Hi-

I have been blocked. Why I do not know. I am not sending out spam. Now emails to my clients are being blocked because of this totally restrictive approach.

I am using a service via a hotel, and of course cannot make any sense of this entire thing.

I am so angry at this loss of communication that I am prepared to be very irate with any person whenever I meet them who state they are involved with this organisation.

This is an unwarranted restriction of my business activities.

Totally disgusted with this so-called police operation. It has not validation for this blocking action, no relationship with me, and hides behind an anonymous structure - with no contact emails available on the web site that I can find.

The Why am I Blocked? thing is provided as both a SpamCop FAQ entry and as a Pinned item in this Forum section.

Not sending spam? That's what they all say ....
"emails to my clients are being blocked" .. if the SpamCopDNSBL is involved, then it should be noted that your clients (and.or their ISPs) are the ones doing the blocking. SpamCop.net cannot 'touch' your e-mail.

And you expect someone here to make sense of your specific issue when you provide absolutely no data?

Looking for contact data on "what" web-site? Within this Forum, there are several items that deal with "How to contact an Official SpamCop.net person" .... Noting that if this is all you're going to provide wvwn if you had found a 'contact' ... it would be a waste of time.

Bottom line, if you really want some help, an explanation, actually much of anything beyond a rant, please look at data provided to 'help us help you' .... What SpamCop.net is, how the SpamCopDNSBL works, why 'your' e-mail is allegedly blocked if the SpamCopDNSBL is at all involved, who is actually doing the blocking of 'your' e-mail, and most of all, please take a look at the numerous items placed in your way to suggest data needed if anyone wishes to actually try to offer you anything useful.

Of course, you could have looked around a bit, found some of those other folks that arrived much before you did, some even more irate, adn see what happened in their situations ... even more fun, note the discussions started by ISPs thathad their e-mail servers blocked and the surprises involved with most of them about how insecure their systems were and what they did to fix the problem.

Thus far, all you've done is waste a possibly good rant. Failure to actually provided something to work with will result with this Topic being moved to the Lounge area as a simple waste of time for all involved.

You posted from an IP Block belonging to;
inetnum: 203.117.64.192 - 203.117.64.223
netname: City-Development-SG
country: SG
descr: City Developments Ltd
admin-c: NS110-AP

But none of this describes what e-mail server might be involved. There's even the possibility that some (of your clients) may have this block of addresses already blocked directly, or as a portion of an even larger block of IP addresses.

I think the attitude relfected in the following says it all -

'Not sending spam? That's what they all say ...'

I am not interested in spending time in this forum. I am not interested in a holier than thou attiitude.

Nor am I interested in a system that destroys business correspondence relationships.

Which I conside this 'Spamcop' nonsense to be about.

Talk about a ridiculous reply to someone who is trying to maintain a business relatiosnhip and has his emails blocked without any valid basis.

pshew - arrogant geeks rule, huh?

Sure you're angry... But if you provide some actual information/data then there are plenty of folk who will willingly identify the reason for your problem and may be able to to assist in ensuring it doesn't happen again.

Wazoo pointed you to the information that explains the reasons why you might be blocked. Do any of these apply?

Did you receive an error message which said your mail server is listed in the SpamCop blocklist? If so, what was the ip address or mail server name involved.

But if you just came to let off steam then that's fine too. We just do that in the Lounge.

Andrew

Well, the reply implying I was actually a spammer was more than a red flag.

The real problem seems to be that the following [edited] message is of no real value to me for diagnostic purposes and the 'spamcop' site is also of no real help - having to join a forum to find why this is happening is a massive waste of time and energy. I do find the whole thing to be a very threatening big brother arrangement - along the liens of - we can get you blocked as a spammer even if that is a false accusation - and there is nothing you can do about it....

Emails and names removed to protect the innocent -

The original message was received at Mon, 19 Nov 2007 09:30:04 +0800 (SGT) from kbsmtao2.starhub.net.sg [203.116.2.167]

----- The following addresses had permanent fatal errors ----- xxx[at]yyy.sg>
(reason: 550 Rule imposed as me[at]msn.com is blacklisted on SpamCop (see www.spamcop.net))

----- Transcript of session follows -----
... while talking to somesite.com.sg.:
>>> RCPT To:<xxx.sg>
<<< 550 Rule imposed as me[at]msn.com is blacklisted on SpamCop (see www.spamcop.net) 550 5.1.1 <xxx[at]yyy.sg>... User unknown

Cheers,

John

No real help here either, based on that absolutly terrible error message. The SpamCopDNSBL only works with IP Adresses, not e-mail addresses. The suggested 'error message' was not used by the receiving e-mail server ... it should have contained the IP Address of the 'sending' e-mail server ..... as bad as this 'error message' is, it may not even be the truth that the SpamCopDNSBL is involved at all, it's just that the server configuration decided to throw that line of data up as a wrong excuse.

Without that IP address, there is no further research possible by anyone here.

Basically, you need to figure out another way to contact these folks and throw in your complaint about the bad configuration of their e-mail servers. (And I'm not talking strictly about the [possible] use of the SpamCopDNSBL) ... at the least, the 'error message' needs to be corrected.

The only IP Address you've provided is documented at http://www.spamcop.net/w3m?action=checkblo...p=203.116.2.167 which says;
203.116.2.167 not listed in bl.spamcop.net

However, the odds are that this is not the outgoing e-mail server that ran into the block at the receiving end.

It should be noted that a majority of e-mail set-ups will include 'your' e-mail as part of the 'rejection' notice .... the headers of that e-mail should contain the IP Address of the server in question. But .. this all depends on the configurations of the servers involved.

Experience here would suggest that 99.9% or more of people who are spamming (or rather their machines are) are totally unaware of it. Look at some of the old threads here. That is "what they all say" and are then horrified to find that they have been spewing spam for days, totally unawares.

Since the owners of the receiving mail server have neglected to included the single piece of information that is really needed to diagnose the problem, it is going to be hard to track down the cause of this block. Is this the only recipient that is using spamcop to block your emails? If not, perhaps another of your recipients mail servers will give a better rejection notice?

Another possibility, in your email program, what do you have configured as your outgoing server? This is not always a foolproof approach though, as sometimes there is some internal routing between you submitting the message to your outgoing server (smtp.example.com) and the server that actually sends the message out across the internet, but at least it would be a start.

What we really need, is a rejection notice that includes the specific sending server's IP address. Something along the lines of "Your email was rejected because your email server [1.2.3.4] was listed on the SCBL" would be extremely helpful in tracking down just exactly what the cause of your problem is.

Also, it would be worth noting that the SCBL is entirely automated, and based on actual samples of spam received and analyzed to determine their source. There is no opportunity for you to "get you blocked as a spammer even if that is a false accusation". The only way for a mail server to end up on the SCBL is for it to send spam to spamcop users and/or spamcop spam traps.

John,
That's not a valid error message. As Wazoo pointed out, the SCBL lists *only* IP addresses, and this error message implies that an MSN email address is what is triggering the block. Therefore, you'll have to contact the support personnel at the destination address to inquire what they're doing. From what you've shown us, they appear to be putting out false information and may be quite incompetent, but it's their fault, not SpamCop's.

DT

The only thing that people in the forum can do is to guess at why your email was blocked by someone who attributed it to the spamcop blocklist.

However, one guess could be that if you are in a hotel, then perhaps you are using a wireless laptop without good security measures. If the email was from msn.com (of which there are multiple IP addresses possible), it is more than likely that it has something to do with the computer you are using rather than your email address provider being blocked. If it is the same IP address that others have looked at, then that theory is no good because it is not on the blocklist - at least at the moment.

If the person blocking the email is just using the spamcop blocklist as a generic message and because they include the email address specifically, it is possible that your customer, either accidentally or deliberately, marked one of your emails as spam. One way to find out is to either call that person or send an email from another address and ask what the problem is.

I am technically non-fluent myself and it is particularly aggravating to deal with what seems to be 'techie arrogance' when one is already frustrated. However, understanding how email works and what can go wrong is similar to understanding about one's automobile and what can go wrong - without actually having to be a mechanic and able to fix it yourself. And, even the bluntest among those who have responded, are ready and willing to help you if they can.

Miss Betsy

...Which, to be quite clear about it, in case you think you're being blamed, is not anything you could be expected to do anything about, yourself. It's a problem with the admin of the e-mail system to which you are sending your e-mail....It could be you but I'd say it's just as likely that it is either someone else who visited that hotel before you or someone else identified as having sent spam through the hotel's system.
...Another approach that I don't think anyone else has mentioned is to have the people to whom you send e-mails "whitelist" you. This may improve your chances of your e-mails getting through to them.
...Finally, a note on your statement, "Nor am I interested in a system that destroys business correspondence relationships." Please reconsider your reliance on e-mail. It isn't, has never been and is unlikely ever to be (at least in the foreseeable future) a guaranteed delivery mechanism. If your business relies on your ability to communicate with others, you would be very well advised to have an alternate means of communication.

I believe that falls under Russel's Admonition

The format of this message indicates it came from a MailMarshal server. Configuration details can be seen in this whitepaper, pages 14 and 15 show the format. The rejection message is indeed misleading. While it appears to be triggered by the sending MTA being listed in SCBL, the rejection message fails to show the listed IP address, and worse, it leads the reader to believe their *email* address is listed by SpamCop. Someone from SpamCop should contact MailMarshal and encourage them to fix these misleading reject messages.


It was warranted by the *recipient* of your mail. The recipient (or their mail provider) declined to receive your mail because their mail system is configured to do DNSBL lookups and a lookup on the IP address of your computer (or the mail server you're sending through) showed it was listed in the SpamCop blocklist. Their server, their rules.

The rejection message also shows "User unknown" so even if not rejected for the SpamCop listing, it would likely be rejected because there is currently no user xxx at yyy.sg (typo? Obsolete address?)