> It will be a cold day in hell before I use xtras SMTP server, every time
> I
> have tried the comboniation of it having zero DNS entries relevent to the
> domain name used in the from address, and its presence in some spam list
> has
> resulted in at least one email going out being tagged as spam.
>
> Using my hosts smtp which has the reverse lookup all set up (no SPF yet -
> been too lazy to do that) and the mail gets thru without being tagged as
> spam.
>
> Happened for someone that I work with as well, because a lot of the
> content
> of there newsletters gets picked up by the words in it.
>
> The solution is for recipients to refuse mail based on it being a dynamic
> IP, and having the reverse of the IP having nothing to do with the domain
> name in question. That seems to work very well indeed. For shared servers
> without there own IP there is SPF records but obviously when other people
> have access to relay thru that same server you want to take it carefully.
>
> Ideally all end user SMTP would require authentication, but that's not
> gonna
> happen when there are broken AV packages around that still trap smtp when
> they don't support secure or authenticated smtp.
>

Rich
Sorry I dont entirely follow your reply.
Xtras mail server doesn't hold any DNS entries. Obviously.
The concept of a domain being hosted _by_ an ISP is universal, but people
who own their own domains and have them hosted by their provider don't
likewise expect a dns entry for their domain to point at their ISPs mail
network.
This would only penalise you if your mail domain in question has published
SPF that conflicts. Otherwise, for someone to score your message as 'spam'
on those grounds means their filter is being too aggressive.

> The solution is for recipients to refuse mail based on it being a dynamic
> IP, and having the reverse of the IP having nothing to do with the domain
> name in question. That seems to work very well indeed. For shared servers

This particular paragraph, however, basically advocates some sort of
'dynamic IP blocklist'. These exist, but they serve to mitigate some of
the problems. Theyre vulnerable - huge admin overhead in keeping them
current. Thus why even when implemented, they dont block _all_ traffic.

Besides would it not be better to block at the source instead of the
destination?

Mark.

PS: I use smtp.xtra.co.nz most of the time, and have never seen my emails
score as viruses as a byproduct of using smtp.xtra.co.nz, despite the fact
I do my own domain mail handling and Xtra have _never_ hosted it.
I dare say that other habits - like posting in HTML as an example - do far
far more to increase the risk of a false-positive spam hit.

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