Some background information. We are a web hosting company. We sell shared hosting accounts. I'm not sure how familiar everyone on this list is with this. Basically we rent server and IP space from various datacenters/server companies throughout the world and then split that server up into multiple shared hosting accounts. We use cPanel, maybe you are familiar with that.
Having said all of that, we don't actually own any of the servers or IP addresses that are used. But we are a steward of that server and everything associated with it (at least that's how we work, maybe other hosting companies react differently?) So while we really only have control over the IP address listed, there may be other IPs in that subnet that are behaving badly. We don't have any control over that. And yes, that is sometimes an issue with blacklists as they might tend to block an entire class C or subnet regardless of which IPs are behaving badly. I also can't speak to past behaviors of these IPs. So all this talk about this IP being owned by Tailor Made Servers or dfw-datacenter.com, that's certainly valid. Should this process all go through Tailor Made Servers? I suppose you can make that argument. But they have no vested interest in getting this resolved, they're not the ones having customers screaming at them because they can't send out mail to hotmail and outlook. That's why I typically try to resolve these issues myself if at all possible. Back to this particular issue... the part that really upsets me, is that Hotmail/Outlook was blocking this IP address and would not cop to it. Please explain to me the argument where they can say they were not blocking the IP address. Maybe it's true that they weren't blocking the 67.222.128.248 IP specifically. Maybe they were blocking the 67.222.128.0/24 or 67.222.128.0/19 network. I don't know. But regardless - 67.222.128.248 is in that subnet. Don't tell me you aren't blocking it when you are blocking it and I show you direct evidence that you are blocking it. I don't know how Microsoft/Outlook/Hotmail support works. I'm assuming you initially get a low level tech, they plug an IP address into a tool and it spits back if its blocked. If that's the case, then this tool needs to be looked at as it's not working properly. It's not searching a full subnet or it's just not looking deep enough into why an IP address might be blocked. Secondly - when I provide evidence that Outlook/Hotmail is in fact blocking the message and if the low level tech is not able to determine why. Don't close the ticket. Escalate the ticket up until you can find someone that understands that Outlook/Hotmail is in fact blocking the IP and (hopefully) give me some remediation steps. This is not what was happening. I opened ticket after ticket after ticket, each time showing them this raw SMTP transaction and that Outlook/Hotmail was blocking the IP and requesting escalation. Each time, they would respond with "I don't see where we are blocking the IP" and come to find out, they were closing the tickets. If the answer is "We're blocking all of Tailor Made Servers" at least give me that. Give me something. The handling of this situation was about as poor as poor could be. To a greater scope of dealing with blacklisted IPs, I do realize it's a thin line. I like to think we do a pretty good job of keeping spam abusers off of our servers. But when Outlook/Hotmail or AT&T or any other major system that uses a private blacklist blocks our IPs and when none of the major public blacklists (Spamhaus, Spamcop, CBL, etc) are showing any issues, that's when I start to get a bit skeptical. Are you blocking our IPs just because you can? Or do you have legitimate evidence of spam being sent from our IPs? If you operate a blacklist, you really need to understand that we (the stewards of that IP) can't really do anything to stop this activity without a little bit of information as to why you are blacklisting the IP. Now I understand that's a thin line - you can't exactly give out the information that lead to the blacklisting because what if I'm a spammer and I'm trying to learn how to circumvent your system? I get that, I really do. But if I'm not seeing any evidence of spamming in our logs or in any other public blacklists, it's really just impossible for us to know which user on the server sent you the spam and offer any assurances that it won't happen again. Back to this particular issue with Outlook/Hotmail. I am happy to report that this issue appears to have been resolved. Unfortunately, I had to open so many tickets and reply to so many tickets, post every where I could find to try and get someone's attention to this matter - I do not know what ultimately lead to this resolution. I still stand by my points from above that there is a huge disconnect with the tools and procedures that Outlook/Hotmail used within this incident. Whatever problems exist there, I would hope that Outlook/Hotmail uses this as a learning experiences and works to resolve those issues so that others can avoid such a frustrating week. _______________________________________________ mailop mailing list mailop@mailop.org https://chilli.nosignal.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mailop
