Emails blocked

Orange tell me that their outbound email to Hotmail and other providers has been blocked as spam for over a month. I haven't received any notification of this and it was only when a friend with a Hotmail address told me they hadn't received a particular email that I contacted Orange to find out what was happening. They have no date for restoring the service. Anyone else having a problem with this?

I have had similar trouble over the past two days.

About 4 years back, this happened also.

Reporting it to OFCOM had it sorted in about two days.

The other ISPs if based in the UK, have to conform to UK Law and OFCOM requirements, accepting and forwarding ALL e-mails (with some very specific exceptions), whether Spam or not.

The blocking etc is also probably against EU legislation.

Roughly, the situation is similar to Royal Mail, which has to accept and deliver snail-mail, whether the contents are the equivalent of spam or not.

This is the reply I got from Orange:

I'm sorry to learn that you're having problems sending emails with your Orange based email account.

In response to your query regarding issues with the Orange email service, I can confirm that our email administration team are trying to solve the issue that you mention in as timely manner as possible.

As you can possibly appreciate, the problem was initially caused by unsolicited mail being sent within our service, which placed Orange mail servers on a public blocking list relating to spam.

We've made sure that the mentioned offending users we're removed from our service to satisfy the requirements of this blocking list and as such, we've covered what needed to be done to resolve this situation.

The Sorbs public blocking list (PBL) involved in this issue is a third party service and the time taken for removal of our server details is based on their time constraints and as such, the time scale for resolution of this issue is out of our hands.

At this point I can only thank you for your continued patience and offer my sincere apologies for any inconvenience this issue may be causing you.

If you have any further queries then please do not hesitate to get in contact with us again.

And when I asked how long it had been going on:

I'm unable to give you an exact date, however, we believe it's been ongoing for about a month.

In reply to a post by rwg:

Orange tell me that their outbound email to Hotmail and other providers has been blocked

Whose outbound email server? Do you really mean Hotmail's SMTP Server whilst you are connected via Orange ISP?

If so, you should be using Authenticated SMTP Server "smtp.live.com" on port 587 using SSL.

In reply to a post by rwg:

the problem was initially caused by unsolicited mail being sent within our service, which placed Orange mail servers on a public blocking list relating to spam.

Ah, I see! It's not Orange's fault but some of their naughty users.

Try using the Hotmail SMTP server I suggested instead for your Hotmail emails.

No, it's mail sent via Orange's SMTP servers to Hotmail addressees.

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The other ISPs if based in the UK, have to conform to UK Law and OFCOM requirements, accepting and forwarding ALL e-mails (with some very specific exceptions), whether Spam or not.
------------------

You have PROOF of this I trust ?

Ofcom don't appear to have a problem with it. They often refer to the ICO.

ICO states that ISP's can & do use blacklists.

Infact, .gov.uk use spamhaus.org themselves.

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The blocking etc is also probably against EU legislation.
------------------

Funny that, as many of their governments use spamhaus as well.

I had sent the same messages to about thirty addresses on about 20 ISPs, spread over 8 otherwise identical messages.

In some cases it was multiple mixed addresses (& "cc:") on different ISPs on a single message.

At present, the majority of the Addressee Recipients have confirmed receipt, either by e-mail or by telephone.

Only the HOTMAIL Addresses have not received the messages.

If the Blacklists allow Complete Rejection of EVERY e-mail originating with specific ISPs, whether truly SPAM or not, then the whole global e-mail system would grind to a halt, if spamhaus included every ISP.

Your description of "spamhaus" suggests that it corresponds to the Spam Filters that Individual Users can set up on their own Mail Boxes, to discard of Spam etc as it arrives at their individual input port, rather than a generalised system, otherwise why did my other Addressees receive the Messages without problem one confirming by phone about 30 minutes after sending; and in two cases to the extent of Forwarding them on, at my request by Orange e-mail, to two of the HOTMAIL addresses without any problems?

I have literally just received confirmation that both forwarding actions to those Hotmail Addressees, were successfully completed, the Forwarders being on other non-Orange ISPs; and could only have forwarded those after receipt from my Orange Address.

The contents were not in any way contentious.

------------------------

Extract from www.spamhaus.org
"
At 21 July 2011 the Spamhaus Blocklists are protecting 1,438,216,000 users mailboxes
"

Note that the claim relates to "users Mailboxes".

Most UK ISPs would use "spamhaus", hence you emails are getting through.

Hotmail use "sorbs", which is a whole different ball game, hence you are blocked by hotmail.


BTW, I use both blacklists + a few others.
I get emails just fine, & zero spam so far this year.

Switch to Gmail.

Regarding changing to Gmail or similar, I have considered that route; but I have many Contacts in my Address Book; and have had the same address since about 1998, so not really an attractive proposition.

Correspondingly, my Address is scattered globally in the many other Address Books of my Contacts.

Also, it appears that the same could happen at any time, to any e-mail provider.


Surely ORANGE should have sent out WARNIBGS, particularly when it was realised that "sorbs" was continuing to have this effect.

And I would hope that HOTMAIL and the "sorbs" organisation would have been able to respond much more quickly, after Orange had taken corrective action.

It seems extremely irresponsible in this day and age of allegedly almost instant communication, that this situation has continued so long.

Hotmail in particular has been a problem for years.

I now email them using my Hotmail account.

The other day I had same problem sending to btinternet.

Also last week I had quite a few bounce backs of emails which I had not sent to .ru addresses.

Keith

Edited by deleted (Sat 23-Jul-11 09:47:02)

wrong, no network need to accept email or data it does not want to carry

the following faq explain it well

http://www.spamhaus.org/faq/answers.lasso?section=Le...

I have a Right to send email to Spamhaus's users!
The rights of every email sender end at the outer boundaries of every recipient's domain. Spamhaus blocklist users have the right to deny access to their private mail servers on their private networks to any sender, for whatever reason. You may have a legal right under certain jurisdictions to send email to our users, but our users have no obligation whatsoever to accept it.

A few years ago I worked for a company doing B2B products and they would not accept any mail from Hotmail, Yahoo, Gmail or other 'free' accounts due to the amount of spam in general that is sent from those addresses.

The block also cut down the number of fraudulent orders that being placed, Nobody was saying that free email account users all commit fraud, but that any reputable business would have a domain name of their own to send mail from.

I binned my Hotmail account many years ago as I hit a similar situation, trying to order something and used my day-to-day address (Hotmail.co.uk). The order was rejected, but happily accepted once I used an address at my own domain. I decided then that I didn't need that hassle. I sent everyone on my address book a message to let them know, I don't think I lost any friends.

As for bouncing messages to .ru addresses, I get loads like that. These days I look after about 25 domains and spammers will use almost any address, resulting in stuff coming back that's supposed to have originated from TheManager@ my domain or even silly character strings like aowmKq6BQ1@ something. I know I haven't sent it out. Most of it gets filtered out as I simply junk messages that come to unknown names. Again, I've not lost any contacts through doing that as everyone who needs to contact me will use an address I've given them.

Afternoon Cobra001

You are correct where a PRIVATE MAIL Server handling e-mail addressed to an Employee of that company and using that Company's Address, can be blocked by that company if it believes that Spam or other unwanted Mail is being received or generated.

It is for that private company to control; and it could even choose to abandon e-mail altogether, if it so chooses.

But the Mail Servers of Public Carriers should NOT be blocking other Public Carriers unless they can prove that the other Public Carrier itself is actually generating Spam, as opposed to simply forwarding the Spam messages originating elsewhere.

Note that you yourself have used the phrase-
"
Spamhaus blocklist users have the right to deny access to their PRIVATE mail servers on their PRIVATE networks to any sender, for whatever reason.
"
"PRIVATE" = My Emphasis

And I Agree with that statement!

That is exemplified by the fact that I have my own local BLOCKED List.

It is two PUBLIC CARRIER Mail Servers that are the subject of the Thread - NOT PRIVATE (Company) Mail Servers.

I would be amazed if any of the Public Carrier Mail Servers do NOT have any Spam e-mails passing through them.

So taking your logic to the extreme, every Pulic Carrier Mail Server forwarding Spam, should be blocked - bringing the global e-mail service and facilities to an end.

Can you name any of the Public Carrier e-mail Servers that are/is in your opinion and experience, either totally free of Spam; or has it at minimal level, say 1% of traffic, by any measure that you choose to use?

Correspondingly, can you guarantee that any Mail Server, Public or Private, is not handling Spam IN or OUT, whwther it using Spamhaus or not. That is, can Spamhaus be used to prevent Spam goint OUT as wells as coming IN?

And are you aware of any significant Public Carrier Mail Server using such Out-Going protection?

Now that would be a more advantageous and efficient way of working, freeing a lot of the Web's capacity for genuine traffic!

And as it would be within the originating Public Carrier Mail Server - before "pubkication" on the Web, it could be done legally within the Contract to Individual Users.

I have submitted a formal written complaint to Orange. Their reply was a brief letter that included, "It's a massive issue that's effected (sic) a number of our customers". Has anyone got anything through to Hotmail users yet? Orange seem determined to keep us all in the dark about the problem.

Yes, from my Orange SMTP to my Hotmail a/c and back from Hotmail's POP3.

Never ever had a problem with it.

It's not just Hotmail. Orange support state that they block access to all non-Orange smtp servers, so anyone visiting my house and using my wifi can't send an email unless I give them my Orange smtp login details.

This is [censored] ridiculous!

In reply to a post by keybaud:

they block access to all non-Orange smtp servers

The OP made it clear that he was talking about Orange's own SMTP server.

Most ISPs, not just Orange, block others' port 25 SMTP to counter spam. For Hotmail (& others), they do provide a non-port 25 SMTP that can be used from any ISP.

In reply to a post by XRaySpeX:

In reply to a post by keybaud:

they block access to all non-Orange smtp servers

The OP made it clear that he was talking about Orange's own SMTP server.

Most ISPs, not just Orange, block others' port 25 SMTP to counter spam. For Hotmail (& others), they do provide a non-port 25 SMTP that can be used from any ISP.

I'd not previously had an ISP block access to my domain name email provider before and this included Pipex and UKOnline (easynet now part of Sky). Before the increasing use of smart phones, tablets and laptops this may have been a suitable thing to do, but times have moved on. The problem isn't bypassing the block on my email provider, as I can set that up, it's the problem of reconfiguring every device that anyone brings to my house that needs access to a non-Orange smtp server.

The Orange support desk claim that they don't block any ports, which is a half truth, as they block port 25 to any location except their own smtp server.

In reply to a post by keybaud:

The Orange support desk claim that they don't block any ports, which is a half truth, as they block port 25 to any location except their own smtp server.

Never believe anything told you by telephone support

Orange publish it quite clearly here: http://help.orange.co.uk/orangeuk/com.instranet.Inst...

In reply to a post by XRaySpeX:

In reply to a post by keybaud:

The Orange support desk claim that they don't block any ports, which is a half truth, as they block port 25 to any location except their own smtp server.

Never believe anything told you by telephone support

Orange publish it quite clearly here: http://help.orange.co.uk/orangeuk/com.instranet.Inst...

Or from their main website help page: http://help.orange.co.uk/orangeuk/support/personal/6...

"Network Management - what gets blocked?
In a word, nothing!

As you can see on the how much can I download? page, we don't block you from accessing anything online based on your usage, even if you�re using our service heavily.

Actually, the only thing that we have in place that comes even close to us blocking your access is an email setting that we have which protects you against unsolicited emails, also known as spam."

I fail to see how stopping me from accessing a legitimate outgoing service protects me from an incoming threat.

How did you find that document, as I can't find it independently of your link? It may clearly be published, but it is in no way published clearly.

In reply to a post by keybaud:

I fail to see how stopping me from accessing a legitimate outgoing service protects me from an incoming threat.

No, but it protects the rest of the world from your, and others like you, outgoing attack of swamping the Net with spam.

Go up to the page from whence you came to "Network Management - what gets blocked?" and look instead at "the detailed stuff". There you can see that Orange are members of "Broadband Stakeholder Group (BSG) best practice guidelines on traffic management transparency". From there click on " BSG Key Facts Indicator". Voila!

Methinks you doth protest too much about a common Internet security practice!

Edited by XRaySpeX (Mon 05-Sep-11 22:12:57)