Spamhaus prenventing outbound mobile email :-(

[upandcoming]

Hi I was wondering if any of you guys could point me in the right direction to fix this problem.

I have no problem sending emails from my office computer, but when I go to send mail from my virgin mobile it says there are account problems and quotes that my outgoing IP address has been blocked!

I have visited the spamhaus site which has refered me to the CBL? site which confirms my current IP is on the blacklist.

I have downloaded the suggested Symantec root link thingymagic and turned mobile on and off again with no such luck?

Would really really appreciate it if somebody could give me some advice ?

Many thanks

 

[andygambles]

Who is your email provider? It is them who have been blocked. That or you have your mobile incorrectly configured. You should be using SMTP Auth.

 

[upandcoming]

Thanks for your reply Andy.

It is an info@ address which is provided by my friends company who also hosts my site. It is a fairly big company with reliable services.

The bit that confuses me is that all is well from my main pc via outlook express.

My mobile account hasn't been altered or messed with today. Have sent emails from it successfully today - then it just fails to send quoting the spamhaus site and ip address blackest message. The smpt address is set to auth.

Thanks once again.

 

[andygambles]

Is it rejecting before it is sent or is it bouncing back to you?

Might be a big company. Doesn't mean to say they can't get blacklisted.

 

[Subbynet]

Hi,

Are you able to connect your phone via Wi-Fi to the internet?

If so, turn it on, and try to send the email again. See if that works. You should be using a different IP address, so I'd expect it to work, but if it doesn't, then maybe its a connection issue.

 

[upandcoming]

Cheers,

It is bouncing back - every 5 mins!

Fair point - I'll give him a call first thing in the morning

Just thought I'd pick some clever brains this evening, in case it was something I could sort my end.

Thanks Andy

 

[upandcoming]

Subbynet ' a legend is what you are'!

All sorted,

Thank you both for your time

Dave

 

[andygambles]

If it was the connecting via wifi that sorted it then that to me says your phone is possibly not configured right and you are trying to send directly to the mail server without authentication. Difficult to say without seeing all the mail headers and spamhaus rejections.

 

[ukwebhosting]

Hi

Just to add we see this a lot when the recipients mailserver checks the blacklist.

What is happening is in the header there is a line like

"yoursendingmailserver" received from "yourmobileip"

And this is the crucial part this stays in the header even with SMTP auth used so the recipients mailserver reads it and checks all ip's in the header.

Your mobile IP is either part of a full range that spamhaus have deemed should not be sending mail or is one that has been picked up that has been used to send spam maybe when another customer used it or it is a shared one and has been abused.

Thanks

Paul

 

[Deleted member 155999]

Sometimes it's not the customer's problem at all. If an ISP or mobile operator has a bunch of compromised customers that are sending spam on behalf of the ISP, that ISP can get a bad IP reputation from receiving networks and get blacklisted. Once blacklisted, email grinds to a halt and users experience mail delivery delays or worse - email bounce-backs. Spamhaus CBL is a common IP blacklist that ISPs use to protect against inbound spam. If your network gets listed on Spamhaus, getting de-listed is a slow and complex process. Not to mention, your users' email gets backed up.

Look up 'outbound spam protection' in Wikipedia.

 

[leemason]

I'd agree with andygambles. Check your phone's mail account for the outbound settings. From a smart phone you would normally relay your outbound mail via an SMTP relay server (often the same server used to collect your inbound e-mail). Many will accept the same username/password authentication as the inbound server.

Find out from your provider what you need to set as the name (and username/password) for the outbound SMTP server. Otherwise everytime you go back to using 3G you'll get your e-mails marked as spam and bounced back.

 

[Page]

we had to reboot our router the other day - and in the process were given a new IP that was on the spamhaus list

Another reboot and we were okay again

 

[andygambles]

we had to reboot our router the other day - and in the process were given a new IP that was on the spamhaus list

Another reboot and we were okay again

You should not be sending from your own systems. Either use a hosted mail server on a server or get yourself a dedicated IP for outbound mail.

 

[cocodude]

andygambles is absolutely right. Many mail providers will reject mails from IP ranges considered dynamic (i.e. most consumer connections). Consumers and even many businesses should be using their ISP's smarthost.

Unfortunately, the CBL is probably the most well used blocklist (or zen.spamhaus) so a lot of mails will be blocked. Have you been able to determine precisely what IP address is blocked on it? Are you able to let us know which hostname is configured as your outgoing SMTP server?