Interesting People mailing list archives
IP: When your service provider blocks your IP address
From: Dave Farber <dave () farber net>
Date: Tue, 05 Mar 2002 09:20:02 -0500
------ Forwarded Message From: Naoki Yamamoto <naoki () matatabi com> Organization: Matatabi.Com Inc. Date: Tue, 05 Mar 2002 22:07:33 +0900 To: dave () farber net Subject: When your service provider blocks your IP address Dave, I would like to share my experience with IPers. Until today, I was on the side of blocking the Spam with strong means, but when I became the victim of Spam block, I realized it was not that easy. My business is rely heavily on email communications and it is vital for me to keep connected with my clients and associates in the U.S. and Europe. It would not be possible for me to make living if my email connections are refused just because I send messages from the Asian IP address block. I would appreciate any suggestions. Please remember you would be blocked too. Recently, there has been several articles about U.S. Internet providers blocking SMTP connections from Asia to fight against Spam. I live in Japan and access the Internet using DSL connection provided by a Japanese ISP in Tokyo. However, my small company's domain is hosted by an U.S. hosting company and I sent and receive most of my email via its mail server in Silicon Valley. I have been with this hosting company since 1994 when I first built my web site. Even after I returned to Yokohama from L.A. in 1999, I've been using it as my primary web and mail service provider. I never thought my Japanese provider could be in the blocked Asian IP address list. But, it happened on this Monday. I was awaken by a phone call from one of my clients. She was furious at me about the returned email messages. She was trying to send me the page proof of an article that should be taken care of within a couple of hours. I tested the mail server by sending a message to myself. It refused the connection from my ISP in Tokyo. <naoki () matatbi com>: host mail.xxxxx.com refused to talk to me: 571 You do not have permission (I deleted the real domain name of my hosting company and IP address.) At this point, I suspected my hosting company had blocked connections from a range of IP addresses, possibly as the last resort to keep their mail server from going down by Spam. The problem was that I could not even reach the tech support at the hosting company reporting the problem. It was like getting a death sentence without a trial. Unable to contact the support, my email services was interrupted more than 10 hours on Monday. On Tuesday, the mail service was restored. I sent a message to the support and got the following reply: Thank you for contacting XXXXX technical support. The issue you experienced was caused by a block our Systems Administrators put on a number of IP addresses within the Asia region. The block was put in place to stop spam from being sent to our system. We apologize for the interruption in service you experienced. It was not our intention to prevent any of our users from being able to connect to our mail servers. I replied to this message asking if they repeat the same thing in the future to fight againt spam. I suspected that you blocked connections from Asia. I read an article on Wired News about blocking the Spam from Asia a couple of week ago and I understand the spam problem from China and the other parts of Asia is getting out of control. I hope your sys-ad did block those IP addresses as the last resort and emergency action for a short time. However, it is vital for me and my business to have reliable mail communications with the clients. I believe that unannounced and intentional interruption of mail services to the legitimate customers are not acceptable. I would like to know if your Systems Administrators plan to block the IP addresses from the suspected spam origins again when your servers are attacked in the future. Do you plan to implement any new mail policy to fight spammers such as POP before SMTP? I have not got any answer to my question yet. Best, Naoki -- Naoki Yamamoto <naoki () matatabi com> in Yokohama, Japan Matatabi Digital Industry Report <http://www.matatabi.com> Gpg Fingerprint = B2A7 2A11 C50B DCC4 83EB 9311 607A FAE9 386B F070 Public Key available from <http://www.matatabi.com/naoki_pubkey.html> ------ End of Forwarded Message For archives see: http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/
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- IP: When your service provider blocks your IP address Dave Farber (Mar 05)