GSolutions Online Mail Server Filtering Policies
The purpose of this webpage is to provide information regarding
GSolutions Online's / EricGillette.com / or any server controlled by EricGillette.com Spam Control Policies.
This page will also explain some of the measures we take to ensure
that
UCE (spam messages) are not delivered to us or our webhosting clients.
For general questions, feel free to contact us.
Blocked Mail Error
Codes Returned by GSolutions Online Mail Servers
Below, you will
find a detailed explanation of error messages returned by GSolutions Online mail
servers. These error messages will indicate why your mail was blocked from
our servers. Your best resolution is to resolve the reason that caused the
blocking error message to begin with, and as a result we're providing this list
in order to assist you in resolving the problem that caused the blocked error
message.
Error messages listed below are TEMPORARY error messages and CAN be actively resolved (this indicates a temporary block):
[TEMPORARY] 421 Refused. You are not following the SMTP
protocol. (DENIED_EARLYTALKER)
[TEMPORARY] 421 Refused. You have no reverse DNS entry. (DENIED_RDNS_MISSING)
[TEMPORARY] 421 Refused. Your IP address is listed in Spamcop, Spamhaus ZEN, or
MAPS RBL. (DENIED_RBL_MATCH)
[TEMPORARY] 421 Refused. Your reverse DNS entry does not resolve or you don't
have a reverse DNS. (DENIED_RDNS_UNRESOLVED)
[TEMPORARY] 421 Refused. Mail is temporarily not being accepted at this address.
(DENIED_RECIPIENT_BLACKLISTED)
[TEMPORARY] 421 Refused. The domain of your e-mail address has no mail exchanger
(MX record). (DENIED_SENDER_NO_MX)
[TEMPORARY] 421 Refused. Too many Recipients. Try again later.
(DENIED_TOO_MANY_RECIPIENTS)
Error messages listed below are PERMANENT error messages and CANNOT be resolved (this indicates an indefinite block):
[PERMANENT] 421 Refused. Your reverse DNS entry contains
your IP address and a country code. (DENIED_IP_IN_CC_RDNS)
[PERMANENT] 421 Refused. Your reverse DNS entry contains your IP address and a
targeted keyword. (DENIED_IP_IN_RDNS)
[PERMANENT] 421 Refused. Your IP address is blacklisted. (DENIED_BLACKLIST_IP)
[PERMANENT] 421 Refused. Your domain name is blacklisted. (DENIED_BLACKLIST_NAME)
[PERMANENT] 421 Refused. Your e-mail address has been blacklisted. (DENIED_SENDER_BLACKLISTED)
Please Note: As of 8/20/2009, our servers now employ a spam filtering "heuristics" engine, and occasionally will block your domain if your server lacks an accurate SPF Record, fails SPF Authentication and/or fails to accurately sign your inbound e-mail with DKIM / DomainKeys signatures (the latter happens less often currently). If you feel your domain was misidentified, please contact us using the link at the top of this page.
GSolutions Online
Inbound Sending Policy
Like all other website hosting companies,
GSolutions Online is interested in making sure that its web hosting customers
receive all of the email that they want, while minimizing the amount of
unsolicited email that gets to their mailboxes. GSolutions Online
therefore defines the following guidelines, hereafter referred to as our
"Inbound Sending Policy" for other sites wishing to send email to GSolutions
Online or GSolutions Online website hosting customers:
Technical
Guidelines:
• All email must comply with the relevant RFCs which
define the protocols for exchanging email between two sites connected to the
public Internet.
• All email servers connecting to GSolutions Online's inbound email servers must have valid reverse DNS entriess (i.e., all sending IP addresses must have active corresponding domain names in DNS).
• All email servers connecting to GSolutions Online's inbound email servers must be secured to prevent unauthorized use (may not be an open proxy, router, or relay).
•
Connections from dynamically assigned IP addresses (dial-up accounts) will be
refused by GSolutions Online's inbound email servers.
Organizations may not
hardcode GSolutions Online's MX records into their configuration files.
Organizations must immediately unsubscribe any GSolutions Online email addresses
that receive a permanent failure email bounce from GSolutions Online's inbound
email servers.
Policy & Procedural Guidelines:
GSolutions
Online's efforts to control the flow of unsolicited email into our networks
could be correctly typified as proactive, rather than reactive. This means
that in general, a site is checked against multiple sources and if found to be
on any "Blacklists" we will refuse email from its servers or networks.
IIt is also worth noting that GSolutions Online's efforts to control the flow of
unsolicited email into our system focus on servers and networks, and not on
sender addresses. This can mean that we will occasionally block legitimate or
wanted email from persons who are trying to send email from a server or network
from which we are currently refusing email. Unfortunately, we cannot make
exceptions for individual senders using these blocked servers and networks, but
we will listen to removal requests from our customers and the owners of these
servers and networks, and grant those that, in our judgement, will not cause
further harm to befall our network.
While the criteria we use for
blocking or rejecting mail is based solely on the source of the email (i.e., the
IP address of the server attempting to send the mail), our servers are also now
equipped to filter email based on spam-like characteristics in the body of the
mail message. The default behavior for this filtering is to mark messages deemed
to be spam in the customer's e-mail box. Customers can change this behavior to
have such mail placed "whitelisted" in their inboxes (with or without the
subject prepended with the tag "****SPAM****") or to have such mail deleted from
our servers without its being read.
GSolutions Online
Block List Policy
To control the flow of unsolicited inbound email, GSolutions Online utilizes
three lists of networks and IP addresses from which its inbound servers will
refuse all email messages:
A GSolutions Online internal list, comprised of IP addresses and networks that
have either delivered unsolicited email to our customers, and/or those networks
that we feel have the likelihood of sending such unsolicited messages along with
lists of major ISP dynamic address spaces.
We also utilize the following "Blacklist" providers:
The SpamHaus ZEN List (https://www.spamhaus.org)
The Spamcopy RBL (https://www.spamcop.net)
The Trend Micro (formerly MAPS) RBL-Plus list
The idea of all this is that if someone sends an email message and the IP
address of the sender's SMTP (mail) server (or the network in which it resides)
is on one of these lists, then the incoming email is refused.
GSolutions Online's internal list is mostly comprised of addresses and networks
gleaned from spam complaints from our customers. The fact that our customers
complain about unsolicited email from a given source does not, in and of itself,
guarantee that a source will be blocked from sending future email to GSolutions
Online customers; instead, these complaints provide GSolutions Online with
candidates for blocking.
These candidate IP addresses are further investigated thusly before a blocking
decision is made:
If the IP address is part of a network space that GSolutions Online has reason
to believe is another provider's dynamic space, we will block the encompassing
network. For example, if we get complaints about spam from IP address 1.2.3.4,
and we have reason to beleive that this is dynamic space, we will put in a block
to refuse all connections from any IP address that starts with 1.2.3.
If the IP address is not part of another provider's dynamic space, GSolutions
Online will use an objective scoring system, based on a reputation built from
available public information about the IP address, to make a decision as to
whether or not to block the IP address.
This scoring system is used as a defensive mechanism to make sure that the
blocking decisions we make will hopefully not have an adverse impact on a large
number of GSolutions Online customers. Our spam complaint processing method is
an automated one, it is designed to err on the side of caution. Our customers
sometimes mistakenly forward spam complaints to us about email that is either
not really unsolicited or email that was unsolicited but was sent to an address
they have on another system, one that is setup to automatically forward all
email to their GSolutions Online account. If we were to block every server that
passed into our mail system a message that a customer complained about, we would
likely cut off mail that many of our customers want to receive from other
legitimate ISPs, businesses, educational institutions, and the like.
In addition to this objective scoring system, if the IP address has no valid
reverse DNS (i.e., queries for its PTR record return "NXDOMAIN") the IP address
will be blocked regardless of its rating in our objective scoring system.
Removal requests for IP addresses blocked due to their having no valid PTR
record will not be honored until a valid PTR record has been created.
The parts of GSolutions Online's internal list that are not comprised of servers
and networks that have sent unsolicited mail to our customers are one of the
following:
Network space that is known by GSolutions Online to be in another provider's
dynamic space; our confirmation source for such space would be the other
provider itself. This space may be identified by either number (i.e., the IP
address of the connecting mail server) or name (i.e., the PTR record of the
connecting IP address).
Network space that is believed by GSolutions Online to be in another provider's
dynamic space. This space would be identified by name as matching generic naming
patterns culled from our own server logs. GSolutions Online believes that such
generic names indicate dynamic space.
Domain name-based patterns that match domains which have in the past had a
reputation for sending signifcant volumes of unsolicited email; this reputation
may continue to the present day.
Network-based patterns for space that was known at one time to be occupied by
senders with reputations for sending significant volumes of unsolicited email;
this reputation may continue today, as may the presence of those senders in the
specified networks.
In all cases, GSolutions Online tries to return an error message that is
descriptive enough to let the sender know the reason that his mail has been
rejected by our servers, so that he may proceed appropriately regarding possibly
requesting that the block be lifted.
As to the third-party lists, while the SpamHaus ZEN, Spamcop and Trend Micro RBL-Plus
lists are used by GSolutions Online, their content is not controlled by
GSolutions Online; addresses and networks appearing on those two lists are there
based on criteria set by the organizations that manage those lists, and we
suggest you visit their respective sites to determine why your IP was listed
and/or if it can be removed.
Note: It is possible, under certain criteria, for GSolutions Online to override
a listing of either of these services; those criteria would include, but are not
necessarily limited to:
A demand from a sufficient number of our own customers to lift the block.
Evidence from the listee's provider of a good-faith effort to get the listing
removed.
A willingness on the part of the listee and the listee's provider to accept any
complaints about the space in question from GSolutions Online and to take action
based on those complaints.
GSolutions Online
Whitelist Policy
GSolutions Online realizes that utilizing any blacklist may result in the loss
of requested and wanted email.
In an effort to alleviate this, and to ensure that our subscribers receive mail
that they have legitimately requested, GSolutions Online subscribes to multiple
services listing senders who have certified, via some pre-defined mechanism,
that all mail that they send is confirmed as having been requested by the
recipient. We also employ an "in-house" whitelist, that you can request to
be added to. Use the contact us link above if you think you organization
should be listed by our servers.
The lists that GSolutions Online currently subscribes to and utilizes are:
DNS White List (https://www.dnswl.org)
GSolutions Online does not require that a given entity certify itself with
the reputation services listed above; we will accept email from any server or
network which is not currently listed on any of the lists we use to determine
from where we will accept email. If, however, a given entity is found to have
sent unsolicited bulk or commercial mailings to our accounts or our customers,
as described above, they will be subject to the removal criteria specified
therein. This policy extends to our use of MAPS, SpamCop, and Spamhaus ZEN
lists.
If a given entity does not "come onto the radar screen" of either GSolutions
Online, or the lists that GSolutions Online utilizes, then GSolutions Online
will take neither positive nor negative action in regards to mailings from that
entity. If you take the time to setup proper SPF records on your server,
GSolutions Online will typically accept your e-mail messages, as long as you
haven't appeared on any of our pre-defined blacklists mentioned above.