Contact AUP team

[JulianMHall]

Hi All,

My IP address is blacklisted on Spamhaus (used by many including my local authority to vet emails). Undoubtedly Virgin's fault as the last time they alleged a device on /my/ system was sending spam it turned out to be /their/ webmail - which I never use as I have my own domain.

How do I contact the AUP team //directly//? I've tried making a complaint but all I got was a standard, totally irrelevant, reply.

Kind regards,

Julian

[coenoby]

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@ravenstar68 wrote:

My feeling is that it's not Virgin Media that need to be looking into this.  It's Vale of Glamorgan Council that should be investigating why their server is blocking you, considering you are sending through Virgin Media's email servers.

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It certainly looks odd that they are quoting Julian's home network IP address in the error message

@JulianMHallAs an experiment it would be worth trying Tim's suggestion to send an email to VOG council using your VM / NTL email address and seeing whether they reject that.

I would just like to say that this has been one of the most interesting threads I've seen in a quite a while. Lots of twists and turns and I'm still not sure the answer has been bottomed out. Certainly I thing who ever runs VOG email system need to get involved

Coenoby

[JulianMHall]

Hi Tim,

Many thanks to you and @coenoby for your assistance and perseverance with this. Could the local authority's SMTP policy (and/or the policy of the mailing list provider) have changed and whoever implemented it stuffed it up? It could be that the server has been wrongly told to parse the whole header including the public IP instead of ignoring the public IP. Mind you that wouldn't explain my post yesterday when three different IP addresses were blocked, Vodafone, Easyspace, and my public IP.

Kind regards,

Julian

[JulianMHall]

Hi Tim / coenoby,

It seems my Virginmedia webmail account has been disabled, so I am unable to use it to test the Vale's SMTP.

'Your Virgin Media Mail account is currently unavailable

This is either because your Virgin Media Mail account is locked, or because you don’t have an active account with us anymore.

If you have an existing Virgin Media Mail account with us, please follow the steps below, as your account may have been locked as a security precaution.'

However I do have a Gmail account so I tried sending from that. Not bounced yet about 20 minutes later even though the domain one blocked only a minute or so later. Easyspace then suspended my email account because I sent a test email using the Gmail account so I then I had to get that unblocked before I could send any email. Sent another test email to the local authority which the blocked yet again within a minute or so, definitely my public IP, the 'X-Originating IP' header.

Kind regards,

Julian

[ravenstar68]

Can you let us see the latest bounce from your domain?

BTW The Easyspace block is unlikely to be do with you using your Gmail account IMHO.

Edit BTW your DKIM is passing nicely now.  In most cases DKIM is preferable to using SPF alone

Blocks like this are dealt with by contacting the blocking party, they have to look at the mail filters their end and then if they are blocking In error they can usually do something about it.

NO SELF RESPECTING EMAIL ADMIN will run the X-Originating-IP: header against Spamhaus Zen, or any other blackllist for that matter.

Edit:  Finally I did check the multi abuse checklist to make sure EasySpace's server was not blacklisted

see here

Tim

[coenoby]

@JulianMHall

Just to add to Tim's response.
Thanks for coming back with those updates.
"Could the local authority's SMTP policy (and/or the policy of the mailing list provider) have changed and whoever implemented it stuffed it up? "

To be honest I don't think it's worth speculating.
However, to be honest, if that were the case I would have expected the issue to have been raised by other people.

I have done a search of other community forums that deal with email issues and emails being rejected by VOG does not seem to have come up. On the other hand that does not mean VOG are doing it right of course.

"It seems my Virginmedia webmail account has been disabled, so I am unable to use it to test the Vale's SMTP.........  'Your Virgin Media Mail account is currently unavailable"

The VM email account can usually be unlocked by a (relatively) simple password reset - see my standard explanation of how to do that at the bottom of this post.

Coenoby

How to reset your VM email password when you get the account unavailable error.

Sign in from this link https://my.virginmedia.com/home/signIn   using the VM email address and existing password of the email account you wish to reset. 
That will take you to the relevant "My Virgin Media" account for that email address.
Then click on the "Account settings" tab, then  the "Account details" tab.
Scroll down that page and you will see a place to edit the password. While you are on that page, make sure you set up a Password Recovery Question.
VM advise that you should then wait 20 - 30 minutes before trying to access the account again.

Virgin Media have recently made another change to their email service which means that when you reset a VM email password you now have to generate an app specific password to use instead or your webmail password when accessing that email address via any third party email apps or clients such as Thunderbird.
To do that scroll down the "Accounts details" page to "Mailbox app password management." and click on "Manage".
You can then generate an app password which will be in the format:        video-post-mossy-sharp
You will then need to enter that new app password (including the "-") into the password field in the email apps on your various devices.

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[ravenstar68]

I've taking the liberty of emailing the Council on behalf of Julian

Dear Sir/Madam

I am writing to you as I am active in Virgin Media’s Community Support Forum and one of their users is having issues emailing you when using their own domain address.

My username on the Forum is ravenstar68 although as you can see my real name is Timothy Dutton.  I am not a Virgin Media employee myself, but I am a Forum VIP (Very Insightful Person) a title that is only afforded to Forum Members who have provided useful information to other customers.

I have a user who was trying to send to you using the email address j********l@kaotic.co.uk. This was originally done using Virgin Media’s outbound mail servers but with no authentication (which is possible ONLY for a user connected directly to the Virgin Media network.

The user has since set his email to use EasySpace’s outbound SMTP servers to send his mail and also configured DMARC, SPF and DKIM on his email yet still struggles to get his mail through.

The bounce message appears to indicate that the server was blocked because the users IP address (not the mail server) exists in the PBL.  This is an unusual situation as MOST originating IP addresses will be in the PBL and mail servers should not be blocking because of this.

Are you able to ask your email team to look into this?

Thanks

Tim Dutton

P.S.  I am willing to share the URL of the Forum Thread on Virgin Media’s Forum.  I also have a copy of the bounce message itself if that will help.

Note: I've edited the users email address in this post.

The mail seems to have gone through as I received a standard automated reply from the Council, saying they will contact me as and when.

Tim

[JulianMHall]

Hi Tim,

Having discussed the Easyspace SMTP block apparently it was simply my sending a Gmail - i.e. a non-Easyspace email - using their connection. One of the very few times I have ever sent using that address as the default is my Kaotic domain email address. They removed the block when I explained the situation.

I agree that no self-respecting admin should block based on the X-Originating IP, but I examined the headers and that's the only instance I can see of the IP they are blocking, hence my comment that they were doing so.

Kind regards,

Julian

[JulianMHall]

Hi Coenoby,

Thanks for the advice  ref the VM webmail. However I don't actually even know my VM webmail address because I've never used it, so I cannot try to log in and reset the password. When I sign in it defaults to the domain email address and only gives me a 'forgotten password' option. I chose to sign in with another email address - key word 'another' - then it did give me the forgotten email address link. However that came back with my domain email address which was not 'another' email address but the same one.

Kind regards,

Julian

[JulianMHall]

Hi Tim,

Many thanks for emailing VOG on my behalf!! I think I emailed you the latest bounce yesterday? I can always try again today and post the result here. BTW the Gmail test was sent using Thunderbird, I wonder if the same would happen if I used the Gmail portal online.

Kind regards,

Julian

[ravenstar68]

I don’t recall seeing the latest bounces in my inbox yesterday, are you able to resend?