OT: Be sure your rDNS is in place...

[Bill Vermillion]

On Mon, Jun 28 00:05 , while impersonating an expert on the internet, 
John Esak sent this to stdout: 

> A few weeks back I found I couldn't get mail directly to
> bill at celestial.com. He told me that it was because I didn't
> have my rDNS setup correctly (or at all). I was under the
> mistaken impression that because we buy a managed router from
> AT&T that this service would have correctly set up our rDNS for
> us when we gave them the domain we wanted it attached to... no
> such luck. It says they will do this in their contract, but
> they didn't!

AT&T has gotten very sloppy in all their businesses in the last
couple of years.  I even had to go to the Florida PUC about them 2
months ago after talking to AT&T directly three times.  Needless to
say when the PUC transfered me directly to the AT&T rep in
Tallahassee they notice that.

> So for about two and half years I've been running and
> periodically getting (but really very rarely) email sent back
> because the reverse DNS was not there. I kind of ignored
> them... but like Bill, most ISP's are implementing this method
> of rejecting spam. They seem to all have started doing a few
> weeks to a couple months ago. I just offer this note from our
> provider (Rapidsite/Verio) just to let everyone on the list
> know it may happen to you too, if you have not taken care of
> this. What was not so important a short while ago is now very
> important.

What is really sad about the note you attached [deleted in this
reply] is that RadidSite/Verio has just started doing this now -
several years after most responsivle ISPs have been implementing
this. Most for about 4 years at least.

One site I manage used to get close to 300,000 spams PER DAY.  At
least 1/2 of those were from IPs that could not reverse and many
were forged.

The spam problem we have today is partly because of people like
RapidSite/Verio who have waited far too long to implement this.

And as to checking for open-relays that has been pretty much
standard for responsible provders since about 1997.

I'd advise investigating carefully the next time you need to move
to another provider.

Bill
-- 
Bill Vermillion - bv @ wjv . com