I recently moved a server to a new host and all mail is going through with the exception of earthlink. After some research it appears that this is a huge problem with legitimate businesses like mine. First of all, I was under the impression that if your server is being blocked that the blocker would send a message to “abuse@mydomainname.com”. That’s why I have that mail box set up anyway. Apparently earthlink doesn’t. So after running my mail server log analyzer a week after cutting over, I discovered that some of my clients have not been receiving email notifications.
What to do?
First I checked all the spam indexes that earthlink suggested to see if I was on a spam list. I’m not. Second, I verified that my server is not an open relay, Third, I verified in the logs that for some reason my server was sending email as if it were compromised, it’s not. Fourthly, I verified that a ptr was set up on the server, it is.
So I wrote blockedbyearthlink@abuse.earthlink.net with {BLOCKED - myIP} in the subject line asking to be removed from their block list. However, I have not heard back. The email just goes into what I can only guess is a black hole. I’m sure the employees at earthlink are hard working individuals and that the company really doesn’t want to block legitimate emails to their customer inboxes. However, the system they have in place is broken.
It’s hard to imagine why legitimate emails are being blocked so arbitrarily by just earthlink and not any of the hundreds of other ISPs my clients use. What gives?
Has anyone else run into this? If you have, what did you end up doing about it? I’d be willing to bet that some of you reading this have the same thing going on and you aren’t even aware of it. Check your logs and let me know.
I hope I have a resolution soon. I’ll chime in once I do.
Update: 2/8/2008
I just received a response from (associate_name)@corp.earthlink.net and here was the response:
Vincent, That IP was removed from blocking. The changes will take a couple of hours. Regards, (associate's name) EarthLink
In the end, I’m just glad it’s cleared up but I still have no idea why the server’s IP ended up on their block list. My only advice…monitor your email log files often.
Vince Collins
