non t-mobile smpt server & spam blocking

[Guest adge]

I have been having problems connecting to my ISPs smtp server for sending email on t-mobile.

smtp.t-email.co.uk works fine, but obviously not when using wifi.

After some investigation I have discovered that the reason for the problem is the t-mobile proxy IP address has been blacklisted on a couple of spam checker sites (like spamcop.net) !! Therefore my ISP is rejecting my sends !!!

It looks like t-mobile has 3 sendmail servers, although only 1 has this problem. Interestingly it's also the only one with no reverse-dns lookup.

Anyway, I have reported all this to t-mobile, and they have escalated it in order to try and work out what is going on !

Adge

[Guest mumbles27]

Hi Adge,

just searched google and your the only item to come up on this subject.

I have a T-Mobile data card with numerous email accounts on my laptop. alll accounts are my own, hosted in various places, but on some of the accounts i cannot send email when connected with the data card as it lists an IP address which is listed with spamCop. On closer inspection the IP address belongs to T-Mobile. not the same problem as you I know, but similar. did you get any more info on this..? eager to know as T-Mobile sound a little unsure when i talk to them.

Would liek to know if this is Tmobiles fault or its my host for these particular emails that are failing to send when connected with the data card...

any help would be much appreciated...

Andi

Edited September 27, 2006 by mumbles27

[Guest richard_d]

Hi Adge,

just searched google and your the only item to come up on this subject.

I have a T-Mobile data card with numerous email accounts on my laptop. alll accounts are my own, hosted in various places, but on some of the accounts i cannot send email when connected with the data card as it lists an IP address which is listed with spamCop. On closer inspection the IP address belongs to T-Mobile. not the same problem as you I know, but similar. did you get any more info on this..? eager to know as T-Mobile sound a little unsure when i talk to them.

Would liek to know if this is Tmobiles fault or its my host for these particular emails that are failing to send when connected with the data card...

any help would be much appreciated...

Andi

One of the other site members noticed that Hotmail doesn't recieve email sent via pop3 from the Vario II - I wonder if this is related?

Richard

[Guest mumbles27]

Hotmail has a terrible reputation regarding spam, supposed spam and what it labels as spam so that doesnt surprise me.

The way they deal with spam is to give certain words and phrases they thinka spammer has and would use, a secret score. Once that score reaches a threshold, again a secret threshold, they automatically dump the mail without warning. So it may do this with mail its servers delegate as spam, others make it to the spam folder. These items that make it to the spam folder are items that it thinks maybe spam but have not triggered its auto dumping feature. So its no surprise that hotmail pop3 may not work with the TMobile Vario II as it thinks, or is being told, its possibly spam. Infact it looks like its actually not being told its spam, but is infact not being idenfied as not being Spam [i know, too may double negatives... sorry...] via this reverse DNS lookup feature, which appears to be Tmobile's, or the server that TMobile's server is talking to when sending this email, problem.

Not an expert on server systems but i do know a lot about email...

[Guest Matt Kirby]

It could also be down to Sender Policy Framework (SPF), which I think Hotmail use.

SPF attempts to verify that a server is permitted to send email on behalf of another domain.

So if Hotmail recieves an email relayed from "domainA" and the sent from address is from "domainB" it checks the SPF record at "domainB" to see if "domainA" is allowed to send email on its behalf.

Problem is that very few domains have SPF records and if there isn't one Hotmail seems to treat the email as spam anyway.

The other problem is if your domain does have a SPF record it's a pain trying to cover all of the servers that might send email on behalf of that domain (SMTP servers for home user's ISPs, mobile users, users in a foreign hotel room using the hotel's SMTP servers, etc).

In my opinion its a flawed bodge on a flawed system that does hardly anything to stop spam and just annoys legitimate email users. All it does is give the likes of Hotmail and AOL a grand project that they can say they are doing to stop spam.

Full details available at www.openspf.org.

[Guest]

yeah it was me who couldn't send emails to hotmail based accounts. my solution eventually and after testing lots of smt servers and settings from my vario 2 was to open another account with googlemail and use that if I wanted to send to a hotmail based account or wait till I came home and sent stuff out from my outlook program set up with the same smtp servers and stuff but from my desktop

nothing else seemed to work at all and I mean I tried everything. there is a thread on the help and advice section started by me have a look for it if people are interested.

anyway will keep an eye on this thread in case anyone gets it working for hotmail based emails from yahoo pop3 and smtp

Jeremy