007 by Al Iverson. For posts to SPAM-L, permission is granted only to this lists's owners to redistribute to their sub- scribers and to archive this message on site(s) under their control.
participants (3)
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Al Iverson -
Albert Meyer -
Paul Vixie