Some Anti-Spam Vendors Blocking and Slowing Gmail

fiorenza writes "Google's Gmail (and corporate mail) are being throttled and sometimes blocked by some anti-spam services, including MessageLabs and Antigen. Ars Technica reports that the blocking is a result of the Google CAPTCHA crack, which has allowed a deluge of spam from Gmail's clusters. Most users won't get blocked mail, but Ars confirmed with MessageLabs that Gmail delivery delays are to be expected."

Re:It's ok though...

[kris.montpetit]

This is to be expected from free mail providers. If you want quality service, including people that police spammers and watch their systems, then you obviously pay for the higher-quality email service. Regards,

What can i say, Google gives me 7 gigs of space for my account, the most popular local ISP gives 100 megs, and this crappy service. Actually gmail is the only email client i've dealt with recently that isn't hell and a half to support. the anti spam service has been near perfect until now as well on all 3 of my accounts. :D

And saying thats its a budget service is just plain uneducated. its funded (quite generously, I might add) by the discreet, context sensitive ads you will find on the side of the page, as opposed to part of your internet subscription.

Re:It's ok though...

[ubrgeek]

Notes is a bitch to admin and has a serious learning-curve but it's absolutely bulletproof. It's also used in some places as a tie-in/point of connection to DMS [wikipedia.org]. Like I said, I'd hate to admin it, but I love know it's going to be reliable (and I mean C&C reliable) when it's administered right.

Re:Gmail and others blocking legit domains, so hey

[Spazmania]

if a mail server accepts my mail with a 200 code, then the mail *should* be delivered.

That's not actually the rule. The rule is: if a mail server accepts my mail with a 200 code, then the mail should be delivered *OR* a non-deliverable message should be constructed and returned to the envelope from address.

When you actually follow that rule, it's quite amazing how many folks get bent out of shape by the undeliverables returned when someone forges their address, even though they haven't bothered to use SPF to protect themselves.

Re:It's ok though...

[CowboyNealOption]

The really nice thing is if you don't buy the superdupermondo version, you can add disk space until you turn blue and it won't matter: the mail stores in the standard exchange 2003 version are limited to 2GB, you can only have one, so be prepared to fork over more money for a version that is identical, except it doesn't have the limit. As an added bonus, feel happy that you could have bought a really nice linux server for the cost of the exchange software alone.

Re:It's ok though...

[kesuki]

um the problem i mentioned the disc usage wasn't directly tied to exchange, it was tied to a 'feature' of windows, where it was endlessly consuming more and more gigs of space, at a rate of 10 GB a day. just wanted to be clear here, this was due to a 'feature' of windows not exchange server.

It just happened to be happening on a mission critical exchange server..

Re:Gmail and others blocking legit domains, so hey

[gnuman99]

Here's what happens. On SMTP level. << is for what server sends. Rest is what is sent to server.

<< This is your great SMTP server. Yo!
<< 220 super.server.net ESMTP
HELO srv.my_super_subnet.server.net
<< 250 srv.my_super_subnet.server.net
MAIL FROM: <[e-mail]>
<< 250 2.1.0 Ok
RCPT TO: <[e-mail]>
<< 250 2.1.5 Ok
DATA
<< End data with <CR><LF>.<CR><LF>
Subject: Yo
From: Bob Superman <[e-mail]>
To: My Buddy <[e-mail]>

Want some viagra?

.
<< 554 5.7.1 Rejected, id=sdsada - SPAM
QUIT
<< 221 2.0.0 Bye

See?? No backscatter. The pre-queue filter runs *before* the message is accepted after the . is on the new line indicated end of message.

What happens now is they get,

<< 250 2.6.0 Ok, id=fsffs FROM blah Ok: queued as foo

or similar response. Then the filter runs and junks the mail! *That* runs email. I send out email, and it get junked. It gets delivered 50% of the time because some wise guy runs some new magic filter - no spam gets through, and 50% real messages get binned. Then people that should get mail complain that they never get mail (and not just from me).

If you reply to message from a post queue filter you get backscatter. This is wrong way of doing things. If you reject mail in pre-queue, there is NO backscatter.

The *only* reason to run after queue and drop silently is for mail marked as Bulk, like mailing list software marks mail as Bulk precedence. Any other mail should be treated as a *no* mail lost priority. Otherwise we may just abandon SMTP altogether.

Re:It's ok though...

[jsfetzik]

In Exchange 2003 prior to SP2, the limit for the mailbox store was 16 GB. In SP2 they upped that limit to 75 GB

16GB per mailbox should be enough for most users for a few years to come, what is all the fuss about?

No 16GB to for the mailbox store, which houses ALL of the mail boxes, IIRC. Thus, the reason for having 10M-20M limits on peoples inbox.