Verizon's Aggressive New Spam Filter Causing Problems 311
aviancarrier writes "Verizon DSL has turned on a very aggressive spam filter that is blocking lots of long-time legitimate emails. Emails get bounced with an error: 'XX@verizon.net: host relay.verizon.net[206.46.232.11] said: 550 Email from your Email Service Provider is currently blocked by Verizon Online's anti-spam system. The email "sender" or Email Service Provider may visit http://www.verizon.net/whitelist and request removal of the block.' That whitelist web page lets you request one address at a time to be whitelisted with no guarantee for their response time to process it. I have tested multiple email sources and only one got through. As a VZ customer, I just spent 28 minutes on a call to tech support, eventually got a supervisor who knows nothing about the new spam feature, and would only agree to email a manager who doesn't work weekends about it. I warned her that VZ has a public relations problem but she was too clueless to understand." Many users have submitted this problem so it seems to be a pretty far reaching problem. There is also a discussion going on over at Google about this problem.
There seems to be some mixup... (Score:5, Interesting)
ISP form, you can request multiple domains and multiple IP addrs in a
single request.
Also, the discussion over at Google currently has a whopping 6 entries.
Much ado about nothing?
looks good: wish AT&T would learn from Verizo (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:looks good: wish AT&T would learn from Veri (Score:3, Informative)
Re:looks good: wish AT&T would learn from Veri (Score:3, Informative)
Imagine the impact to email in general if EVERY ISP and company use such a bonehead system. Everytime you sent email to a new person (customer / client,) you would have to *find*, then fill out some bizzaro web form. MAYBE in a week or so you will finally be able to send your email. Exactly how does this help things???
VOL's problem is that the group running their email service is a bunch of totally incompetant BOFH a-holes. Ins
Pesky Supervisors! (Score:3, Informative)
I've spent a fair amount of time tracking down the error that you're looking at. Its primarily caused by 2 things. Your server sends Verizon spam or its misconfigured.
1. Your server is a known open relay or h
Re:There seems to be some mixup... (Score:3, Insightful)
Much ado about nothing?
It has probably not reached epidemic proportions yet, but as a former Verizon DSL customer, it does not surprise met that their idea of SPAM filtering is to block most legitimate incoming traffic. They tend to have a brute force approach to technical problems. Their tech support has been spotty for a long time; I would sometimes get really sharp people who could scope something out in minutes, other times I wo
Re:There seems to be some mixup... (Score:2)
Re:There seems to be some mixup... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:There seems to be some mixup... (Score:2, Informative)
So they have been evil again, wow, i'm shocked truely shocked.
enjoy
Get a real ISP (Score:2)
For two years 3 grey haired polite chaps used to dealing with local governments (successfully) tried to find out WTF and how to fix it.
After two years Verizon told us all to use a different ISP if they expected reliable email.
Apparantly is IS rocket science.
Re:There seems to be some mixup... (Score:4, Informative)
Re:There seems to be some mixup... (Score:2)
Whitelist *@hotmail.com ? There's a winning strategy!
Re:There seems to be some mixup... (Score:5, Informative)
I called Verizon about it in January after I realized it was happening. I suspected it had been going on since I got my DSL service, but at the time just assumed that I had been unsubscribed from all of my school's listservs (because of some crazy mix up regarding my academic year, my switch from an undergrad to a law student, etc. Don't ask...). Verizon opened an Operation Control Services (OSC) ticket to look into the matter. After four months of investigating, dozens of calls, hours of talking to tech no-support, and five OSC tickets later, the matter still is not resolved.
During the time we were diagnosing the problem, OSC asked for the error code that my university received whenever it tried to forward messages. My college's IT department told me that they received an error 450 for every message: "Deferred: 450 Requested mail action not taken-Try later:sv11pub.verizon.net (from relay.verizon.net [206.46.232.11])." According to OSC, this meant that the Verizon mail server could not verify that the listserv messages being forwarded actually originated from the listserver domain. Given my school's list server set up, this makes perfect sense; users on the listserv may send an email to the server's listening account, which takes messages and creates a new message to blast the original message to all the listserv's recipients. The intermediate listening account seemed to be a legitimate way to relay messages to recipients.
Apparently, that didn't fly with the Verizon servers. OSC engineers thoroughly explained the problem in my account's notes, "Sender cannot be verified, which is the cause of their mail issue. NOTE: 451
But this is not the only problem at Verizon. One month ago, they had to suspend their entire "Block Senders" database because it got so large that the Verizon server couldn't process the messages through it. As I understand it, the database caused a number of hiccups, blocking hundreds of legitimate messages and letting through as many or more spam messages. To this day, Verizon has not reintstated users' "block senders" email option.
This is not to mention the fact that Verizon is notorious for not following up with its customers. Over the four months that I tried to get a resolution, only once did I ever receive a call from a member of the supervisor escalation group, informing me of any "progress." In an effort to keep myself in the loop, I would call the verizon tech no-support department, only to find that that my OSC ticket had been closed without notice and without resolu
Re:There seems to be some mixup... (Score:3, Funny)
I call BS. You're implying that you actually got through to Verizon's customer service.
Re:There seems to be some mixup... (Score:3, Funny)
Zonk on the other hand would run it today, and again tomorrow.
*ducks*
28 minutes? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:28 minutes? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:28 minutes? (Score:5, Insightful)
From that page:
That's very nice, but it doesn't seem like a very intelligent way to measure customer service. As a trivial example, suppose you want to know your credit card balance. A decently programmed voice response system can give you that information quickly and clearly, and in much less time than it would take to get the same data from a human. If you're lucky, the IVR won't even try to sell you something that you don't need.
Yes, I know that there are times when the available pre-programmed options are not useful and speaking to a representative is the only option. But do you want to have to wait in queue for an agent who has to handle ninety-twelve "what is my balance?" calls before it's your turn? Now ask yourself why the call centers are being outsourced to overseas providers
This "I only will deal with a human" attitude is pointless. Better to demand that corporations fix their IVR systems, because they're not going away. (And maybe I'll get hired to write more VUI specs instead of having to implement what 'the business' thinks it wants.)
Re:28 minutes? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:28 minutes? (Score:3, Insightful)
When I call in, it's because I have a problem or a question that isn't answerable by automated systems. After spending the last few years exploring phone trees exhaustively before finally saying "Yep, they can't handle it" and getting to a rep, I'm perfectly happy to rate companies on how easy that last step is.
Re:28 minutes? (Score:2)
Re:28 minutes? (Score:2, Insightful)
On the contrary. When IVR systems suck less, I'll use them more. (There are a couple good ones that I actually use regularly.) But until then, the way I demand better IVR is bypassing them. So when you get asked why the IVR system isn't meeting goals, tell 'em that it's the sucky UI.
Re:28 minutes? (Score:2)
I used to work with a guy who would have been happy if no calls were ever allowed to get to a real live person. I think there should be no barriers at all. We used to fight, a lot; but his side of the table controlled the budget, so guess who won?
Of course now I just work with people who think adding speech recognition to a system means re-recording the prompts so that they say "press or say 1."
Yep, it was mentioned before... (Score:2)
Re:Mod Parent up (Score:2)
The mod was just a knee-jerk retard.
Obviously... (Score:5, Funny)
Don't you know how they troubleshoot already?
Re:Obviously... (Score:5, Funny)
"I have OSX"
"Sir... I understand, but I need to walk you through this. Please locate your Start button."
"You don't understand - I'm on a Mac, I don't have a Start button."
"Sir... You're not making this any easier. Once we go through this we can identify your issue."
"Actually, my issue is that my cable modem arrived without a power supply."
- Actual conversation I had with tech support. Long live tech support. Long live tech support scripts.
Re:Obviously... (Score:2)
Of course, their tech support people once I got through were fairly clueless, insisting first that my old DSL provider hadn't shut off my service yet, despite the fact that a Verizon page stating that my PPPoE passw
Re:Obviously... (Score:2)
Re:Obviously... (Score:2)
Re:Obviously... (Score:3, Funny)
You missed the essential step (Score:2)
That way, you end up generating real spam while you're trying to get your real mail through.
Verizon have been jerks for quite awhile (Score:5, Interesting)
The big thing they already had in place was that they want to connect back on port 25 to the sending system AND make sure it responds initially with the same name it's using to send mail out. Not a bad thing overall, I suppose, but I can see how it would block quite a few messages from providers that use separate sending servers from their receiving servers. I finally had to set up SMTPFWDD on both outgoing servers to accept connections and silently drop any emails they get, that helped, but I think they still rate-limited heavily.
I'd say if you depend on getting your email, Verizon's not a good ISP to use.
Re:Verizon have been jerks for quite awhile (Score:2)
I suspected that they were doing something like that...
Have you tried SPF?
If that doesn't work, I suppose masquerade-as on the relay server might work.
Re:Ah, yes, the "mailing list" defense (Score:2, Insightful)
It's not a solution, it's just a new problem.
Re:Ah, yes, the "mailing list" defense (Score:2)
I can't figure out whether you're a troll or just clueless about customer support. On the off-chance it's the latter, let me try to explain that you are greatly over-estimating the ability of most humans to "figure out" how to install and use an RSS feed, and you are greatly under-estimating the number of humans who call to ask to be added to email-based mailing lists.
Sounds like a perfect solution to me.
Indeed, your idea works wel
Re:Ah, yes, the "mailing list" defense (Score:2)
People (normal people, not people like you) actually LIKE
Re:Ah, yes, the "mailing list" defense (Score:2)
If it is my work email, then I don't want to hear from you unless you are part of my job.
If it is my home email, then I want to hear from you if you are friend or family. I will tolerate hearing from you if we have a bona fide preexisting business relationship and your email is not marketing. (Statements are OK...trying to sell me new stuff is spam.)
If I want more I'll visit your web site.
Re:Ah, yes, the "mailing list" defense (Score:2)
That is to say, NORMAL people don't use it. Only geeks do. The average user would MUCH rather sign up to receive email updates to something (say, a website updating) than to subscribe to an RSS feed. It's just not intuitive for them.
So until you can get the general public to adopt RSS, mailing lists are going to continue to need to exist.
from annoyances-and-other-corporate-bothers? (Score:2)
- Andrew
Now thats rich. (Score:5, Interesting)
http://www.spamhaus.org/sbl/listings.lasso?isp=ve
I think that's a different job (Score:5, Insightful)
Having worked in tech support for a large company, I can assure you that the position of supervisor for a tech support call centre really doesn't have nearly as much influence on coprorate public relations as you seem to think that it has.
Most of the people in her position would be surprised to find out that any one from the head office even knows that they exist, let alone cares about what they do or asks their opinion on issues like PR. It's normal to be annoyed when a company like Verizon screws up like this, but lashing out at the tech support staff just because they're the easist people to reach really doesn't help anybody.
Re:I think that's a different job (Score:2, Funny)
Re:I think that's a different job (Score:2)
that's sort of a ridiculous attitude (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I think that's a different job (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I think that's a different job (Score:3, Insightful)
What you say is true, of course. It's
Re:I think that's a different job (Score:2)
Re:I think that's a different job (Score:2)
That's why you Americans need regulation, not de-regulation. Get a proper regulator who will bitchslap the incumbent monopoly when they suck, and force them to allow competition over the lines they supervise, but don't own. Like ours does.
Re:I think that's a different job (Score:3, Interesting)
I disagree. Part of the what is so frustrating about dealing with a company like Verizon is the massive diffusion of responsibility. It is almost impossible to get a hold of someone who is really responsible and accountable to you, because everyone's job is so specialized and compartmentalized. If they can't sol
Re:I think that's a different job (Score:3, Interesting)
I worked at one of these outsourcers. Most of the intelligent & ethical tech pros there were diligently finding other employment as fast as they could
Resistance is useless (Score:3, Funny)
Update on the blocking (Score:5, Interesting)
Regarding the person who accused me of being a spammer: No. Just a husband trying to email my wife's VZ account.
Regarding the "lashing" out at the customer service supervisor: I was trying to get her to help her own company out. The fact that she was not told anything about a new level of spam filtering nor had (she claims) a way to contact a manager on a weekend about a PR problem may be a standard problem for that level of supervisor, but I wanted to give her a way to be a hero internally and stop a PR problem from getting worse.
Re:Update on the blocking (Score:3, Insightful)
This has been posted a bit in the main thread, but I'll restate it: the "customer s
Re:Update on the blocking (Score:2)
And while your intentions were no dount good, you probably came across as arrogant. Dep
verizon's response (Score:3, Funny)
ISP Blocks (Score:2, Interesting)
AOL
Excite
Comcast
The easiest was AOL, they have a number you can call 24 hours a day to get removed (but it takes 48 hours for the removal to take effect). The other two have been blocking mail from my servers for two weeks. I have filled out contact forms, and left voicemails to no avail.
I haven't recieved a complaint about Verizon yet, but that could be because I have SPF records.
Such a hassle (Score:2)
Even if you let users manage it, about 60% of them won't have a clue, they'll bollocks it up for themselves, and they won't be able to distinguish between your web appliance and the OEM Norton Antispam which continually misconfigures itself again and again.
I wonder if we should just ban email altogether so that we can actually get some other work done.
Ironic (Score:2)
Generally speaking, I think it's a good idea to implement something like this, but the problem with Verizon is that they need to filter port 25 on their broadband IP space first and foremost, like AOL and Bellsouth and many other providers are starting to do.
Ultimately, what Verizon is doing is not a bad thing. It will force
Verizon? PR problem? You don't say! (Score:3, Interesting)
Perhaps she was too jaded from hearing customers complain that Verizon has a PR problem.
"We don't care. We don't have to. We're the Phone Company."
From what I've heard (and what I experienced from having their service in the second half of 2000), this is nothing new for Verizon. They're only interested in the money-making aspects of the telecom business, and drag their feet on everything else. The setup of this aggressive new spam filter was probably one of those "money-making" items, since it means far less spam traffic and decreased accusations of hosting spam bots. Of course, when customers start complaining that they can't send email to specific addresses, they have to deal with Verizon's understaffed, undercapable customer service departments, who will most likely be faced with fierce opposition from the suits in opposing the "grand money-saving, liability-reducing spam filter".
Also, keep in mind that when Verizon acquired MCI, they acquired UUNet, a tier-1 ISP with some serious spam problems of their own [infoworld.com]. I wouldn't be surprised if taking on UUNet's elephant-on-their-back was part of the rationale behind the new spam filtering policies.
Stop the presses! (Score:2)
google embracing and extending usenet? (Score:2)
Oh wow, now I see they are also hosting mailing lists as "groups" as well. Way to muddle the terminology; I guess that is the point. I hate marketing/advertising people.
And netmail.verizon.net now seems to be IE-only? (Score:2)
Re:And netmail.verizon.net now seems to be IE-only (Score:2)
Now that's cross platform!
Huh? (Score:3, Insightful)
spam paranoia rampant (Score:2)
There's only one place that my site regularly exchanges email with that uses SPEWS, and I know exactly who to talk to for the fix. The problem is, it keeps on happening every couple of months. What a Pain in the Ass.
Are you in the right? (Score:5, Informative)
More and more ISPs are starting to implement the same compliance checks. Would any of these reject your system's mail? Several of our customers had misconfigured outbound servers and we helped them fix their systems. We were only early adopters, though; if we hadn't caught the problem then a major ISP or five would have started rejecting their email without being so helpful.
Maybe VZ is in the right this time. Are you sure they're not?
Re:Are you in the right? (Score:2)
Most SPAM mailers fail this test.
Re:Are you in the right? (Score:2)
(I know, I know, rtfm & etc)
Ugh! (Score:2)
Problem is several ISPs block all emails from these devices. "Relaying Prohibited" or something like that. The one I know for certain is Mindspring, but strangely Earthlink emails get through just fine. I g
I'm SO happy... (Score:2, Interesting)
Verio (Score:2)
I tried resending several times. I restarted Mozilla. I typed the password very carefully. It would not send.
Then I took out the dirty words and left the rest of the message, and it went through on the first try.
I'm not a child, and I
Workaround: try SPF (Score:2)
WideOpenWest destroys modem when mail forwarded (Score:2)
45 minutes later I finally convince the guy that I'm pretty sure my ubuntu box is not infected. Apparently they locked out my connection by dropping a new bin file onto
RSS Feed (Score:2)
I encountered this yesterday (Score:2)
I sent a reply to an email a friend of mine sent me (he is a Verizon customer). I got the same message quoted in this story. I've been corresponding with this friend (him using the same Verizon account, and me the same non-Verizon account) for months.
Re:Oh no! Not again! (Score:2)
Messages in bottles. (Score:5, Interesting)
I used to send all my email out of my own mailserver, out of my home firewall/router/"box-in-a-closet" machine.
Recently -- like within the last six months or so, I've noticed an alarming number of domains that aren't receiving my emails. And no, I haven't been blackholed or otherwise put on anyone's shit list, nor am I running an open relay. The mailserver is perfectly well-behaved, standards compliant, and only relays from within my home LAN.
I also don't mass-mail or do any other sort of sketchy activity, I just always liked having my own mailserver and never having to worry about when my ISPs (or Google's, or my web hosting providers') was going to flake out on me. But it's becoming nearly impractical to do. I'm never sure if an email that I sent out has actually gotten through, or if it's just been silently eaten by some spam filter somewhere.
The worst offender that I've found so far is Comcast; I haven't been able to get any messages through at all to Comcast subscribers, and they don't provide back any sort of acknowledgment that a message has been blocked. Every time I send anything to them, it's firing a shot into the darkness.
I hate spam as much as anybody else (probably more than some); I'm in favor of using some of those Federal "computer crimes" laws -- the ones that have harsher penalties for electronically violating a system than if you walked in and stole it in person -- against spammers. See what 20 years of pound-me-in-the-ass prison followed by another 10 or 15 of no-computer probation (and consequent unemployment) does for their attitude. Or there are the always popular vigilante death squads, I could find a warm place in my heart for them, too. Either of those would be preferable to the current patchwork system of blacklists, whitelists, greylists, RBLs, and unilateral policies on the part of ISPs that break up the nature of the network.
Sending an email shouldn't be like tossing a message in a bottle into the ocean, but that's how it's getting to be with some ISPs.
Re:Messages in bottles. (Score:2)
Re:Messages in bottles. (Score:4, Insightful)
> The worst offender that I've found so far is Comcast;
Sorry, but you're sending email from a residential IP with a rdns of something like "dsl-123-234-12-56.dyn.myisp.net" and you're calling comcast the offender?
The days of running your own mail server on a residential account are over -- blame the thousands of zombie spammers on your
You can get mail hosting for like five bucks a month. It's the cost of spam. Deal with it, because we sure as hell are.
Signed,
the world's mail administrators
Not that simple. (Score:4, Insightful)
It's the fact that there is nothing to distinguish his email server from any of the hundreds (thousands?) of zombies on that same network.
In cases such as this, the best solution is for the home user to over-comply. And that means learning about relaying and getting a relay account on a server that does not look like a zombie. This is not about anyone being an idiot.
This is about making it as easy as possible for the other competent email admins to see that you are not a zombie.
The more concessions you expect from all of them, the more problems you'll face.
Re:Not that simple. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Not that simple. (Score:2)
Re:Messages in bottles. (Score:2)
Where was the word "idiot" in my reply to him?
The guy thinks he can still run an outMX on his home broadband, and believes everyone else is trespassing on his right by refusing mail because of this origin. Naive perhaps.
Ascribing motives of "censorship" and "fascism" to those who blanket-block dynamic IP ranges is idiotic, but I haven't yet seen such a screed. That's when I'll throw out insults. The bar is lower for those who put words in my mouth.
Re:Messages in bottles. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:the times they are a changin' (Score:2)
In the US, large network carriers would relay mail to one another and smaller organizations would be required to relay everything through them. I don't see the problem with that ... we route packets that way ... why not mail?
Re:the times they are a changin' (Score:2)
no. http://www.newstarget.com/003639.html [newstarget.com]
Re:the times they are a changin' (Score:2)
SRV records (SPF specificaly), on the other hand, are actually helpful here.
Re:the times they are a changin' (Score:2)
Most normal hosts are ignoring SPF.
Many (not a large proportion though) of spammers are using SPF.
So the filter on the mail servers I help run scores messages on the spam scale HIGHER if they have an SPF.
Is that screwed up or what?
(It works, though the SPF in itself does not push it over the threshold. A lot of times it goes along with other spammy-ness that combined does push it over the threshold.)
Re:the times they are a changin' (Score:2)
That just kills me. The whole point of SPF is so that you can ID and block (accurately) places that you don't want to get mail from. If a domain has an SPF record, then you know who's allowed to send mail for that domain. If you're getting spam from the mail servers *on* the SPF list, then they can't very well say "hey, that wasn't us". It's a system that *should* work great.
The biggest problem I have with it is that I have to pay a lot more money to have an email server running now. Last
Re:the times they are a changin' (Score:2)
Actually, that's not true at all. Setup multiple PTR records and use dig -x to view. Works FINE.
Now some stupid clients only use the first result received, and some stupid DNS management tools only allow one, but that is not a limitation of DNS.
Re:I'm not all that surprised (Score:2)
Just about any other service will let you filter on subject, header, body, filter out domain, etc.
Re:I'm not all that surprised (Score:2)
Recently I migrated my email from self hosted over to GMail for domains. Nothing ge
Re:I'm not all that surprised (Score:2)
650 a week! Pah! I self-host and I'm currently getting more than one spam attempt per second, 24/7. I have about 1 per month geting through, but recently my girlfiend's account has started to leak spam at the rate of 1 per day. I've not worked out why these ones are getting through yet.
TWW
Re:The only reason I'm on Verizon... (Score:2)
Re:The only reason I'm on Verizon... (Score:2)
Great uptime, I can't think of a single outage since I've had them (almost 2 years). I complained about crappy speed when I first moved into my 1960s apartment, the some Cox guy came out and replaced about every coax fitting in the place, plus a few cable runs (where he co
Re:Why are you using Verizon email anyway? (Score:2)
-nB
Re:Why are you using Verizon email anyway? (Score:2)
That sounds suspiciously like "you paid for a running car, not a working horn or radio." If they advertise a service bundle, they need to deliver.
They need to deliver? Or what? Are you going to leave them for the competition? This is like saying Microsoft "needs" to deliver software which is more reliable, immune to viruses, etc. People have been complaining about MS forever, but they still keep buying their products.
You can complain about your ISP's email all you want, but in the end, wha
Re:Why are you using Verizon email anyway? (Score:2)
You can talk all you want about how companies should perform according to your TOS contract, but when your only realistic option is to discontinue the service, and there's only two companies with the service which are both bad, you have no real choice. The only realistic choice is to accept the poor performance on the non-essen
Re:Discussion at google? (Score:2)
We'll restore your access as quickly as possible, so try again soon. In the meantime, if you suspect that your computer or network has been infected, you might want to run a virus checker or spyware remover to make sure that your systems are free of viruses and other spurious software.
We apologize for the inconvenience, and hope we'