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August 11, 2003

I heart spammers.

For some reason, since we moved to our new server, about 60% of my outbound e-mail is getting blackholed.

Typical messages:

Remote host said: 550 : Client host rejected: REJECT - We do not accept spam!

Connected to [IP] but sender was rejected.
Remote host said: 550 5.7.1 Rejected: 66.216.97.162 listed at blackholes.intersil.net

Remote host said: 550-66.216.97.162 blocked by blacklist.mail.ops.asp.att.net. 550 Blocked for abuse. Please send blacklist removal requests to blacklist_comcastnet@cable.comcast.com

[IP] does not like recipient. Remote host said: 554: Recipient address rejected: Relay access denied

For those of you scoring at home, we are NOT a relay. We have never been a relay. Congressman, I can stand here before you right now and tell you, if you think we are a relay, you. Are. INSANE!

The uber-cool guys at logjamming have tried to contact the various RBLs that are blocking us, but none of the RBLs have responded. One of them went so far as to block our freakin' request:

Hi. This is the qmail-send program at logjamming2.com.
I'm afraid I wasn't able to deliver your message to the following addresses.
This is a permanent error; I've given up. Sorry it didn't work out.

retest@relays.osirusoft.com:
Sorry, I wasn't able to establish an SMTP connection. (#4.4.1) I'm not going to try again; this message has been in the queue too long.

That's sheer genius, osirusoft! Make us prove that we're not an open relay, and bounce the freakin' e-mail we send to prove it! Hooray for self-fulfilling prophecies!

Thanks a lot, Spammers. It's bad enough that you clog my inbox with shit. Now you're screwing up the Internet so badly, legit e-mails get killed.

Freakin' brilliant.

UPDATE: Several readers have pointed out to me that the RBL issue is because of Rackspace, not WWdN or logjamming. I had no idea that Rackspace was so spammer-friendly. That sucks the most. It was also brought to my attention that I misread the qmail error (don't tell anyone, okay? It will reveal to the world what a lameass non-technical-pseudo-geek I am) about osirusoft. They didn't block our request. Our mailserver just timed out.

None of this changes my feelings about spammers, though. While we are all annoyed by the proliferation of junk mail, and its continued invasion of our inboxes, this problem of innocent people getting caught up in RBLs and the like is something I've never thought about until it happened to me.

Therefore, on behalf of the Internet, I would like to invite all the spammers in the world to kindly fuck themsleves.

And don't cuddle after, you bastards.

Posted by wil at August 11, 2003 11:27 AM

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