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the authors of RFC 2317 have a question for at&t worldnet

  • From: Paul Vixie
  • Date: Thu Feb 01 12:56:42 2007 
(this must be my week for past-sins pennance related to RBL's.)

today someone whose e-mail was blocked when they tried to send it to an at&t
customer, asked the authors of RFC 2317 to please unblock their address.  as
the only such author whose e-mail address hasn't changed since RFC publication
i pretty much assumed that the other two guys weren't hearing this, and so i
investigated.  the complainer showed me this text:

  <[email protected]>: host gateway2.att.net[12.102.240.23] said:
    550-24.248.126.43 blocked by ldap:ou=rblmx,dc=worldnet,dc=att,dc=net 550
    Blocked for abuse. See http://www.att.net/general-info/rblinquiry.html";
    (in reply to MAIL FROM command)

i looked at the URL thus indicated, and the link for

  Information for end-users whose messages have been blocked.

is

  http://www.att.net/general-info/mail_info/block_enduser.html

which says:

  What to do: Ask your system administrator to submit identifying information
  to the DNS. For more information, your administrator should refer to
  http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc2317.html In the meantime, you should use a
  fully registered domain for sending your messages, such as the mail system
  from an ISP or one of the major free e-mail services.

now, i count myself as a master of the obscure reference, but this is over
the top.  can someone from at&t worldnet please contact me for the purpose
of explaining what RFC 2317 could possibly have to do with spam complaints?

(and btw, if you're going to block inbound e-mail, you need to give senders
some idea of how to get unblocked.  not for fairness, just for practicality.
and this parenthesized paragraph is why i count this screed as not-off-topic.)