Arctic Marooned Posted May 17, 2004 Share Posted May 17, 2004 I am doing a three year stint working in Inuvik. My gal is a teacher in Nova Scotia. She has always used that email account ([at]staff.ednet.ns.ca). They have recently begun to use Spamcop. As luck would have it, there have been a number of computers on our system (buffalo[at]theedge.ca) that have been infected with viruses. As such, I am now blacklisted. I was wondering if there is a way of tagging legitimate email to allow for its throughput. Any suggestions are greatly appreciated. Sincerely, A.M. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mikey Posted May 17, 2004 Share Posted May 17, 2004 Might be in the wrong forum here but..... Does she have whitelisting capability? That is, can she submit a list of approved recipients to her hosting company? Some ISPs allow you to do this via their webmail, others require you to do it through a shell account (which might be a lot of work if she's not a geek like some of us out here). Are they using SC through a filtering program like Spamassassin or is it a pure DNS blacklist on their server front-end? Whitelisting in Spamassassin is pretty easy if that's the case. Short of allowing her to do it, she might try calling their help-desk and sweet-talking someone on duty. Not too likely unless its a small, mom-and-pop ISP. Obviously places like Earthlink and Verizon (here in the states) can't do that for everyone or they would have a whitelist of 2 million addresses. You can also try appealing to the SC administrators here in the SC Help Forum, but if your servers are listed, its probably for a good reason and you won't have much luck swaying them from their automated protocol. One other thought. Just go to Yahoo, Hotmail or hotpop and get a free account. Kind of a pain, but it will work. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Miss Betsy Posted May 17, 2004 Share Posted May 17, 2004 If there have been viruses reported, they should not be. Have you contacted your ISP to tell them that they are on the scbl? They may want to know and if people have been sending automatic virus notifications, they probably have been going to spamtraps so they may not know that their servers are blocked. However, if spamcop users have been reporting viruses, then the IP address can be immediately delisted. Tell your ISP to follow the links or email deputies at spamcop.net for information. It takes a maximum of 48 hours to age off the scbl. If your girlfriend can't whitelist your address, then probably using a hotmail or yahoo account is the best alternative. Miss Betsy Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Arctic Marooned Posted May 17, 2004 Author Share Posted May 17, 2004 Might be in the wrong forum here but..... Does she have whitelisting capability? That is, can she submit a list of approved recipients to her hosting company? Some ISPs allow you to do this via their webmail, others require you to do it through a shell account (which might be a lot of work if she's not a geek like some of us out here). Are they using SC through a filtering program like Spamassassin or is it a pure DNS blacklist on their server front-end? Whitelisting in Spamassassin is pretty easy if that's the case. Short of allowing her to do it, she might try calling their help-desk and sweet-talking someone on duty. Not too likely unless its a small, mom-and-pop ISP. Obviously places like Earthlink and Verizon (here in the states) can't do that for everyone or they would have a whitelist of 2 million addresses. You can also try appealing to the SC administrators here in the SC Help Forum, but if your servers are listed, its probably for a good reason and you won't have much luck swaying them from their automated protocol. One other thought. Just go to Yahoo, Hotmail or hotpop and get a free account. Kind of a pain, but it will work. My apologies if I am in the wrong forum. Some excellent info, Mikey and Miss B. I will see what I can do. Hopefully she can or obtain whitelisting capability. I spoke with an administrator (with NorthwesTel). They informed me that there are quite a few users on our system that are infected and don't even realize it. They are busy wading through the glut. I asked them if they recommended a firewall. (they don't) And I therefore pointed out that this is likely the downfall. Thanks again! AM. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Miss Betsy Posted May 17, 2004 Share Posted May 17, 2004 No apologies needed - the only 'wrong' thing about this forum is that you might get a faster answer somewhere else. But you seem to understand what is happening. If more people were reasonable and put pressure on ISPs to be responsible for senders (why should you be discommoded for some idiot? Why shouldn't your ISP cut them off so you can get your email?), then perhaps fewer of us will be inconvenienced when we use email. Miss Betsy Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wazoo Posted May 17, 2004 Share Posted May 17, 2004 My apologies if I am in the wrong forum. Already moved to Help ... and see that Miss Betsy has started you on the path for a solution (we hope) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Merlyn Posted May 17, 2004 Share Posted May 17, 2004 You mail server should not be blocked if you have a virus on your machine because most virus have a built in SMTP engine and therefore the virus email will have your IP and not your ISP's mail server IP. If you are running your own mail server then you will have a problem. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
WB8TYW Posted May 18, 2004 Share Posted May 18, 2004 According to Microsoft, a software or hardware firewall is needed between their operating systems and the Internet. There are many exploits of those systems that can only be prevented by a firewall, even if you have all the patches installed. -John Personal Opinion Only Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mikey Posted May 18, 2004 Share Posted May 18, 2004 Perhaps before we blame SC reporters for reporting viruses or auto-responders we should at least figure out if that is the reason they were listed. Just because one person at his ISP told him that "infected machines" caused the problem does not make it true or correct or exclusively correct. I've had more than one help desk tell me they are listed in the RFC Ignorant blacklist because of spam. No. No you aren't. Information is a good thing. A little information is a dangerous thing. Mr. Marooned, can you have your ISP forward any SC bounces they have? Or better yet, get us an IP address for the mail server? We have had countless people out here claiming that SC is blocking them, often based on comments made by their ISP, only to find out SC never blocked them. There are several reasons for these errors that are beyond the scope of your question. I'm not trying to pick a fight, I'm not claiming you are doing anything wrong. Point is, there a many super folks out here who can offer advice and help, but they need the geeky details to dig to the bottom of the problem. You are in the right place. (My earlier comment of the "wrong" place is now out of context since the post was moved by Wazoo.) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ellen Posted May 18, 2004 Share Posted May 18, 2004 Perhaps before we blame SC reporters for reporting viruses or auto-responders we should at least figure out if that is the reason they were listed. Just because one person at his ISP told him that "infected machines" caused the problem does not make it true or correct or exclusively correct. I've had more than one help desk tell me they are listed in the RFC Ignorant blacklist because of spam. No. No you aren't. Information is a good thing. A little information is a dangerous thing. Mr. Marooned, can you have your ISP forward any SC bounces they have? Or better yet, get us an IP address for the mail server? We have had countless people out here claiming that SC is blocking them, often based on comments made by their ISP, only to find out SC never blocked them. There are several reasons for these errors that are beyond the scope of your question. I'm not trying to pick a fight, I'm not claiming you are doing anything wrong. Point is, there a many super folks out here who can offer advice and help, but they need the geeky details to dig to the bottom of the problem. You are in the right place. (My earlier comment of the "wrong" place is now out of context since the post was moved by Wazoo.) Did we ever stumble across the IP that was listed? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wazoo Posted May 18, 2004 Share Posted May 18, 2004 not yet ... closest thing was a reference to "NorthwesTel" .... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ellen Posted May 19, 2004 Share Posted May 19, 2004 not yet ... closest thing was a reference to "NorthwesTel" .... sigh Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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