Earthlink/CBL Update
An update on the previous CBL/Earthlink issue posted about here:
http://www.dreamhoststatus.com/2007/01/03/cblxbl-blacklist-issues-bouncing-mail/
CBL temporarily inhibited our IPs from being blocked several days ago, so our listings there (and with XBL/spamhaus) have ceased. We’re still talking with them to get this resolved permanently, and our IPs should not be blocked by them in the meantime. As many of you noticed, however, mail to Earthlink is still being blocked.
We have been emailing Earthlink since 12/30, before we ever contacted CBL. After 6 emails we unfortunately haven’t received anything but autoresponses from Earthlink’s blacklist/abuse address. We’ve spoken with their techs via chat and phone and have not been able to get through to anyone above their first tier of support; attempts to transfer to a supervisor were met with 20 minutes on hold and the call being dumped.
We will still be attempting to contact Earthlink to get this particular issue resolved, but if you are an Earthlink customer and are being impacted by this (such as if you utilize forwarding to an Earthlink address — and we know there are several thousand of you), you may wish to contact their support and let them know that we have been writing them to get information about this block and how it can be resolved. If they are so inclined, they may even contact us directly at abuse@dreamhost.com!
Finally, I do apologize for the impact on everyone. Blacklistings are no fun for anyone, and unfortunately we’ve found that large ISPs are the biggest headache to get de-listed from, as it’s incredibly hard for us to get a human response out of them. Still, we can’t fix the problem on our end (if there is one) without them responding to us to let us know what the problem is. There needs to be a reasonable amount of earnest communication on both ends for these issues to be resolved, and we are certainly trying to meet our end of the bargain there! We aren’t shy about disabling spammers when we find them, and certifiable spammers are actually pretty rare on our primary SMTP machines judging by the (few) complaints we get.
Thanks to everyone for continued patience, which understandably may be wearing thin!
.
January 6th, 2007 at 4:10 pm
Holy cow, Earthlink sucks. I’ve actually been carrying a notice on our business’s Contact page advising people using Earthlink to write from another address. I just had a bounce from mindscape.com, too (related). If this keeps up I will probably block Earthlink customers to avoid problems — it would be easier than moving a whole site.
January 6th, 2007 at 4:11 pm
Actually not BLOCK earthlink customers but rather not allow orders to be made from an Earthlink address.
January 6th, 2007 at 4:24 pm
I hear of Earthlink/Comcast/AOL doing this crap BLing to the smaller ISPs and it is really disgusting. If I were DH, I would seriously consider unloading on them via legal channels. That may make them angrier, but if you’re not getting any response from them and you remain blacklisted, it’s not getting any worse for you. They need to be told firmly they can’t destroy someone’s business and have people keep cow-towing to them. Enough is enough.
January 6th, 2007 at 4:50 pm
Conrad -
> I hear of Earthlink/Comcast/AOL doing this crap BLing to the smaller ISPs and it is really
> disgusting. If I were DH, I would seriously consider unloading on them via legal channels.
While it’s tempting on some level, there’s one simple fact that would prevent us from doing that: Their network, their rules.
We don’t have the right to dictate whom Earthlink should accept inbound network traffic (including email) from. Doing so would set a dangerous precedent for the Internet as a whole.
Companies can and should be able to choose whom they allow onto their networks based on whatever criteria they want. If they are unreasonable, though, they should expect to be publicly called on it.
- Jeff C @ DreamHost
January 6th, 2007 at 4:51 pm
Idea: add a nice little iptables (or whatever firewall you use) rule to redirect all customers on Earthlink to a page saying: “Your ISP currently blacklists us. Since they refuse to deal with us in a pleasant manner, we’d like to request that you, the concerned client, contact them and share your feelings about this.” At the bottom of the page, have a link to their contact info, and another link saying “continue to ____” (for whatever the site was that the visitor was going to.)
January 6th, 2007 at 4:52 pm
(And no, I wasn’t serious… just dreaming…)
January 6th, 2007 at 5:20 pm
SO this is why all my e-mails are getting bounce back from my client??!!
When will this be resolved? sounds like some lawyers need to make a call to earthlink!
January 6th, 2007 at 6:26 pm
I don’t know if this can be helpful, but an earthlink tech support gave this email and number to contact:
800 ELN SPAM
openrelay@abuse.earthlink.net
Were these the ones you tried earlier - is it worth us trying again?
Thanks!
January 6th, 2007 at 6:40 pm
I use to work for Earthlink Technical Support a long time ago until they started outsourcing to India. All I can say is good luck getting any help. They (at least when I was with them) switched to a per-call payment scheme. This means the company they outsource to gets paid for every call they take. It is in their best interest to get you off the phone as quick as possible as well as make you call back.
January 6th, 2007 at 7:16 pm
Have you tried contacting Earthlink thru their NOC contact, NOC-to-NOC? Sometimes a NOC-to-NOC call can be productive in getting connected to the right people in the abuse department.
http://puck.nether.net/netops/nocs.cgi?ispname=earthlink
January 6th, 2007 at 7:41 pm
I just had a long live chat with Earthlink and I encourage everyone to do the same. If you really want to annoy them, you can get multiple live chat windows going and tie up more than one tech person at a time…it’s rather challenging to keep all those conversations going but it’s tremendous fun! They all forwarded me to supervisor “Eddie A”. I put on my big girl panties and got bitchy…after all, I’ve spent a LOT of money on them every month for 10+ years. And I have plenty of other options for service. The supervisor asked for 24 hours to talk to the engineers and said “It will be resolved”. Yeah, and the check is in the mail….and I’ve got a bridge…and baby baby they’re shipping me out tomorrow. I don’t expect results, but I do believe there are power in numbers. DH please let us know ASAP if you hear anything.
January 6th, 2007 at 8:41 pm
Have you considered having your lawyers talk to their lawyers?
Not necessarily to start a lawsuit, but you have to admit that they do tend to get more attention than first-tier support…
January 6th, 2007 at 9:37 pm
“Have you considered having your lawyers talk to their lawyers?”
Oh, Gawd, No! *That’s* a recipe for disaster if I ever heard one! ‘-)
January 6th, 2007 at 9:59 pm
Simple first plan of attack: “Certified US Mail Letter.” I know, snail mail is SOOO 2006, but that’s the human touch you need. Make ‘em sigh for it. No lawyers, no threats but certainly proof that you’re at least knock on the door and it’s being answered.
January 6th, 2007 at 10:22 pm
Who uses email anymore?
Pfft, you guys are so last decade.
January 7th, 2007 at 2:58 am
Some time in the 1990’s I had to get the Better Business Bureau going on a case of improper billing before people at Earthlink would communicate with me.
January 7th, 2007 at 3:16 am
Well, this lawyer is beyond pissed. This issue came up while I was out trying to have a good time (in Pakistan, Turkey, and Greece) while keeping in touch with clients via email. As with CZM, I’ve been spending money with Earthlink/Mindspring for ten @#@#!@! years, and I’m done with them, now. Absolutely no response to any of my attempts to contact them.
January 7th, 2007 at 8:10 am
It appears that mail to attglobal.net is still being rejected:
: host mx1.prserv.net[12.154.55.40] said:
550-208.97.132.202 blocked by mx.rbl 550 RBL block by MX.RBL - Spammer
(20061219) (in reply to MAIL FROM command)
January 7th, 2007 at 8:57 am
I’ve added this handy PHP code to our Contact “send message” page:
if (strpos($email,”earthlink”) == true)
{
echo (”NOTICE TO EARTHLINK USERS: Earthlink blocks significant amounts of email due to severe blacklisting practices. You may not receive a reply. We strongly recommend hitting \”Back\” and using another email address, otherwise contact us via another method if you don’t get a reply.”);
}
January 7th, 2007 at 9:46 am
Get on a plane and fly to Atlanta and get this fixed. Screw all that chat and waiting on the phone to talk to someone above the first tier tech support. You guys need to get this fixed not all of us customers that are paying you for service. You are a business and need to deal with Earthlink like a business would.
January 7th, 2007 at 9:49 am
Just a reminder! If you have information about a block other than Earthlink, please contact our support or write us directly at abuse (at) dreamhost.com. We will only post about chronic blacklist problems here on the blog. Most blacklist issues can be resolved within 12-24 hours if the “gatekeepers”, so to speak, are responsive.
January 7th, 2007 at 12:20 pm
I swear, some of those companies really get on my nerves. Whenever I deal with a company that provides such rotten service, I always make sure that they know how I feel. I’ve been refunded or given gift certificates for a few hundred dollars now dealing with companies like those.
No matter what problems I’ve had with dreamhost, I don’t think there is much of anything that could make me leave. It’s a great service, and even if problems are resolved slowly, they usually get resolved with little extra problems.
I know who not to do business with: Earthlink.
January 7th, 2007 at 12:24 pm
@ Mike, if they don’t answer emails or phone calls–which are clearly easier to deal with–what would make them respond to a letter?
January 7th, 2007 at 2:01 pm
earthlink’s reaction to this is just horrible. I hope they lose lots of customers.
January 7th, 2007 at 4:30 pm
I talked with someone in abuse at earthlink. they have been removing single blocked IPs in response to each report they get. They need dreamhost to supply all of the IPs of all of their mailservers in order to remove them all. This information is asked for at the bottom of thier auto-responses. I have emailed abuse@dreamhost and requested that
they send earthlink this list. I am confident that this issue will then be resolved.
January 7th, 2007 at 4:38 pm
FYI, i did contact live support. it’s like emailing a wall. the upshot is that this person will “inform the issue to our engineers so there is no need to worry about it
Sebastian P: It is quite unfortunate that one of our best customers has to face such difficulty.”
i’ve cut and pasted the exact reply. this was all after many questions that were irrelevent to the problem. after clearly explaining the issue, the first question was: “are you using an earthlink hosted domain?” Uh, duhhhhhh, if i was, would i be having the problem, or does earthlink tend to blacklist itself…hmmm
January 7th, 2007 at 5:03 pm
Abuseninja — We contacted them with a full list of our primary SMTP IPs a week ago, per the instructions in their autoresponder. I do note from the logs that it looks like a small fraction of mail is now getting through (which is better than earlier last week) but the majority is still blocked. We’ve still received no response, even for the IP(s) that have been de-listed. I sent them all the IPs again today for good measure. Hopefully someone will be reachable over there tomorrow (Monday) morning.
January 7th, 2007 at 5:05 pm
To those who think DH should pursue a legal remedy, wake up. Even if they could (and they can’t) Earthlink undoubtedly has a significant legal department. DH doesn’t have any legal representation on staff, which means DH would go bankrupt paying attorneys to correspond with people Earthlink has on staff.
This is just another case of a big company that doesn’t care about customer service, and I see that a lot. They have so many customers that if they lost a thousand of them they wouldn’t even notice. Companies like this have a different business model than you’d expect. They get the cost of support and service down so low they really don’t care if the lesser quailty makes customrs unhappy or causes a few customers to switch to a different company. Think about it. If they can reduce their support costs by $1 million or $10 million/year (or whatever the number is) by outsourcing to clueless people in India or the Philippines, making you wait on hold for 20 minutes and suffer through multilevel phone menus, sending you useless autoresponses, and so on, how much influence do you think you can have threatening to take your account somewhere else? Threatening to take your business elsewhere doesn’t have much effect anymore with any company anymore. Just take it somewhere else instead.
January 7th, 2007 at 5:29 pm
Hey guys,
I used to work for EarthLink, I’ve forwarded this page on a few people who work there. Hopefully someone will be able to fix this but I really wouldn’t hold my breath. It’s not that anyone doesn’t WANT to help you, it’s that the internal political structure makes it next to impossible.
DH: I recommend you guys call the phone number listed on http://puck.nether.net/netops/nocs.cgi?ispname=earthlink
I doubt anyone has the time to read postmaster / abuse mail there any more, they laid off 75%+ of the competent staff.
January 8th, 2007 at 12:06 am
Yeah, welcome to Earthlink! Your phone and contact experiences are the norm. I dread anytime anything goes wrong with my DSL.
They’re cheap and relatively fast for the buck but god forbid you have a problem and/or don’t know enough to solve it yourself. Most “techs” at Earthlink aren’t! You’ll definitely have to get to tier 1 (even then….)
Thanks for the update(s), keep them coming.
Having dealt with blocking issues with our servers (one of the reasons we’re with you guys!). before I realize it doesn’t get solved quickly.
January 8th, 2007 at 9:06 am
There is a simply bypass that has worked very well for me. I have all my email copied to my gmail account. That gmail account is also set-up to send email messages out as my primary email address, as in me@example.com not me@gmail.com. If I see that there is black listing going on then I simply log into my gmail account and send all my mail through there. I haven’t had any problem getting mail to EarthLink through this bypass method.
January 8th, 2007 at 9:12 am
I’m a computer consultant with a client whose website and email are hosted on Dreamhost. I’ve been working on this issue with her for several days, and I sympathize with Dreamhost about the problem.
This morning I got into a support chat session, which got escalated, with Earthlink about it. I won’t bore you with all the details, but I threatened to cancel my membership and recommend all my clients who use Earthlink do the same, if they did not get this resolved. I was told there are no engineers on right now who can help, try again tomorrow.
The tech I ended up with (Steven T.) recommended that bounceback messages received by Dreamhost customers should be forwarded to: openrelay@abuse.earthlink.net .
I suggest a deluge.
January 8th, 2007 at 9:23 am
I tried that email earlier - it bounces back.I am not sure if it is a good one.
January 8th, 2007 at 9:27 am
Re: Jim Hill –
I received the same address from an Earthlink chat rep days ago and unfortunately it emanates the same autoresponder as blockedbyearthlink@abuse.earthlink.net. I’ve received no (real) responses to mail sent there, either. A deluge would likely only slow things down, as fun as it may seem at first!
As Jeff@DreamHost alluded to on 1/06 above, diplomacy is really the only answer. They may never unblock us (hopefully won’t be the case), but that is their decision (and the right of any network owner, regarding traffic coming into their personal network), as it is the decision of email customers whether they want to remain with a company that may be acting unresponsive to complaints of legitimate email being rejected from their mailbox. Ultimately we’re all on the same side here — the side of reducing/preventing spam to the highest extent possible with the resources available. The problem exists when CompanyA’s abuse department will not communicate with CompanyB’s abuse department to work together to resolve the problem. This is not an adversarial process, though frustration with running up against a wall may make it feel like it is.
January 8th, 2007 at 2:40 pm
Hi.
Got no where with outsourced support…got abuse voice mail when I called their corporate office at 404-815-0770 and asked operator for abuse department.
I post the automatic reply I got from Earthlink just in case the subject formatting hasn’t been followed already by Dreamhost…
“reply back to blockedbyearthlink@abuse.earthlink.net with “BLOCKED
” in the subject line with the IP inserted. blockedbyearthlink@abuse.earthlink.net
does not block any mail sent to it…”
Good luck!
Jim
From: Earthlink Abuse Department … Flag Message | Mark Unread
To: anearthlinkaddress
Subject: Re: Email bouncing to Earthlink customers from {our domain}
Date: Jan 8, 2007 4:31 PM
Thank you for writing openrelay@abuse.earthlink.net.
PLEASE READ THE ENTIRE EMAIL TO RESOLVE YOUR ISSUE
This address is only for issues where EarthLink appears to be blocking a mail server
and mail is returned with the the following error messages: “550 Dynamic IPs/open
relays blocked.”
EarthLink may be blocking your mail server because the server is listed in a dynamic
IP range, is listed as an open proxy, is listed as a compromised machine, or is
major source of spam.
In order to help you with your issue we will need some information from you. If
you are the administrator of this mail server, please follow the instructions below
before emailing us back.
If you do not know what IP address your server is sending with, please contact
the mail administrator of your company or your ISP and have them follow the instructions
below.
If you are the administrator of the email server being blocked, please know you
may be able to expedite unblocking by checking to see if your mail server is listed
in the following lists and resolving before emailing us:
http://cbl.abuseat.org/lookup.cgi
Info from their site states: “What is the CBL? The CBL takes its source data
from very large spamtraps/mail infrastructures, and only lists IPs exhibiting characteristics
which are specific to open proxies of various sorts (HTTP, socks, AnalogX, wingate
etc) which have been abused to send spam, worms/viruses that do their own direct
mail transmission, or some types of trojan-horse or “stealth” spamware,
without doing open proxy tests of any kind. In other words, the CBL only lists
IPs that have attempted to send email to one of our servers in such a way as to
indicate that the sending IP is infected.” EarthLink blocks mail from all
known proxies/zombies because they are major sources of spam.
http://www.spamhaus.org/sbl/index.lasso
Info from their site states: “Spamhaus tracks the Internet’s Spammers,
Spam Gangs and Spam Services, provides dependable realtime anti-spam protection
for Internet networks, and works with Law Enforcement to identify and pursue spammers
worldwide.” EarthLink blocks mail from all known major sources of spam.
http://www.us.sorbs.net/lookup.shtml
Info from their site states: “Users of dynamically assigned IP addresses,
please note that SORBS is not identifying you as a spammer. SORBS is identifying
you as a dynamic IP address user, nothing more, nothing less.” EarthLink
blocks all known dynamic space from sending directly to our mail servers. Dynamic
users should be sending their mail out through their ISP’s static outbound
mail servers, or their company’s static outbound mail server.
Other spam databases to determine if your mail server IP has spam issues:
http://www.dnsstuff.com
http://www.moensted.dk/spam/
If your IP is not on any of these lists, is not dynamic, is not an open relay/proxy/zombie,
please reply back to blockedbyearthlink@abuse.earthlink.net with “BLOCKED
” in the subject line with the IP inserted. blockedbyearthlink@abuse.earthlink.net
does not block any mail sent to it, so we are asking for your mail to be sent to
us in this format to help us sort out spam from legitimate reports. All reports
sent to this address, not using this format will receive this auto response. This
process will allow us minimize the amount of time to resolve any blocking issues.
Thank you for your cooperation,
EarthLink Abuse
January 8th, 2007 at 3:04 pm
> I was told there are no engineers on right now who can help, try again tomorrow.
Therein may lie the problem. We’ve heard second-hand from someone who seems to be in-the-know that Earthlink’s abuse team is pretty much down to a skeleton crew these days and they may be swamped with dealing with some new email-related product they just released. So, they may just be backed up.
- Jeff @ DreamHost
January 8th, 2007 at 3:19 pm
I also just spent some quality time on Earthlink’s Live Chat with Harry N. He was plenty nice. Gave me lots of easy answers; all of which had been mentioned above. Then he gave me this number: 888-356-7766 and said a live person from Open Relay would be standing by to help me immediately. Of course the number just leads to a recording a place to leave a message. Thanks Harry N!!
You might want to call that number if you haven’t already, Jeff, and leave a message with more specific information. Thanks.
January 8th, 2007 at 3:22 pm
Jeff, and others.
I just tried to send to trigger a bounce. I sent from 2 separately hosted domains and my email arrived. Now technically it’s not an earthlink.net address (it was an acquisition of Earthlink’s back in 2001.)
However, it _was_ bouncing to that domain earlier (including today.)
You might try and email someone you know on Earthlink to see if it’s still bouncing for you.
Take care.
Jim
January 8th, 2007 at 3:25 pm
When I send mail through Dreamhost’s SMTP servers here’s what ends up in the header:
Received: from [192.168.1.101] (69-12-131-xxx.dsl.dynamic.sonic.net [69.12.131.xxx])
by spunkymail-a9.dreamhost.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id E137220C27
for ; Wed, 3 Jan 2007 17:17:49 -0800 (PST)
“spunkymail-a9.dreamhost.com” resolves to “10.3.42.100″, a private 10.* address that is not routable from any mainstream IP address. Dreamhost appears to be forging my outgoing mail headers to describe impossible connections, and Earthlink and the other RBLs appear to be rejecting legitimate mail based on these forgeries.
I’m very curious why Dreamhost is publishing bogus A records on the outside wire.
January 8th, 2007 at 4:04 pm
I just spent 2.5 hours on the phone with Earthlink.
First, I spoke with “William” in tech support who just kept saying “I understand what you are saying” … which was totally annoying. I told him that I must speak NOW with someone in a higher level than his supervisor; he said that he would put me into “third tier” support.
I waited on hold for awhile and then got “George”. I specifically asked George what title or position he held there at Earthlink and he said he was in “Delta Support” which handles higher level problems. Uh huh … right.
George and I “danced around the Maypole” a few times with him asking me about MY email client, etc.
(Why does tech support ALWAYS think it is the user’s computer!?)
George must have been a bit “higher” in the food chain there at Earthlink, because I refused to give him my email password and simply by confirming a response to a question, he got into my Earthlink email.
George claimed no foreknowledge of the problems with Dreamhost. Nada. Zip. Zilch.
I emailed myself a copy of the DreamhostStatus statement and George was able to see it.
He gave me a case number. He told me to keep sending the bounced emails to abuse@abuse.earthlink.net. He told me to wait 48 hours.
I explained that it is not just ONE freakin’ website with a problem … but an entire webhost who is being blocked!
I have been with Earthlink(Mindspring) for ten years as my “backup” dial-up in the event my cable goes down or a hotel does not have service … and I told George that if I am willing to dump Earthlink, so perhaps are thousands of others.
So … I did as was requested: “you may wish to contact their support and let them know that we have been writing them to get information about this block and how it can be resolved” … I sure hope everyone else who forwards mail through Earthlink will contact them too.
If for any reason … to simply annoy them into acting upon this!
January 8th, 2007 at 5:05 pm
Don’t make threats…make promises. Instead of threatening to dump Earthlink’s service…dump Earthlink’s service via telephone and tell the rep exactly why you are doing so. No company in their right mind listens to threats made by customers because more often than not they do not pan out. Put your money where your mouth is and kick the service to the curb…that is how you get things done in the business world.
January 8th, 2007 at 5:07 pm
This is of course directed to use…the irritated DH customer. DH is really in a tight spot and they need our support.
January 8th, 2007 at 8:06 pm
I am a new customer of DreamHost, and, after working out a few glitches in moving our four sites here — all with our Webmaster on vacation till February — I can feel insufferably proud of myself. But DreamHost’s support really helped make it happen, by pointing me in a couple directions I would have otherwise overlooked.
As to EarthLink: I was once going to write a book for them, back about a decade ago. I got paid for it, but ended up mutually agreeing with the publisher to get out of the project because I couldn’t take dealing with EarthLink’s inability to make up their minds.
In any case, I used to be a GoDaddy customer, and they have issues where they block incoming mail from legitimate sources. I personally intervened to get one block removed (a public library, believe it or not) and another involved a tiny, but law-abiding ISP, which I never followed up on.
I ended up moving my email to Webmail.us, and that’s a possible alternative if EarthLink keeps blocking DreamHost customers. I know you don’t want to pay extra for something you get free here, but if business mail is important, you should consider the alternatives that work for you. Webmail.us charges you $60 per year for five 1GB mailboxes, and include SSL support on IMAP, and a very powerful junk mail filter.
Peace,
Gene
January 8th, 2007 at 9:06 pm
okay…Get this: I sent an email to openrelay@abuse.earthlink.net in response to reading these threads and getting ANOTHER client email returned. Basically telling them to get up and smell the roses…So I just got this:
: host
dillinger.admin.atl.earthlink.net[207.69.200.23] said: 550 Unknown local
part openrelay in (in reply to RCPT TO
command)
Guess I need to resend from an alternative email account…
January 8th, 2007 at 9:16 pm
Well, after sending from my comcast account:
The following addresses had delivery problems:
Permanent Failure: 550_Unknown_local_part_openrelay_in_
Delivery last attempted at Tue, 9 Jan 2007 04:08:12 -000
I think I will inform all clients on earthlink that they should consider moving since they are probably losing business…
January 8th, 2007 at 10:42 pm
It sounds like it’s time for a lawsuit!
I would not be surprised if Dreamhost customers are leaving to go to Laughing Squid or Media Temple. I know lots of people and organizations who have already left DH because of the frequent downtime. I’m still here, but when my time gets eaten up by dealing with my users who can’t send email or the site is down, it’s tempting…
Sue them!
January 8th, 2007 at 10:47 pm
BTW, does anyone know if this will affect my “Announce Lists” (aka mailing lists)? Isn’t the system set up to unsubscribe people if they bounce back too many times? Will my organization lose a big chunk of our subscribers? This is a very scary thought. We can’t pay the rent for our arts space if we can’t get people to come to our shows…
January 9th, 2007 at 3:43 am
Some of you have to quit whining here. It is not Earthlink’s fault that Dreamhost is having this problem. It simply shows that Dreamhost does not do a good enough of a job to block spam. Remember, will your clients leave Earthlink because your website does not work properly, I really doubt it. They will simply visit another website. Also, let’s get realistic here on a couple of issues. First, one customer really does not make a difference. Even 1000 does not. So, all of you threatening to leave will not make a difference to Earthlink. It is the same reason why people don’t vote, because one vote really does not make a difference. Think about it this way. How often are elections decided by one vote? Rarely! Someone might point out Florida in 2000. But as a Florida resident, even if I voted, it still would not have made a difference. Some might argue that elections turn out certain way because people have the crappy attitude I have, but they need to understand that whether I voted or not still would not make a difference.
Finally, some of you complain about outsourcing. Tech support was just as bad as before versus after. No better no worse. It is just you people who are just have racial prejudices against non-whites. If you have a problem, leave Earthlink. Earthlink does not mind if you leave. You can leave anytime. After all, America is a free country.
January 9th, 2007 at 5:38 am
We’re so terribly impressed at what a pointless and unassertive existence you lead, Lola. Thank you for sharing.
January 9th, 2007 at 9:47 am
This is ridiculous!!! I’m waiting for a call back from a supposed “engineer” at Earthlink. Perhaps this will get resolved…
Here’s a questions…what if it doesn’t…
What do we do?
January 9th, 2007 at 10:00 am
I think this whole thing comes down to Earthlink being a horrible provider. What kind of business wont return your calls and never get something solved. I dont think it matters whos fault it is as long as it gets fixed, and earthlink is failing miserably. Lola thanks for the “One vote doesnt count” speach. I wonder what would happen if the whole world subscribed to your awesome wisdom. MMM pure anarchy, what a wonderful world that would be! Anyway thought I would add my 2 cents to this wonderful blog and hope everyone reading this is 2 cents richer.
Me
January 9th, 2007 at 11:32 am
WOW mentioned “what would happen if the whole world subscribed to your awesome wisdom.” However, I don’t mind if other people vote. Even if I joined others and voted, my vote would not have made any difference. Other people still voted.
January 9th, 2007 at 1:27 pm
I have numerous employees here that cant email some of our customers because they are on earthlink or peoplepc. I really need this issue of our emails being blocked by them. Our customers are getting really ticked off that its taking us forever to get back to them. Get Dreamhost unblocked NOW! Its been 5 freakin days… Geeze!
January 9th, 2007 at 5:56 pm
Can you please post more updates? Is anything happening or are you just waiting?
January 9th, 2007 at 6:03 pm
Yes, this *is* a problem that needs resolution. It’s not just Earthlink, it’s AOL, peoplepc, and perhaps others.
And, while Lola may be wrong about one vote, she’s right in that the problem is shared by DH.
A decent sized hosting provider should have some working relationships with the NOC’s of the major account holders. ‘Hanging on the phone with “Tom X.” in India for 20 minutes’ isn’t how I want my hosting provider to be working with the rest of the internet infrastructure. Telling the customers that “they just won’t talk to us” doesn’t solve the problem or shift the onus to Earthlink et al.
If DM needs to invest in better anti-spam technology in order to play with the big boys, they need to either decide to do that, manage a compromise with them, or let us know it’s not going to happen.
Either way, after a week or two, I think it’s reasonable for us to either have a resolution, or have a plan. And, it’s been almost a week already with Earthlink, it’s been ages with AOL.
Thanks, Steve.
January 10th, 2007 at 2:30 am
The unfortunate reality is, that DreamHost was blocked for a reason.
How long they stay blocked isn’t determined necessarily by how quickly they fix the problem - the length of time could be arbitrary.
All I can suggest to DreamHost is that they make sure much less (preferably no) spam leaves their network.
It’s actually not a very difficult thing to do - there is a perceived inconvenience to the customer, but I doubt many would object to certain tactics:
1. Force all outbound port 25 traffic through a smarthost that requires authentication - prevents pretty much all CGI exploits and other web-app weaknesses used to spam.
2. Put limits on how much outbound mail each account can send per day, and tune it dynamically based on how “good” the account is over time.
3. Set up feedback loop addresses for people like AOL and EarthLink to send you spam reports, if you haven’t already.
That’s a start, then maybe you won’t get blocked
January 10th, 2007 at 9:07 am
I don’t think it was a spam problem. From what I read the load balancing that is done on the mail servers appeared to be a bot or something similar. This flagged the account on a blacklist and Earthlink grabbed it. The problem was quickly taken care of on the blacklist side but Earthlink will not update their list. I like how we all think we know what is best for DH when we don’t know 80% of the situation. Crap happens in the world of IT and if Earthlink isnt going to be willing to chat then how can we sit here and complain. I am not saying that it is pleasant but who are all you to sit here and talk. I would guess the people with the most to say know the least about how an email server even works or why things get blacklisted. I have personally tried to contact Earthlink on many occasions per day getting nowhere. I have sent the blocked ip’s in a number of times with nothing but the autoresponse. If anything we should get onto an Earthlink blog and bash their service reputation. I have been a customer for a while now and if there was something that could be done i know DH would do it. I have started suggesting to my clients a switch of email accounts so as to avoid any future problems with this company and will continue to do so, even after this gets solved. Well I guess that’s all for now. P.S. this is not directed at anyone so please dont send me hate mail or mail bombs or anything like that. I am only voicing DH side a little as I feel bad for the one sidedness.
Chris
January 10th, 2007 at 10:15 am
Just wanted to second Basak’s request for a new update. I’ve got antsy clients here and being able to point them to evidence that DH is at least still working on this would be helpful… Thanks.
January 10th, 2007 at 11:16 am
UPDATES FROM DH AS TO THIS PROBLEM ARE NEEDED!
Piss poor how tech support is handling this HUGE issue. We may lose customers over this one. If so, I may lose DH and take my clients with me.
Please give us all an update DH!
January 10th, 2007 at 11:22 am
A couple of my webmail customers are complaining that they are able to send and receive their webmail thru Outlook but not all their emails are being received by their customers whom I suspect are using AOL, Yahoo, Earthlink. Gmail and other such free mail services. They tried to send one to my Yahoo and GMail accounts (yes I have those still–for stuff like this) and I did not get either of them. I have had people complain in the past that their customers/clients have emails rejected because their addresses on DH servers are blacklisted. What can I tell these people? They keep calling and I have no answers for them! What is the benefit of webmail @ yourdomain.com if it’s going to be a disaster like his?
January 10th, 2007 at 11:31 am
Well it’s been how many days–12? 14?–since this Earthlink/DH problem started. And it’s been 4 days since DH has given us an update. No fixes, no updates, no e-mails back, no responses, no assurances that this situation is ever going to get fixed–I’m feeling very flipped off by BOTH businesses. I won’t run MY business that way so I have to do what I need to do to keep my clients happy, informed and confident in my abilities or they’ll leave. That’s the way of the marketplace. In this case, I’m trying to be fair and equitable so–after a gazillion years of untroubled service–I’m leaving both DH and Earthlink. Yes, I’ll probably run into this problem again, but I’ve signed up with a new ISP/host service that has a reputation for great service and great communication–live American techs available 365/24/7. Yes, I’m paying more. But I’ve learned my lesson that some things are worth paying extra for. I hope Earthlink gets what they deserve. But I wish DH all the luck in the world and that this will be a growth opportunity for them. Bye guys, miss you!
January 10th, 2007 at 12:14 pm
Would you mind sharing the name of the company? That is what I need to do, as well.
January 10th, 2007 at 12:41 pm
Still not working.
January 10th, 2007 at 1:51 pm
I found the following workaround for DreamHost customers who forward their incoming mail to an earthlink address: (1) I opened a new, free email account @gmail.com; (2) I set the incoming DreamHost mail to be automatically forwarded to the new gmail address; and (3) I then set up the gmail account to automatically forward all its incoming mail to my earthlink account. It works like a charm.
But we STILL cannot send DH email to those of our customers who have email accounts with Earthlink, AOL, etc.!!! Earthlink advises that the reason DH mail is being bounced is because it is susceptible to third party manipulation (whatever that means). DH we need an update please!!!
Ken
Ken
January 10th, 2007 at 3:43 pm
EarthLink Abuse told me that all dreamhost mailserver IPs have been removed from their blocklist and that it would take anywhere from 2 hours to 24 hours for this change to propagate everywhere.
January 11th, 2007 at 10:04 am
my family has been telling me that my email was bouncing and now i realize why!!!! i’m an earthlink customer in atlanta less than 5 miles from earthlink headquarters and my connection still sucks. this email crap makes me want to switch but i’ve already suffered under comcast and i don’t want to give bellsouth/cingular/at&t any more money than i have to. gah.
January 11th, 2007 at 11:49 am
I’ve moved both my hosting and ISP to speakeasy.net. Yeah, yeah, it costs a bunch more. But the money I’ve lost so far this year–and the time dealing with problems equals $$–has been more than the extra cost of speakeasy.net. They’re the highest rated ISP in the nation right now because they offer awesome 365/24/7 service from live techs in Seattle (never overseas), they e-mail you status updates, they post constant updates on problems, they answer their phones almost immediately and they are incredibly patient with blonde, computer-newbie airheads (like moi). I was also able to boost my ISP speed with them. Sorry, Dreamhost.
January 11th, 2007 at 1:22 pm
Thanks for sharing that czm!
January 11th, 2007 at 2:01 pm
I’ve had a response from Dreamhost that I’d like to share with everyone since they haven’t seen fit to update anything here.
I had already tried to see why Dreamhost ended up on the blacklist on my own and saw the same problem that Earthlink had (That the Dreamhost mail servers do not identify themselves with a public IP address because they are behind the wall on DH’s network).
Basically, its a case of Dreamhost’s setup being more sophisticated than Earthlink is used to deal with.
On Thu, 11 Jan 2007, I wrote:
> Please post a meaningful Earthlink/CBL Status Update to dreamhoststatus.com
> and to the support pages.
>
> We’re going on 10 days of not being able to send e-mails to Earthlink and
> other ISPs. I’m sure other customers share my frustration of not being able
> to send e-mails in question.
>
I told our abuse department, and they tell me they will update the
Dreamhoststatus page once they receive more information from Earthlink.
In the meantime, I will answer your questions as best I can.
> Some examples of meaningful communication are:
>
> 1) How long will Dreamhost IPs remain on the blacklist?
We don’t know right now.
> 2) Why did Dreamhost end up on the blacklist?
It was a misunderstanding on how DNS and mail load-balancing works. Our
reverse DNS doesn’t match the SMTP HELO hostname, and they didn’t like it
every much. The reason our reverse DNS doesn’t match is due to load
balancing.
> 3) What does Earthlink have to say?
They’ve only given us auto-responses and has not been cooperating with us
thus far.
> 4) What are you guys doing to get off the blacklist?
We’ve tried multiple times to contact them to no avail.
> 5) Aside from pressuring our clients and friends to pressure Earthlink, is
> there anything we
> can do?
That’s about it right now! Bugging Earthlink might be the only course of
action at this time.
>
> Thanks!
I’m sorry about this, we want this blocked removed as much as you do!
———– End————-
January 12th, 2007 at 9:56 am
Email from my DH addresses to Earthlink no longer bounces, so I’ve cautiously reactivated forwarding from my domain. However, it would be useful to know whether the blacklist/blocking episode that began on January 2 has been conclusively resolved. How about a status update, Dreamhost? The most recent one was posted last Saturday. Thanks…
January 12th, 2007 at 10:01 am
Oops, just read the rest of the thread including the January 11, 2:01pm update. I’ll keep checking back.
January 12th, 2007 at 11:42 am
Okay, why do we have to rely on customers for an update, Dreamhost?
And the “They won’t talk to us!” excuse has hit its expiration date. In my work, I’ve run up against Echostar, NBC, and AT&T - and even I could get a hold of someone there within a few days.
Not fucking amused.
January 12th, 2007 at 6:04 pm
I write Earthling, EarthLink’s blog, and also have some of my stuff hosted at DH. I’m sorry for any difficulties in getting this resolved, and also apologize that I’m coming in so late to the party. I’m checking with our mail admin team to confirm where this stands.
January 13th, 2007 at 4:29 am
I was black listed by Earthlink when my network provider switched my to what had been previously been a dynamic ip address. I was able to get the issue resolved and get my domains de-listed everywhere EXCEPT Earthlink within two days. I have been trying to get just an acknowledgement from Earthlink for almost two weeks. I have lost contact with a chunk of my users who are getting annoyed with me. I have had to open a gmail account in order to communicate with them. It is very frustrating, and unnecessary. If other vendors can deal with this issue in a reasonable length of time, so should Earthlink.
January 13th, 2007 at 5:34 am
Any idea when this is going to be resolves because this is really bad for business.
January 13th, 2007 at 11:22 am
Well, while signing up for an affiliate program, they requested that I use an email address from my own domain to prove I owned the domain.
The email was returned to them because their mail server doesn’t send to spam blocked mail servers.
The response was “we don’t associate or deal with anyone who promotes and/or utilizes spam in any of our advertising campaigns”.
So, I got dumped like a rock because now I’m a “spammer”.
I hope that DH learns a lesson from this. They should have the adult sites on a different area under a different set of IP’s. They should have a better spam/mail control system.
Looks like I get to spend the weekend shopping for a new host, and the next week moving my sites. The $$$ I saved here wasn’t worth it.
I guess I learned a lesson too.
January 14th, 2007 at 2:27 am
Firstly I understand that dealing with other companies regarding problems can be difficult and lengthy. However that doesn’t not excuse the fact that Dreamhost has not update, either this post or created a new one.
I started having email problems on Friday, so being the patient person I am simply used a webmail account.
Come Sunday I still had problems so I decided to check the status page and contact support. On the GET SUPPORT page there is the Critical announcement explaining the situation. It tells customers to check the dreamhoststatus page. This post is six days old and the Critical Announcement is 3 days old.
On the GET SUPPORT page near the top is the section “Is there a system-wide problem?”. I entered the correct details and asked to be updated. I have just received an update saying
“Outage resolved: No server-wide problem was found.
(2007-01-14 00:58:52 PDT, 0 secs ago)”
I tried to send a mail but it was returned immediately as “Relay access denied”
If there is no system wide failure am I supposed to submit a ticket?
All I want from Dreamhost is clear and current information. Even if it is just a short sentence saying “We are still working on it”.
Thank you.
January 15th, 2007 at 2:06 pm
I agree with Phil. A simple update would be nice. We at least will then understand the issue is still being worked on.
Chris
January 15th, 2007 at 5:55 pm
Philip,
In your case, since the email server was fine, no “system wide” problem. Scroll down to the very end where it says “Doesn’t apply to you?
Click here to submit a support request!” (NOTE that anytime there is not a critical announcement like there is now, you’d see a general support form where you fill out the problem, domain affected, etc.
Having been with Dreamhost since 2001, the ability to report an outage like you did is awesome. See the explananation posted there about how it gets confirmed or shows resolved. (It used to be a support request that might take 24 hours or longer to be responded to; by that time all was fine again and you got a “cheery” message like “No problem found; works for me.”)
Take care.
Jim
January 16th, 2007 at 2:40 am
Jim, thanks for you help.
Still doesn’t excuse DH from not communicating with their customers.
January 16th, 2007 at 4:42 am
I’m now able to send e-mail to Earthlink just fine.
January 16th, 2007 at 9:07 am
It is easy to get a Live Chat with an Earthlink representative. I’ve done it twice concerning this very issue. Dreamhost, have you tried this?
January 17th, 2007 at 7:29 pm
I agree that DreamHost should update users who are affected, like me. It’s not good enough that you are trying to solve the problem. Successful people get problems solved. Make it happen.
January 17th, 2007 at 9:23 pm
Yo neil, how many ISPs have you sucessfully run? None, that’s why your a dh client, so you really don’t know anything do you. moron.
January 19th, 2007 at 2:07 pm
I’ve checked in to this from the EarthLink side and just wanted to confirm that things should be cleared up. We removed the /24 netblock once it was provided to us by DreamHost. Based on the comments from the last couple of days here, it looks like DH customers have confirmed that as well.
January 20th, 2007 at 12:00 am
What has been done for AOL blocking? Should we ever expect that to be cleaned up? Thanks, Steve.
January 20th, 2007 at 5:43 pm
Dave, thanks for doing a better job of keeping us up to date than the DH folks. DH really dropped in my estimation on this one. No more recommendations for them, I’m afraid.
January 24th, 2007 at 11:05 am
Still having emails blocked:
host mxpool.postoffice.net[165.212.65.113] said:
550 Mail from 208.97.132.66 refused. ?Please refer to
http://sendersupport.senderscore.net for an explanation. (in reply to RCPT
TO command)
The link goes to another info about your email being blocked and check blacklisting… blah, blah…
This was not to an Earthlink or AOL address. in googling 208.97.132.66 i found that this has been an issue with DH in Sept 06, according on DH bloggers…
http://blog.dreamhosters.com/forum/troubleshooting/54365-Dreamhost-mail-server-listed-in-spamcop.htm
I am disappointed that there has been no “official” update in the last 2 weeks. Good thing users are talking here!
March 8th, 2007 at 7:12 pm
Was this ever resolved? And if so, has DH been blacklisted again? I thought it was working again for a while, but I had another message rejected by Earthlink today.
host mx3.earthlink.net[209.86.93.228] said: 550 550 Dynamic/zombied/spam IPs blocked. Write blockedbyearthlink@abuse.earthlink.net (in reply to MAIL FROM command)
Reporting-MTA: dns; looneymail-a1.g.dreamhost.com
I didn’t see a new forum topic, so I’m posting here. Any suggestions for the best place to complain about this?
March 9th, 2007 at 5:18 am
I am starting to have the same issue again. Maybe they have been blacklisted again…..
March 9th, 2007 at 7:31 am
Same issue here. Is there any way around this, short of sending from another account?
March 9th, 2007 at 8:21 am
Same issue again. Okay, Dreamhost, get it right, or we’re gone.
Action: failed
Status: 5.0.0
Diagnostic-Code: X-Postfix; host mx03.mindspring.com[207.69.200.80] said: 550
550 Dynamic/zombied/spam IPs blocked. Write
blockedbyearthlink@abuse.earthlink.net (in reply to MAIL FROM command)
March 9th, 2007 at 8:37 am
Just so DH customers know, our IP ranges have been summarily blocked by earthlink. We are not listed on an open relays or spam lists ANYWHERE. This is an earthlink issue.
March 9th, 2007 at 9:07 am
So, is that all you’re doing about it? Tell dreamhost/earthlink customers that it is not your problem?
March 9th, 2007 at 10:54 am
Here here. What’s the plan? Surely DH is doing something about it? I have clients complaining and they will not accept “This is an earthlink issue” when they can flip over to their gmail accounts and get through.
March 10th, 2007 at 9:19 am
Well, 24 hours without a peep here. (Last night, I got an email saying that they were forwarding my trouble ticket to abuse, and that’s it).
Sorry, guys, you’re really failing here.
March 10th, 2007 at 4:24 pm
Since Dreamhost apparently doesn’t give enough of a shit to keep up communication on this forum, here’s the email I rec’d from them at 11:20am (Saturday):
Thank you for writing.
Earthlink lifted this block around noon Pacific time on Friday the 9th.
We’ve been monitoring the logs in the meantime, and have seen no blocked mail thus far for March 10th.
If you experience any further difficulty please send us your most recent bounce dated March 10th or later, with full original headers.
March 11th, 2007 at 8:59 pm
Thank you for that update, MB — you’re a lifesaver!
March 13th, 2007 at 1:50 pm
I have a personal site hosted with dreamhost, but also designed and run the infrastructure of another Atlanta-based hosting/email provider. A day and a half ago that provider was also blacklisted by Earthlink. I want to thank everyone for posting as I’m using the lessons learned here to [hopefully] speed up the unblocking process. Reading the blog, I really HAVE to point out one glaring problem with DH. From a previous post:
>> 2) Why did Dreamhost end up on the blacklist?
>It was a misunderstanding on how DNS and mail load-balancing works. Our
>reverse DNS doesn’t match the SMTP HELO hostname, and they didn’t like it
>every much. The reason our reverse DNS doesn’t match is due to load
>balancing.
This is COMPLETE and TOTAL crap. Total snowjob hoping nobody here understands clustering. It’s not a misunderstanding. It’s a misconfiguration on DH’s side. By not providing correctly resolving DNS, and mismatched server names, they break SMTP RFC’s. I too run a load balanced, firewalled mail cluster and have none of these problems. We were blocked by Earthlink because one malicious customer sent out a mass mailing from his home with a return address hosted on our mail servers.
Sorry. Got a little peeved there for a second. I really hate misinformation .. and Earthlink’s cost-cutting
May 1st, 2007 at 2:13 pm
So I still can’t see wher any of this was resolved? Will I never be able to send emails to Earthlink customers as long as I use my current provider?
July 1st, 2007 at 9:16 am
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October 25th, 2007 at 10:28 pm
Nice work dreamhost! Great Hosting!
January 13th, 2008 at 2:56 pm
yooooooooooooooooo
January 13th, 2008 at 2:57 pm
nnnnnnnnnnooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooonnnnnnnnnnnneeeeeeeeeeeeee
July 10th, 2008 at 2:09 am
Ken, you really need to read the SMTP RFCs before referring to them in order to claim that other people are spreading “misinformation”, when in fact that is precisely what you are doing. In section 4.1.4. of RFC2821 it says the exact opposite to your statement “By not providing correctly resolving DNS, and mismatched server names, they break SMTP RFC’s.” :-
An SMTP server MAY verify that the domain name parameter in the EHLO
command actually corresponds to the IP address of the client.
However, the server MUST NOT refuse to accept a message for this
reason if the verification fails: the information about verification
failure is for logging and tracing only.
Therefore it is earthlink who are guilty of breaking the RFC, not dreamhost. It could be argued that since spam is so much more common now than in April 2001 when RFC2821 was published, that RFC2821 is out of touch with the times and should be changed. Certainly earthlink are one of many who deliberately choose to break it in this manner. Though all this is probably moot now since it is 18 months since the problem was described.
July 29th, 2008 at 9:22 am
SO this is why all my e-mails are getting bounce back from my client??!!
When will this be resolved? sounds like some lawyers need to make a call to earthlink!