🚀 go-pugleaf

In <89ppr9$fup$1@samba.rahul.net> Pierre Uszynski <pierre@rahul.net> writes:

>554 Service unavailable; [209.157.26.19] blocked using 
>relays.mail-abuse.org, reason: Open relay problem - see 
><URL:http://www.mail-abuse.org/cgi-bin/nph-rss?209.157.26.19>

>The relaying server doesn't make it 100% explicit that this rejection
>came from 'rahul.net' (popmx1.rahul.net?) but that seems likely.
>Although the man pages don't seem to say anything about RSS.

We are using RSS.  The online documentation is slightly out of date.

>RSS is another of several "kill them all and god will sort them out"
>schemes of the anti-junk mail crusade.

The people running RSS will only add a host to the RSS if it has
actually relayed spam.  And they will usually be willing to remove the
host from the RSS if the site administrator gives them a firm commitment
that the open relay will soon be closed.  Also, if after 12 weeks no
repeat spam has been relayed from a host, it is automatically removed
from the RSS, even if the site administrator does nothing.

We also provide the username@bypass.us.com escape mechanism, that lets
you bypass such filtering.  However, if you need to use it, it usually
means you are dealing with some bigger problem that needs to be
addressed.
-- 
(Rahul Dhesi)
a2i network support account <support@rahul.net>

Rahul Dhesi -- a2i support  <support@rahul.net> wrote:

>We are using RSS.  The online documentation is slightly out of date.

Is there a way of checking to see is a given correspondent's
mail would likely be blocked by RSS?

It would be nice, for example, if when I suspiciously haven't
heard from someone as expected, I could check to see if they
are blocked.

Steve

In <89qjiq$i2c$1@samba.rahul.net> spp@bob.eecs.berkeley.edu writes:

>Is there a way of checking to see is a given correspondent's
>mail would likely be blocked by RSS?

>It would be nice, for example, if when I suspiciously haven't
>heard from someone as expected, I could check to see if they
>are blocked.

If you know the IP address of the host that would send the message here,
simply go to 

   http://www.mail-abuse.org/rss/ 

and look for the section that begins "If you would like to check and see
if a specific server is on our list..."
-- 
(Rahul Dhesi)
a2i network support account <support@rahul.net>

Rahul writes:
>We are using RSS.  The online documentation is slightly out of date.
>
>>RSS is another of several "kill them all and god will sort them out"
>>schemes of the anti-junk mail crusade.
>
>The people running RSS will only add a host to the RSS if it has
>actually relayed spam. [etc..]

That's neither here nor there. My client got to waste their time trying
to figure it out, then I got to waste their money explaining what
happened and trying to see how to re-route their email system.
Meanwhile some of *their* clients and contractors were not getting
their email. And in all this, neither my clients nor me were sending
junk mail. That someone somewhere sent junk mail through that server is
totally irrelevant to us.

And I had Nojunk turned off.

And the other major national ISP mail relay I suggested they turned to
instead of that now useless one, is also configured for open relay (No,
I'm not going to tell who it is by fear it will become one more victim
of the RSS cheering section.)

>We also provide the username@bypass.us.com escape mechanism, that lets
>you bypass such filtering.  However, if you need to use it, it usually
>means you are dealing with some bigger problem that needs to be
>addressed.

Couldn't you make your RSS filtering layer part of Nojunk? That could
be more effective from your customers' point of view: you could
periodically retrieve the entire RSS list and match every "Received:"
hop of an email against the blacklisted addresses, instead of just the
last one as you do now. You already seem to test these "Received:"
addresses against a blacklist, you might as well do RSS there too. And
then you would leave alone people who HAVE TURNED OFF NOJUNK because
they can't afford "oops we are sorry but meanwhile you are dead" kinds
of mistakes.

Thank you,
Pierre.
pierre@rahul.net

Pierre Uszynski <pierre@rahul.net> wrote:
: Couldn't you make your RSS filtering layer part of Nojunk? That could

This has been discussed before, in more technical terms.

The short answer is that nojunk filtering after email has been handled
within a2i is for your convenience, to prevent you from seeing the spam.

Other filtering methods occur as early as possible, to avoid the tremendous
error message bouncing that is caused by rejecting spam that has bogus
return addresses.

-- 
---
Clarence A Dold - dold@email.rahul.net
                - Pope Valley & Napa CA.

Clarence Dold  <dold@email.rahul.net> wrote:

> Other filtering methods occur as early as possible, to avoid
> the tremendous error message bouncing that is caused by rejecting
> spam that has bogus return addresses.

Yes, this has been discussed before; however given that
we have yet another instance of an a2i subscriber (Pierre)
losing business-related mail and causing an unneeded hassle
for his client, I think a2i ought to evaluate this again
consider whether RSS blocking is in fact the right thing for
a2i to be doing for its subscribers.

Rahul has said there is a dollar cost associated with not blocking
RSS; but there's also a dollar cost when people don't get email
from their (non-spammer) customers.  

Why not, as an experiment, turn off RSS blocking for say two
weeks for the entire rahul.net domain and test this theory that
the added load would actually break things.  If it bogs down,
turn it back on.   If not, leave it off and everyone is happier.

Steve

In <89rdvj$khd$1@samba.rahul.net> Pierre Uszynski <pierre@rahul.net> writes:

>And the other major national ISP mail relay I suggested they turned to
>instead of that now useless one, is also configured for open relay (No,
>I'm not going to tell who it is by fear it will become one more victim
>of the RSS cheering section.)

It's very hard these days to guarantee that email will never be
deliberately blocked.  It's unfortunate that things have come to this.

>Couldn't you make your RSS filtering layer part of Nojunk? That could
>be more effective from your customers' point of view...

This is technically very hard to do.  What we have done instead is
provided a mechanism where if you have a custom domain we can configure
it such that no email, at any time, will ever be blocked at any our
machines except via the user-controllable Nojunk system.  However, this
is not possible to do with username@rahul.net because all addreses of
that form share this domain, so some mail filtering policies will apply
to everybody uniformly.

Having your own domain also allows many other interesting things, so you
and others might seriously want to consider this.  This would result in
a change in your email address, but after that, you would never have to
change it again.
-- 
(Rahul Dhesi)
a2i network support account <support@rahul.net>

In <89rri5$lm7$1@samba.rahul.net> spp@bob.eecs.berkeley.edu writes:

>Why not, as an experiment, turn off RSS blocking for say two
>weeks for the entire rahul.net domain and test this theory that
>the added load would actually break things.  If it bogs down,
>turn it back on.   If not, leave it off and everyone is happier.

We already this this, in the sense that I looked at the mail logs before
and after RSS filtering was enabled.  There was a big difference.  On a
typical day RS blocks between 500 and 2000 spam attempts, but on bad
days I have seen it block 10,000 to 20,000.  Despite this effective
blocking we have had only two reported instances of somebody being
inconvenienced.

And even this very slight risk of inconvenience can be eliminated by
anybody who has a custom domain.
-- 
(Rahul Dhesi)
a2i network support account <support@rahul.net>

Rahul Dhesi writes:
>It's very hard these days to guarantee that email will never be
>deliberately blocked.  It's unfortunate that things have come to this.

Yes, but 'deliberately' is the key word here. Email doesn't just "get
blocked". People block email. Rahul blocks email.

>>Couldn't you make your RSS filtering layer part of Nojunk? That could
>>be more effective from your customers' point of view...
>
>This is technically very hard to do.

Well, off hand, at the SMTP exchange level you manage to test an
address against the RSS list. I don't see how the problem is different
at the Nojunk level. Your tool might not allow this at this time, but
the problem is the same. Maybe easier because done offline.

>so some mail filtering policies will apply to everybody uniformly.

And this is bad news because when I joined a2i, a2i was offering
reliable, technical, no-frills Internet access that was suitable for
professional use. And now it's very difficult to change my email address.
It would have been so easy to *start* Nojunk on a new domain instead of
rahul.net...

>Having your own domain also allows many other interesting things, so you
>and others might seriously want to consider this.  This would result in
>a change in your email address, but after that, you would never have to
>change it again.

Unfortunately, this is not true, as we discussed earlier. For a small
business, getting a domain name does not guarantee *anything*. It's
very easy to contest the ownership of a domain name and while the
dispute is being resolved, the domain name is completely disabled and
so is email. From one day to the next. If the dispute is lost (and it
probably will be - not enough money for lawyers and too many other
things to do), then the domain name is lost too. It might be getting
better now that there are more serious registrars than Network <spit>
Solutions but not yet what I would call reliable.

Pierre.
pierre@rahul.net

Pierre Uszynski  <pierre@rahul.net> wrote:

>Rahul Dhesi writes:

>>It's very hard these days to guarantee that email will never be
>>deliberately blocked.  It's unfortunate that things have come to this.

Only because a cult of email-blocking has emerged, replacing
the previous culture wherein delivering conforming email 
(conforming in the sense that it satisfies the RFC's) was
given the absolute highest priority.

The problem is 90% political and only at most 10% technical.  

>Yes, but 'deliberately' is the key word here. Email doesn't just "get
>blocked". People block email. Rahul blocks email.

Exactly.

I am disappointed with the mass-blocking of email conducted by
Rahul and others, but it's not enough to make me switch
providers.

I have accounts at the University of California.  I include a
berkeley.edu address in all of my Usenet posts, including when
posting from a2i as I am at the moment.  My berkeley.edu address is
harvested by all spammers and presumably receives as much spam as
anybody does, since I post alot.

The Berkeley admins do not do RSS blocking or anything similar.
Nor do they do reverse DNS blocking.  Thus all the spam goes to
my mailbox at Berkeley.  But it does not clog up their systems;
it is not a whole lot of spam to begin with.  Around 10 message
per day I would say.

This proves it is possible to run a system, reliably, without
using RSS.  Granted the Berkeley people have different parameters
(higher ratio of total users to usenet posters, perhaps), and
more resources.  But isn't it a2i's goal to run
a system that has the same functionality and level of service
that one would find in a well-run coporate or academic site?
Thus setting a2i apart from and above nearly all the other
ISP's out there?

Something to ponder, anyway.

Steve

In article <89s6g9$mgg$1@samba.rahul.net>, spp@bob.eecs.berkeley.edu says...

>The Berkeley admins do not do RSS blocking or anything similar.
>Nor do they do reverse DNS blocking.  Thus all the spam goes to
>my mailbox at Berkeley.  But it does not clog up their systems;
>it is not a whole lot of spam to begin with.  Around 10 message
>per day I would say.


	For what it's worth, I just ran across a posting, on ba.internet, I 
believe, which mentioned that many spam enablers advertise lists that 
specifically are 100% .com or .net addresses -- guaranteed no .gov, .mil, .org 
or .edu addresses. This may explain why your berkeley.edu address is relatively 
spam-free. Presumably spamming at least a .gov or .mil address would get you 
rapid, unwelcome, no-sense-of-humor attention, with some overflow benefit to 
.edu addresses. Not sure why .org would be unattractive, unless they're 
considered too small to be worthwhile or maybe just not likely to be the 
general public.

Ken

In article <89tae5$o5t$1@samba.rahul.net>, Ken Ashe <kashe@rahul.net> wrote:
>In article <89s6g9$mgg$1@samba.rahul.net>, spp@bob.eecs.berkeley.edu says...
>
>>The Berkeley admins do not do RSS blocking or anything similar.
>>Nor do they do reverse DNS blocking.  Thus all the spam goes to
>>my mailbox at Berkeley.  But it does not clog up their systems;
>>it is not a whole lot of spam to begin with.  Around 10 message
>>per day I would say.
>
>	For what it's worth, I just ran across a posting, on ba.internet, I 
>believe, which mentioned that many spam enablers advertise lists that 
>specifically are 100% .com or .net addresses -- guaranteed no .gov, .mil,
>.org or .edu addresses. This may explain why your berkeley.edu address is
>relatively spam-free.

FWIW, I have a custom domain at a2i and I have nojunk turned off and
I specifically asked for no blocking to occur to my domain.  I post news
occasionally and I have web pages, which means my email address has been
harvested and is harvested on a regular basis.  (I can tell when.)

Despite this, I only average about 10 junk emails per day at a .com
address.  And as postmaster, I get all the misaddressed junk email too.

Obviously, I fall into the getting-all-email-is-more-important-than-
blocking-spam camp.  I can deal with the spam, no problem.  Perhaps
if I was getting 100+ junk emails per day I'd feel differently, but
that isn't happening.

Cheers,
+++
Lloyd Lim     <Lloyd_Lim@mail.limunltd.com>

Lloyd Lim  <Lloyd_Lim@mail.limunltd.com> wrote:

> FWIW, I have a custom domain at a2i and I have nojunk turned
> off and I specifically asked for no blocking to occur to my
> domain.  I post news occasionally and I have web pages, which
> means my email address has been harvested and is harvested on a
> regular basis.  (I can tell when.)

> Despite this, I only average about 10 junk emails per day at a .com
> address.  And as postmaster, I get all the misaddressed junk email too.

Right.  

My theory is that the incoming email system at rahul.net is sort
of limping along, due to some sort of misconfiguration or
resource problem that Rahul hasn't yet been able to identify.  As
we know, incoming email lags ranging up to several hours are not
uncommon.  So with RSS blocking off, the added load causes the
system to deteriorate significantly, to the point where it
doesn't always function; thus leading to the conclusion that RSS is
necessary to reliably run this particular email system.  But it
isn't necessary in general; other people run other email systems
without it -- under different conditions of course -- and those
systems work just fine.

That's why this RSS business is so frustrating.  Email systems
are very tricky to run, and involve a lot of subtleties, and
a2i has "tuned" this one to run under certain conditions, including
RSS being there.  You change those conditions, and kablooie.  
So at this stage, a2i has bought into using RSS and changing that
would be costly/impossible.

Steve

In <89uk6q$t0j$1@samba.rahul.net> spp@bob.eecs.berkeley.edu writes:

>My theory is that the incoming email system at rahul.net is sort
>of limping along, due to some sort of misconfiguration or
>resource problem that Rahul hasn't yet been able to identify.  As
>we know, incoming email lags ranging up to several hours are not
>uncommon....

The lags should occur only if for some reason you are causing mail
delivery to occur in the old (SunOS) environment.  Details are in 'man
a2i-mailflow'.  In the new (FreeBSD) environment incoming mail should
reach your mailbox within about 5 seconds of arriving here, unless you
interpose your own filtering that makes it take longer.
-- 
(Rahul Dhesi)
a2i network support account <support@rahul.net>

In <89s5m0$met$1@samba.rahul.net> Pierre Uszynski <pierre@rahul.net> writes:

>>Having your own domain also allows many other interesting things, so you
>>and others might seriously want to consider this.  This would result in
>>a change in your email address, but after that, you would never have to
>>change it again.

>Unfortunately, this is not true, as we discussed earlier. For a small
>business, getting a domain name does not guarantee *anything*. It's
>very easy to contest the ownership of a domain name and while the
>dispute is being resolved, the domain name is completely disabled and
>so is email....

True, but RAHUL.NET is a domain too.  So long as you use an address in
this domain you are subject to the same risk as for any domain name you
might pick.  Fortunately the newer dispute procedures promulgated by
ICANN (at www.icann.org) and applying to all COM/NET/ORG domains are
slightly more reasonable than the old onews.  But the risk is not zero.

Also, you can get registrations in domains other than COM/NET/ORG, and
you will incur a much smaller risk of your domain being disputed, simply
because people won't see you as being a significant threat to them.
Alternatives to consider:

   www.nic.to
   www.centralnic.net

When you use a username@RAHUL.NET you are in effect agreeing to use a
shared resource (the mail handling system for the RAHUL.NET domain) and
you will get all of the benefits and liabilities of using a shared
resource.  The benefit is lower cost.  The liability is that you are
subject to whatever limitations apply to that shared resource.  To be
free of these limitations you need to separate yourself from the public
resource.  In this specific case the way to do that is to have your own
domain.  This makes it easier for your ISP to give you the service you
need without affecting all the other customers.
-- 
(Rahul Dhesi)
a2i network support account <support@rahul.net>

Rahul Dhesi -- a2i support  <support@rahul.net> wrote:

>When you use a username@RAHUL.NET you are in effect agreeing to use a
>shared resource (the mail handling system for the RAHUL.NET domain) and
>you will get all of the benefits and liabilities of using a shared
>resource.  The benefit is lower cost.  The liability is that you are
>subject to whatever limitations apply to that shared resource.  To be
>free of these limitations you need to separate yourself from the public
>resource.  

That sounds good in theory, however, what happened in practice is
that many of us signed up at rahul.net because we accepted at
face value claims that junk-mail filtering could be turned of
entirely, on a per-user basis.  The reality that a2i was using
global junk-mail bouncing of various sorts only emerged after
user complaints.  (And only after many of us had widely
circulated our rahul.net email addresses, placed them on our
business cards, etc.)

And again, it's not "lower cost" if you're losing business email...

I don't mean to whine about this too much; a2i is still the
best provider around; but I'd like to see some plan by a2i
to ultimately improve service by getting rid of RSS blocking
and similar non-conforming aspects of the email system.  I don't
expect it to happen overnight, since it does involve resource
allocation, but I'd at least like to see it stated as a goal.

Steve

In <89v61b$1a3$1@samba.rahul.net> spp@bob.eecs.berkeley.edu writes:

>I don't mean to whine about this too much; a2i is still the
>best provider around; but I'd like to see some plan by a2i
>to ultimately improve service by getting rid of RSS blocking
>and similar non-conforming aspects of the email system.  I don't
>expect it to happen overnight, since it does involve resource
>allocation, but I'd at least like to see it stated as a goal.

Providing efficient unhindered mail delivery is one of the goals here.
Another is to cut down spam.  Another is to avoid having large numbers
of email messages, with fake return addresses, be bouncing around the
system waiting for a threed-day timeout.  In some cases, such as yours,
these goals are in conflict.  The technical cost of resolving this
conflict, while still allowing you to use the same email address, is
quite high.

This is why the recommended mechanism to be completely free of all
filtering done at our machines is to have your own domain.  The
technical cost of implementing that is quite low -- and in fact
effectively zero, because it has already been implemented.
-- 
(Rahul Dhesi)
a2i network support account <support@rahul.net>

Rahul Dhesi -- a2i support <support@rahul.net> wrote:
  > This is why the recommended mechanism to be completely free of all
  > filtering done at our machines is to have your own domain.  The
  > technical cost of implementing that is quite low -- and in fact
  > effectively zero, because it has already been implemented.

Rahul,

Couldn't we have a 2nd 'rahul.net', lets call it RahulB.net, that is free
of all filtering.  And everyone can use it.  So people could write to me
at kjs@rahul.net or kjs@rahulB.net.  The 2nd one has no filtering at all.
its a new domain, as you indicate above, but shares the same user base as
rahul.net; just mail forwarding.

Kevin
-- 

Kevin
kjs@rahul.net
Discuss@DomainsAndIdeas.com

In <8a0ndb$5v5$1@samba.rahul.net> Dreamer@Example.com writes:

>Couldn't we have a 2nd 'rahul.net', lets call it RahulB.net, that is free
>of all filtering.  And everyone can use it....

We have one called bypass.us.com, but did you want one that mentions
'rahul'?
-- 
(Rahul Dhesi)
a2i network support account <support@rahul.net>

In article <89us3c$hg$1@samba.rahul.net>,
Rahul Dhesi -- a2i support  <support@rahul.net> wrote:
>In <89uk6q$t0j$1@samba.rahul.net> spp@bob.eecs.berkeley.edu writes:
>
>>incoming email lags ranging up to several hours are not
>>uncommon....
>
>The lags should occur only if for some reason you are causing mail
>delivery to occur in the old (SunOS) environment....

But 'for some reason' still includes having your nojunk level set to
anything but 0, right?
-- 
<LI><a href="http://pobox.com/~flash">Flash Sheridan</a>
<LI><a href="http://pobox.com/~spug">Stanford PalmPilot User Group</a>

In <8a5tpp$lgb$1@samba.rahul.net> Flash Sheridan <flash@pobox.com> writes:

>In article <89us3c$hg$1@samba.rahul.net>,
>Rahul Dhesi -- a2i support  <support@rahul.net> wrote:
>>In <89uk6q$t0j$1@samba.rahul.net> spp@bob.eecs.berkeley.edu writes:
>>
>>>incoming email lags ranging up to several hours are not
>>>uncommon....
>>
>>The lags should occur only if for some reason you are causing mail
>>delivery to occur in the old (SunOS) environment....

>But 'for some reason' still includes having your nojunk level set to
>anything but 0, right?

Yes.  Fortunately, since most of the mail processing is now being done
in the FreeBSD environment, and old SunOS mail system is working well
within capacity.  The occurrences of backlogs in the old environment
should be relatively rare.  It can still happen, if there is an
unexpected burst of email.  The new environment should never get
backlogged.
-- 
(Rahul Dhesi)
a2i network support account <support@rahul.net>

Rahul Dhesi -- a2i support <support@rahul.net> wrote:
  >The new environment should never get backlogged


OOOOHHHHHHH..... lets send that quote to Mitnick and his buddies!
-- 

Kevin
kjs@rahul.net
Discuss@DomainsAndIdeas.com

In article <89s5m0$met$1@samba.rahul.net>,
Pierre Uszynski  <pierre@rahul.net> wrote:
>Rahul Dhesi writes:
>
>Unfortunately, this is not true, as we discussed earlier. For a small
>business, getting a domain name does not guarantee *anything*. It's

You are wrong in this case.  You can get a subdomain name on us.com,
like I did (see my address above, unicorn.us.com).  Much less
expensive, and works just as well as your own domain you'd get by
other means.

And my original a2i address still works.  unicorn@rahul.net is the same
as alex@unicorn.us.com.  However, with my own domain, I can do all sorts
of interesting things with procmail filtering, including setting up
forwarding addresses for others in my company so they can also have an
e-mail address on unicorn.us.com.

-Alex