Blocked Email Issues

[Xepher]

Some of you may have noticed that many emails have been getting bounced when you try to send from xepher.net to other services over the past few days. Turns out the datacenter where the server is got their entire range added to the Spamhaus PBL. This is a kind of blacklist, and it specifically says "these IPs are dynamic (they change ownership frequently), for home and other use, and shouldn't be sending email." I requested an unblock a couple days ago, and it went through, but as they work to resolve the issue as a whole, it looks like the server got whitewashed with the rest of them, and back onto the list. I've again gotten it removed, and hopefully it'll stick this time. If not, I'll continue to work on getting it resolved. Believe me, this is more annoying to me than anyone... I (obviously) use this for all my own mail. :-)

[Miluette]

I'm sad this kind of thing happens to email here. So inconvenient and unfair to boot. I'm mostly sad because of the lack-of-forwarding this also entails. Email forwarding is my friend. ;x;

[Xepher]

Sadly, it's not just here. It happens to almost everyone that's not a MAJOR email provider. Email issues about spam (either getting too much of it, or being blocked inadvertently) were the most common source of calls when I worked tech support the past year. The problem is simply that email was designed back when you could (and did) trust literally everyone on the internet to play nice. That, of course, is pretty much the opposite of today's internet, yet we're still using almost exactly the same protocol, just having tacked on things like block lists. Someone's going to have to invent something better pretty soon.

[Databits]

They have, and it's failed.

[Xepher]

Heheh... yes, but my definition of "better" includes a very definite lack of failure. :-P

[Databits]

Get Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo on board and it will happen.

[Miluette]

Yes!

Soon "gmail" will mean more than just "email" with a "g"!