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.