| Posted by zachbb, 09-06-2009, 07:39 PM | | Hi
I just purchased a server from RapidSwitch. I have all my websites set up and everything runs fine EXCEPT - all of the email that I send from the server is being marked as spam.
Yahoo, Gmail, and Windows Mail all mark mail sent from my server as spam. An example demail address that gets marked as spam is support@mutantauctions.com
I have contacted RapidSwitch and my server managment company (PlatinumServerManagment) and no one has found out what the problem is. They all say that it's Yahoo and Gmail and MSN... But come on, they didn't conspire against my website in certain.. it has to be some configuration issue, right?
This is what I've done:
1. Set up SPF records for my domains
2. Configured the reverse DNS
3. Set up domain keys.
4. checked the IP against black lists
5. Never sent more than 20 emails from my domains, and none were spam
I can't figure it out.. I really need this fixed!
Any ideas??
Zach
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| Posted by ServerManagement, 09-06-2009, 08:00 PM | | Isp's block ranges of ips all the time, especially large free mail providers. Most of the time, when you are blocked by one, you get blocked by all the major ones.
It may have absolutely nothing to do with your activity. Your ip may be blocked from the previous owner of your ip, or even someone in the same C class may have spammed from a bunch of ips and got the entire C class blacklisted.
We have already checked all of your mail/dns/hostname settings and made sure there is no spamming activity, so this is not a problem on your server.
Some isp's unblock an ip after a period of time, but others have to be manually requested. All you have to do is start by contacting one of them and ask to be delisted. They will either unblock you or give you more details as to why they are blocking you. Even if you feel this is not the solution, there's no harm in trying. If you don't do what we tell you, then please do not say we can't solve it. If they block you, there is nobody that can force them to accept your mail until they unblock you. Please try contacting them and see what they say. If they need any technical data, just let us know and we'll get you any details you need.
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| Posted by zachbb, 09-06-2009, 08:05 PM | | I have already tried contacting them.
I got the issue escalated in windows mail, but they have been unresponsive (over 2 weeks now, no response). The sender contact form for gmail does not work (it dosen't submit), and I can't see how to contact yahoo.
So I'm not sure what to do at this point.
This is costing me a lot of money as I have prospects that can't activate their account or that I just can't contact.
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| Posted by Outlaw Web Master, 09-06-2009, 08:15 PM | | can't you try contacting your prospects using another working email address until this issue gets fixed.?
trust me I know how frustrating this issue is but like PSM said...it's the only way forward unfortunately....without moving to another provider who's got a clean ip range.
owm
Last edited by Outlaw Web Master; 09-06-2009 at 08:20 PM.
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| Posted by zachbb, 09-06-2009, 08:19 PM | | That's what I've been doing - contacting prospects from a shared hosting account that I purchased.
It's not that great because I need to send out email based on my database that's hosted on the server that's not able to send emails.
I only use it to contact individual prospects and can't set up automatic emails, such as registration activation or payment emails.
And obviously, I'm sending emails about confidential or payment data from an unassociated domain - not that great.
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| Posted by Outlaw Web Master, 09-06-2009, 08:23 PM | | hmm...you seem to have the wrong end of a sh*ty stick.
hopefully it can be sorted soon.
yahoo tech support..
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/in...4154642AA2ljQ1
owm
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| Posted by zachbb, 09-06-2009, 08:34 PM | | Thanks for the link, I will call Yahoo tomorrow when they open. I really hope this gets sorted out soon or I will have to move to another hosting company.
Last edited by zachbb; 09-06-2009 at 08:40 PM.
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| Posted by Beast5, 09-06-2009, 08:46 PM | | I would suggest contacting the abuse department for your ip block ( the actual NOC ).
rapidswitch?
(from whois on the IP )
e-mail: abuse "at" rapidswitch.com
nic-hdl: AR6363-RIPE
go that road, they should have a better answer for you.
now as i see it, you have a managment company for your server, which i assume got your server working correctly and not spamming.
good luck!
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| Posted by mugo, 09-07-2009, 12:59 AM | | make sure your machines hostname is properly set. Do a hostname and make sure you have it set to a FQDN, and make sure it's set in the /etc/sysconfig/network file also (or equivalent depending on OS).
Many MTAs, sendmail included, hand off the hostname as their mail domain when talking to remote SMTP servers. Having this set to a partial (just host, no domain) or "localhost" will cause major deliverability issues.
You need to restart SMTP after changing the hostname.
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| Posted by gigatux, 09-07-2009, 09:06 AM | | We have a colocated server at Rapidswitch's datacentre, and our Yahoo! mail was marked as spam.
We filled in a form last week at http://help.yahoo.com/l/us/yahoo/mai...er/bulkv2.html with honest information (even though we're not bulk mailers) and got a useful response back, semi-whitelisting our IP.
Our emails to Yahoo! previously had the X-YahooFilteredBulk email header appended, but this has now gone. At the same time, we implemented SPF, DKIM and DomainKeys. Emails from us no longer appear in Yahoo!'s spam filters.
Worth a try using that form, but I doubt there's much Rapidswitch themselves can do.
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| Posted by zachbb, 09-07-2009, 10:04 AM | | Thanks for the link, I filled out the form.
How long did it take for yahoo to get back to you and solve the issue?
What do you mean by semi-white listed?
Did Hotmail and GMail also mark your email as spam?
I really feel that if this affects RapidSwitch's IP block, then THEY should be sorting out the problem, not leaving it up to their customers to fend for themselves.
Thanks
Zach Bastick
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| Posted by gigatux, 09-07-2009, 10:08 AM | | Actually only about one week. I was quite impressed.
They've marked emails from my IP as non-spam, but, according to them, I can't get a full exemption from their 'SpamGuard' technology.
Not as far as I know.
I disagree here. Sometimes, ISPs such as Rapidswitch will have customers that abuse their network. To keep track of what blacklists each and every IP address is on is way too much of a burdon. It is the email providers that are doing the blocking, not Rapidswitch.
I hope you manage to get yourself unblocked!
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| Posted by erigid, 09-09-2009, 05:43 AM | | I noticed that you have include:websitewelcome.com in your SPF record which includes a lot of IPs. Any reason why you have this?
What is you d= and s= values in your DKIM signature?
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| Posted by zachbb, 09-09-2009, 08:57 AM | | I'm not sure. I did ask PSM to review the SPF record and whether it was really neccessary to include websitewelcome.com. They made a new record but left that in there.
I'm not sure, where can I find this?
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| Posted by VPSRight, 09-09-2009, 09:10 AM | | We're having the same issue. Every IP across our nodes are having emails blocked by Hotmail. We haven't received any complaints about Gmail or Yahoo yet.
We contacted our provider and they said to do the obvious like SPF records and rDNS setups but on our domain/vps, the rDNS is already set. Just need an SPF record.
This has happened just recently so it's really confusing, one minute we can send email to who we like (in a non spam way) and next minute we can't send emails to probably 90% of our customers.
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| Posted by zachbb, 09-09-2009, 01:02 PM | | Sorry, this is it:
DomainKey-Signature: a=rsa-sha1; q=dns; c=nofws; s=default;
d=mutantauctions.com;
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| Posted by zachbb, 09-09-2009, 01:08 PM | | I know, it's really a terrible situation to be in. Have you managed to fix this?
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| Posted by mugo, 09-09-2009, 01:43 PM | | Is all your mail being delivered FROM IPs 95.154.193.23 or 10.0.7.12 or your Hostgator server?
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| Posted by zachbb, 09-09-2009, 01:45 PM | | It's all delivered from 95.154.193.23
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| Posted by Daniel Rock, 09-18-2009, 12:32 AM | | I hope this problem gets resolved.. as I've the same problem here!
New server (from a different provider), all mails marked as spam.
I've ensured:
- Reverse DNS is working
- SPF record done (I've got "Received-SPF: pass.. " from Gmail)
BUT Gmail and Hotmail still marking my mails as spam. Yahoo mail is ok thou.
I guess my next action will be to try implementing this DKIM thing - any other suggestions?
Daniel
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| Posted by gigatux, 09-18-2009, 04:46 AM | | Firstly, I'd see if your IP is on any blacklists typically used by email receivers - http://www.mxtoolbox.com/blacklists.aspx
Then, I'd try and contact Google and MS directly to see if they can whitelist your IP address.
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| Posted by Daniel Rock, 09-30-2009, 06:47 AM | | It turns out that Gmail will only remove my emails from spam if they are DKIM-signed.
I have also done a lot of other steps to make my emails/servers "look good", but hotmail is still putting them in junk. Gmail and Yahoo Mail are happy.
I've also gone to the Microsoft support for hotmail, and like described below, they told me to follow their "recommendations" to make a difference, and stated that "IPs that have little to no history of sending email to Hotmail are more likely to be targeted". If anyone has success getting through this wall, it will be much appreciated.
[can't link yet].. http:[double-slash]allaboutlamp.com/2009/09/how-to-prevent-web-server-emails-from-being-marked-as-spam/
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| Posted by koolnhot, 09-30-2009, 08:19 AM | | make sure ur ip is clean, this is one big problem been faced recently, then setup SPF records and domain keys it should be enough I guess, as it worked for my friend with these 3 changes
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| Posted by Daniel Rock, 09-30-2009, 08:36 AM | | I've done that before already actually.. My IP is not in any blacklist. SPF record and DKIM are both shown as pass in gmail mail headers.
I'm starting to think that the Hotmail "SmartScreen" thing just needs to take its time to trust my IP. I've heard that if a new IP consistently sends emails and users consistently mark them as non-spam, mails will be delivered to inboxes eventually. (sigh- eventually when!)
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| Posted by praveenkv1988, 09-30-2009, 09:09 AM | | Your IP might be blacklisted.
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| Posted by koolnhot, 10-01-2009, 07:09 AM | | if ur ip is blocked only by hotmail, send a mail to hotmail technical team, they could guide u better on how to un-ban ur ip from hotmal list
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| Posted by DashingHost, 10-01-2009, 08:41 PM | | I've had this problem on new servers from many different hosting providers, even after setting up SPF, Reverse DNS and DKIM. I did notice though that the more you send out e-mails from your new server, as long as most of your recipients do not mark them as spam the receiving providers such as Gmail, Yahoo and Hotmail eventually learn that your mails are legitimate and will start delivering them to the inbox. This tends to take a few weeks.
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| Posted by Daniel Rock, 10-02-2009, 05:26 AM | | I already did.. in Microsoft's reply (apparently it's standard because I could found it from Google too) I saw:
“… IPs that have little to no history of sending email to Hotmail are more likely to be targeted by SmartScreen…”
My outgoing emails to hotmail will therefore be, inevitably, junk. Some admins in internet did share that it improves after a while, so I can only keep sending consistently and ask my friends to turn them to Not Spam, in the hope that future mails will go straight to hotmail inboxes.
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| Posted by MxToolBox, 10-16-2009, 01:01 PM | | I see that you have used a few of the MxToolBox tools, but we wanted to let you know that you can check all aspects of your server including:
1) Blacklists
2) MX Records
3) Reverse DNS records
4) SMTP Diagnostics which checks for Open Relay, HELO response and more.
All of these tools will help make sure that your mail is being delivered accurately and on time. Keep in mind that while you may pass all of these tests each recipient server administrator can adjust their mail filters however they like, which might end up putting your mail in the Junk folder. It is really up to the users of the system to give feedback to their administrators so that filters can be adjusted accordingly.
Let us know if you have any other questions!
Thanks,
MxToolBox
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