Email to AT&T still being blocked after more than 2 weeks

trickydisko · 27-10-2003, 13:10

Email sent from NTL's mail server has been blocked by the large US ISP AT&T since at least the 12th of October. At that time I emailed both NTL and AT&T to try and resolve the issue, but the block is still in place.

NTL have not responded to my message. AT&T's abuse department gave this reply on the 13th:

Dear E-Mail User:

Thank you for contacting the AT&T Internet Investigations and Security Systems
Team at abuse_rbl@abuse-att.net.

A nondelivery report indicates that a mail system has been blocked from
sending mail to all att.net addresses. We block systems that have been
heavily involved in spam-related activity. The administrator responsible for
the offending mail system will need to contact us to resolve the issue. We
have sent a notification to the administrator with this information, so no
action is needed on your part. We can remove the block once we confirm the
spam-related activity has ended.

We regret any inconvenience this block has caused. The ever-increasing volumes
of spam requires us to be vigilant in our antispam efforts for the benefit of
everyone's e-mail experience.

Regards,

AT&T Internet Investigations and Security Systems Team

Can anyone at NTL say if any action has been taken to rectify the situation, or if any is ongoing? When can email from NTL be expected to be allowed through?

Regards,
trickydisko

Neil · 27-10-2003, 13:14

Were there any attachments on the mail (perhaps generated by a virus that the sender knew nothing about?)

trickydisko · 27-10-2003, 13:19

Quote:

Originally Posted by Neil

Were there any attachments on the mail (perhaps generated by a virus that the sender knew nothing about?)

I was the sender, and there definitely weren't any attachments! The delivery failure report makes it clear NTL has been blacklisted:

Final-Recipient: RFC822; <******@att.net>
Action: failed
Status: 5.1.1
Remote-MTA: dns; gateway1.att.net (204.127.134.23)
Diagnostic-Code: smtp; 550-62.253.162.42 blocked by blacklist.mail.ops.worldnet.att.net.
550 If you feel the email has been incorrectly rejected, please contact abuse_rbl@abuse-att.net and include your email server IP Address. If you don't know your email server IP address please ask the system administrator of the sending service to provide the IP address.

trickydisko

carlingman · 27-10-2003, 23:32

Maybe worth posting this over at nthellworld.com

You may get an official answer there but dont hold your breath.

trickydisko · 29-10-2003, 21:55

Quote:

Originally Posted by carlingman

Maybe worth posting this over at nthellworld.com

You may get an official answer there but dont hold your breath.

Thanks for the advice - tried it, but no replies at all.

trickydisko

30-10-2003, 19:46

On this subject, I seem to be having problems with e-mails to AOL addresses, I've been in contact with several people who have sent me mail ok, but they don't seem to get my replies.

The only way I can contact them is to use dial up on my old virgin net account!

Anyone know if AOL are blocking NTL messages and if there's anything I can do about it?

Scarlett · 06-11-2003, 18:09

Yep still being blocked! I just tried to report an email from to ATT.com and that bounced as well.

Never mind, passed it to the postmaster at ntl as suggested.

Scarlett · 06-11-2003, 18:20

Quote:

Originally Posted by Scarlett

Yep still being blocked! I just tried to report an email from to ATT.com and that bounced as well.

Never mind, passed it to the postmaster at ntl as suggested.

Interestingly, I managed to ge around it by using a different reply to address i.e. not something @ ntlworld dot com

shin0r · 22-11-2003, 12:50

Hi all

The problem stems from the amount of ntlworld customers that got infected by the last round of viruses (i forget which one sent spam to everyone in the address book, but it was one of them.)

AT&T, ntl, BT, most ISPs in fact have auto-generated spam filters / block-drop lists on their MTA servers - in this case AT&T's dropper has triggered and is now blocking from mta2 (and probably the other MTA boxes within ntl's range.)

Unfortunately the solution, although simple, will be difficult to implement due to the amount of traffic postmaster and root accounts recieve (often admins drop these straight to /dev/null). AT&T will need to remove the ntlworld MTAs from it's drop/block list.

How do you get this done? The most effective way of doing it would probably be to try calling your ntl tech support line who will raise an issue with their sysadmins, who will then raise it with AT&T admins, who will (eventually) drop the MTAs.

HTH