Spamhaus and Email blocking

[BobsGalaxy]

I have recently been the victim of Email blocking via Spamhaus. To date have had four sessions with Bigpond consultants to resolve the issue including me having to pay Telstra to reconfigure ThunderBird, but the problem is still there!!!

Has anyone else had this problem and what was done to resolve it...Very anoying and frustrating.

[Christos]

Hi BobsGalaxy

Wlecome to Crowd Support  

There was another user with the same issue who had thier problem resolved: 

Here is a link to the artcle: http://crowdsupport.telstra.com.au/t5/Bigpond-Email-Inc-Windows-Live/Thunderbird/m-p/68882#M340

Hopefully the article will be able to resolve your issue also.

- C

[BobsGalaxy]

Thanks for the link Christos, but that has not realy resolved my issue.

The bigger question I wish answered is what Spamhaus has to do with me sending emails and falsely claiming them to be spam & being rejected and what relation it has with Telstra?

Never had this problem in over 15 years I have been using emails etc.

[Christos]

As far as I am aware Telstra has no control over this becuase: 

Spamhaus is not preventing you from sending email. You can send out as much email as you like, just not to Spamhaus's users.

Spamhaus users (Internet networks and end users that use Spamhaus's blocklists) use our blocklists freely and voluntarily, specifically because they do not want incoming email from IP addresses that we have reason to believe do not fully comply with Spamhaus's policy for acceptance of inbound email.

It is also important to understand that your email never touches Spamhaus's network, nor is it being intercepted or re-routed by us. The mail server you are sending to (the one that is rejecting your messages) is using a filter, set up by the owner of that mail server, that checks to see if the IP address you are sending from is listed on a Spamhaus blocklist. If it is listed, depending on the policy of the mail server owner the mail server may accept, flag for further filtering, or reject your message. How Internet mail servers handle incoming messages is governed solely by the mail server owners, not Spamhaus, we can only state whether an IP address complies with our published policies or not.

The above was taken from the Spamhaus project website.

Telstra has no right to change the settings of the person who is receiving the mail and as far as I am aware Telstra does not have the authority to over rule Spamhaus. The best you can do is to remove the block if it happens again. So really Telstra has nothing to do with it.

Also I can understand you have not had the issue in 15years, but lately SpamHaus has been on a rampage and blocking IP's that have nothing to do with spam, they say it's becuse they handle so many IP's per day that there are bound to be IP's blocked incorrectly

- C

[Ben_F]

Personally, anyone who has an ISP or mail provider that uses Spamhaus should be told in no uncertian terms that they won't get any email from me unless they give me another email address, and leave it at that.

B.

[Juzman]

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@Ben_F wrote:

Personally, anyone who has an ISP or mail provider that uses Spamhaus should be told in no uncertian terms that they won't get any email from me unless they give me another email address, and leave it at that.

B.

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Another way around it would to be leave the modem off for 5-10 minutes, then hopefully you will get assigned another IP address. Unless of course you're paying for a static IP.

[Lathania]

@Juzman I find it generally blocks via email address.

@OP Um have another read of the thread Christos linked, it explains how to get yourself unblocked. If the instructions in that thread or the instructions on Spamhaus itself don't unblock you then you aren't blocked by Spamhaus.

Spamhaus is essentially a spam filter and if there were no spam filters on the internet you'd get 100,000 emails a day selling you less than classy services or informing you that you're now the prince of nigeria as long as you send them $10,000.

[BobsGalaxy]

What I have found is that when email is sent to a recepient that has SpamHaus enabled, and email is rejected, it affects the whole email out system so no email can go out to anyone.

On a brighter note I have spoken to Telstra billing and they have waived the fee for mucking around with my problem and given credit of $50 to compensate for the angst this has caused. Not bad considering...

There has to be a better way of protecting against spam and differentiating spam from legitimate emails etc...

[Ben_F]

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@BobsGalaxy wrote:

What I have found is that when email is sent to a recepient that has SpamHaus enabled, and email is rejected, it affects the whole email out system so no email can go out to anyone.

On a brighter note I have spoken to Telstra billing and they have waived the fee for mucking around with my problem and given credit of $50 to compensate for the angst this has caused. Not bad considering...

There has to be a better way of protecting against spam and differentiating spam from legitimate emails etc...

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Agreed. Personally my employer uses Cisco IronPort Products and Technology which does a **bleep** sight better then Spamhaus

[Shellock]

Hi BobsGalaxy,

If you have to restart your modem to allow emails through temporarily before your emails are blocked again, there is a good chance that you have a virus or trojan on your computer which is why your IP keeps getting blocked.

In the error message you receive through your email program it will provide a link to view WHY you are being blocked, as it could be one of many http://www.spamhaus.org/lookup/

For those who don't know how to find what IP address you are currently connected with, this link will give you those details: http://www.whatismyip.org or http://www.whatsmyip.org/

After entering your current IP, SpamHaus checks a number of protocols which can trigger the blocking. Click on the links for further information on each type that is provided.

If it is a trojan it will provide details on which trojan is causing the problems, when they last detected it active on that IP.

There are also FAQs which will answer a host of other scenarios.

Service providers have no direct influence over SpamHaus.

This information is available for anyone, and there is information available to assist you in getting unblocked and back to emailing.

At the end of the day, it is important to remember that SpamHaus is used by a number of ISPs to help reduce spam and privacy fraud. It is there to protect you and all other users.

Hope this helps

- Shelly

[BobsGalaxy]

Spoiler

An update to my continuing email sending problems...Got my computer back today from my local computer tech, after having it checked for Virus, trojans, Malware, bots etc and non was found!!

In the mean time had my lap top connected and working in lieu of main comp. Surprise, surprise, the same issue started to happen, even to the point of Web mail not being able to be accessed today...Cosultant from Manila tells me that there is an ongoing server problem within Telstra/Bigpond...One wonders how long this has been going on??

To date I have had seven consults, changed email apps a number of times, changed passwords, all manner of settings and had my computer given a clean bill of health by the experts...Really at a loss as to what is happening, starting to seriously consider a change of ISP...

[Lathania]

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@MichelleP wrote:

Service providers have no direct influence over SpamHaus.

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Bob,

Why are you talking to Telstra support about this issue? As per above and several other posts Telstra is not directly affiliated with SpamHaus. Changing ISP's will fix nothing more than the simple steps already provided to you.

[BobsGalaxy]

Hi Lathania,

I was talking to telstra support because I could not get email out any which way, which was happening with Spamhaus as well, not through my email app, or Webmail through the BigPond site. The consultant who I spoke to yesterday, did a remote log in and could not access the mail server either. He told me that there are problems with the mail server that they are working on and all should be good in 8 hours...

If I can't turn to Telstra (who I pay a hefty fee to) who can I turn to to have email service problems sorted?....

Today I have been able to send emails with no probs...Something must have happened somewhere!!

[Lathania]

My apologies Bob I accidentally skimmed over the part where you mentioned webmail. You may have been affected by one of the WL issues.

[Shellock]

Hi Bob, 

I understand the frustration when  you are having ongoing issues with your email. Is it still only the SpamHaus or are you still having difficulties with the webmail?

I am sending you a private message so that you can securely provide details if it requires further investigation.

[BobsGalaxy · Accepted solution]

Some good news of sorts, finally tracked down what has been causing my email sending problems and getting Spamhaus blocking. After a lot of conversations with consultants, I did a very intensive scan of all my (3) network computers and found one that has the Trojan "NecursGen!A" virus, This virus hijacks the ip address. it also has the Trojan Necurs.A pass word stealer.

My AV (AVG) didn't pick them up, even though it did regular scans.

Changed a heap of pass words and put an axe into the infected computer.

Thanks to all the Telstra support team who were most helpfull..

Bob 

[nojoy]

Somehow Spamhaus got onto my computer and it blocking my bigpond emails and a few other things.To old to go changing id etc . Anyone know how to get rid of

[Shellock]

Hi nojoy,

The information from my previous posts should help with this, otherwise you can check out this Knowledge Base that we created: 

http://crowdsupport.telstra.com.au/t5/Bigpond-Email-Inc-Window-Live-KB/I-m-getting-an-Error-related-...

- Shelly

[vmvm]

Thanks Juzman,
I have been stressing over this all day, and turning off the modem worked!

[tbrain3]

Shelly,

re Item 2 in your KB item #76234 (pasted below)

Telstra should have the clout & nous to negotiate a feature request with Spamhaus around a weighting system for its scoring of message content. 

Blocking emails on the basis that their content includes shortened URLs (or any other naughty stuff) is a step too far.

Some email service providers might want that level of censorship from Spamhaus - let's call it "level 4".  Perhaps Bigpond could introduce a premium service that subscribes to that "nanny" level of spam protection.  (George Brandis might sign up.)

The rest of us would be quite happy with Spamhaus protection against Port 25 spam only - let's call it level 2.  After all, most of us either think about the emails we open, or use a client side spam protector - and spank ourselves if we mess up.

Your team is quite wrong to behave as helpless to the whims of any other service provider.  Please ask your vendor managers to represent Australian email users for a smarter service with Spamhaus.

Terry

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2. Checking for Blocked URLs Emails sent to or from BigPond accounts, may be blocked if they contain links using certain URL shorteners and affected emails will be rejected and receive a bounceback message. This is because various domains are listed in the third party provider SpamHaus, that BigPond uses to assess mail for spam/malicious links. Customers are advised to remove any links that may be responsible from the body of the email, this includes any links that may appear in the original email if you are replying or forwarding.

[Shellock]

Hi tbrain3,

Thank you for your feedback, I will feed this back through to the appropriate team.

- Shelly

[ChesterErik]

A bit more feedback, Shellock:

I spent this morning on a mac running safari & firefox, connected via a telstra 4G dongle.

whatismyip returned 1.128.xxx.xxx.  Spamhaus stated that all addresses 1.128.0.0/12 were on their problem lists.

The user only used webmail, not an email client.

Spamhaus suggested SNMP authentication.  Converting him to an email client with authentication allowed him to send emails again, which he has been unable to do for  nearly 3 weeks.

Might it be worth seeing if bigpond webmail uses or does not use authentication?