I'm a spammer?!?! ...... REALLY?!?!?!
So I tried to send a mail to a contact about hosting at his ISP. Yes at his ISP.
I received this message in return.
: host mail.annexa.net[72.35.81.122] said: 550-Email blocked
by SORBS - to unblock see 550 http://www.hostpc.com/emailnotdelivered.php
(in reply to RCPT TO command)
Strange I would say I do not think I am blocked by SORBS heck I can even send mail to AOL and my mail to places like Hotmail, Yahoo & Google goes right to the inbox no mucking around in spam folders for me. So I decided to visit hostpc.com and see whats up. I clicked on the URL above and found this gem.
Funny the IP was even wrong. Well it was not incorrect it was my workstation IP not my mail server. Sad but there was this text.
"If you believe this report is in error, submit a whitelist request
with the email address you're attempting to send mail TO." Ya go ahead click on the link and you will see that the e-mail is sent to a fricking G-mail account. WTF! This is a American ISP's solution to spam. Come on. Either way I put in my best effort and sent the request. A few moments later I received this in my inbox. Undoubtedly automated. "Whitelist requests can only be addressed effectively through our helpdesk at http://helpdesk.hostpc.com Helpdesk tickets should be opened by our hosting clients ONLY. Clients, please use the helpdesk system to request your account be taken out of our global spam filtering. This will likely result in a good deal of extra spam incoming, please request with that in mind." Now I am really pissed. Not only did my mail not get through but I wasted 15 minutes trying to resolve the problem. So if you were in the same situation what could you do? 1. First drop hostpc.com 2. Build yourself a new box LOAD and one of the MANY popular Free Os's on it. IE FreeBSD CentOS Ubuntu Gentoo ect. 3. Read the documentation, download and install the following packages postfix, dovecot, spamassasin, amavis, clam and freshclam. 4. Install and configure them. 5. Thats it..... I know these are simplified steps but if you are running a ISP or even a mail server. You should not be relying on any one else to scan your mail for you. NOTE: If your really lazy. From the list on #2 select CentOS then install DNS and Zimbra. It will take care of all of that for you and then some. I am not even going to get into how I tried to set up a account at SORBS to check what they think of my domains. Finally if you want some one to do it for you.... contact me. I do not charge that much...... ;-) E./
Funny the IP was even wrong. Well it was not incorrect it was my workstation IP not my mail server. Sad but there was this text.
"If you believe this report is in error, submit a whitelist request with the email address you're attempting to send mail TO." Ya go ahead click on the link and you will see that the e-mail is sent to a fricking G-mail account. WTF! This is a American ISP's solution to spam. Come on. Either way I put in my best effort and sent the request. A few moments later I received this in my inbox. Undoubtedly automated. "Whitelist requests can only be addressed effectively through our helpdesk at http://helpdesk.hostpc.com Helpdesk tickets should be opened by our hosting clients ONLY. Clients, please use the helpdesk system to request your account be taken out of our global spam filtering. This will likely result in a good deal of extra spam incoming, please request with that in mind." Now I am really pissed. Not only did my mail not get through but I wasted 15 minutes trying to resolve the problem. So if you were in the same situation what could you do? 1. First drop hostpc.com 2. Build yourself a new box LOAD and one of the MANY popular Free Os's on it. IE FreeBSD CentOS Ubuntu Gentoo ect. 3. Read the documentation, download and install the following packages postfix, dovecot, spamassasin, amavis, clam and freshclam. 4. Install and configure them. 5. Thats it..... I know these are simplified steps but if you are running a ISP or even a mail server. You should not be relying on any one else to scan your mail for you. NOTE: If your really lazy. From the list on #2 select CentOS then install DNS and Zimbra. It will take care of all of that for you and then some. I am not even going to get into how I tried to set up a account at SORBS to check what they think of my domains. Finally if you want some one to do it for you.... contact me. I do not charge that much...... ;-) E./