[AT] Deferrals

[Spencer Yost]

*********** REPLY SEPARATOR  ***********
On 2/10/2006 at 5:49 AM Mike Sloane wrote:
>Spencer - it looks like there are some problems at your end.
>
>Mike
>-- 
>
>Delivery attempt history for your mail:
>
>Thu, 09 Feb 2006 18:08:44 -0600 (CST)
>at at lists.antique-tractor.com: smtp;450 Service temporarily unavailable;
Client host [206.46.252.46] deferred using qil.kelkea.com
>

Hey Mike,

I am copying the lists so others may understand too.   I get a dozen
private messages a day saying the same thing and of course this kind of
stuff gets posted to the lists.   So I want to explain this one last time
for everyone.   I discussed deferred messages when receiving mail during my
response to Dean.    Let me discuss deferrals when you send messages now..

When you send a message, your message does NOT go to my server.   It goes
to my SPAM/Anti-virus service provider's (Trend Micro) servers.  Trend
Micro uses the 450 deferral error message to indicate that your mail server
is listed on SPAM lookup lists.   Your mail server,
qil.kelkea.com[206.46.252.46], is listed at Netherworld right now and was
on other blacklists earlier.  Check out DNS style blacklists and Trend
Micro here:

http://www.dnsstuff.com
http://www.trendmicro.com

This is just the normal course of business and what the message indicates
is Trend Micro is waiting for kil.kelkea.com to fall away from the black
lists.  There is no real cause for alarm unless it goes on for more than a
day or two.   Any public mail service is the source of SPAM from time to
time and mail from that mail server gets squashed by anyone like myself
that uses a full SPAM filtering product or service.  ATIS has been on black
lists before itself when one of my users was sending SPAM.   I also have
shown up on a couple of IP style blacklists because my IP address falls
within a range of residential addresses and most mail servers assume that
only viruses sending SPAM would send mail from a residential address.
Roadrunner finally stopped broadcasting my address in the list of
residential address and fixed that problem.

Why does this not happen to other messages you send you ask?- Simple.
Many other mail servers do NOT use complete SPAM filtering that uses
DNS/BlackHole/SPAM storm style lists.  Their SPAM filters only do content
filtering.   Anyone that gets more than 20 SPAM messages a day has a mail
service that doesn't use blacklists as part of their SPAM filtering.
Blacklists are the only reliable way to filter SPAM in a proactive, highly
adaptive way.

Also, everyone should note that Trend Micro is a fairly large, very capable
24x7 company that receives and pre-processes my mail(they better - I pay a
very pretty penny to them !)  I can virtually promise everyone that as long
as you, your message, and your ISP are legit and off the blacklists, your
message will go through.   It is almost never a "problem on my end".   Even
if my server is down, Trend Micro caches my messages for me.

I hope this helps to explain things.   

Spencer Yost
Owner, ATIS
Plow the Net!
http://www.atis.net