[wellylug] [OT] Ihug Blacklisted?

[Ewen McNeill]

In message <1123562245.1623.11.camel at amber.localdomain>, Jethro Carr writes:
>I always bcc mail to myself, and today, all my email sent to myself have
>been tagged as 'spam' by spam assassin!

Since you say it's not been a problem before I assume that what's
changed is the RCVD_IN_DSBL entry -- and the various DUL penalties (for
sending directly from a dialup IP address) have always been there, but
not sigificant enough to trip the threshold.

According to the http://dsbl.org/listing?203.173.151.71 URL given in the
SpamAssassin report, that IP address was found (once) to be an open
relay.  Given that it's a dial up address, that presumably means that
someone who got that IP address at some previous time was running an
open relay at a time someone happene to check.

Your options at this point:
- play the game the way the Internet mail administrators have settled on
  (ie, all "dynamic" users send through their ISPs mail server as a
  smart host)

- (somehow) get a static IP address (probably nearly impossible with
  dialup these days; but achievable with most "broadband" options)

- use AUTH-SMTP or similar to send your mail via some mail server you
  run, on a "good" IP address (ie, not listed in any RBLs)

- permanently whitelist your RFC2821 source address (rather than just
  relying on the auto whitelist, which isn't giving enough of a niceness
  bonus)

- raise your "it's spam" threshold to a more conventional level (IME
  tweaking the weighting of rules is more effective than dropping the
  threshold below 5)

- if it happens, hang up, and call back hoping for a "better" IP address

- live with your mail being marked as spam

Dynamic IP addresses are a huge pain for mail filtering, so lots of mail
admins, and lots of mail filtering software, automatically penalise them
(and/or block them outright), and you're going to get random noise from
other people's use of those IP addresses interfering with what you do
from time to time.  There are also various admins that wholesale block a
lot of cable/ADSL/etc access networks around the world, simply because
they tend to contain hosts that get 0wn3d and used as spam/virus/etc
sources.

The only real fix to the problem is real mail servers on static IP
address, the way the protocol was originally designed to be used.
Be it one you run or one that someone provides for you (eg, an ISP).
At least that way the IP address carries a real reputation (good or
bad).

Ewen