Google / Telstra blocking emails from Australia
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ad...@reviews.wox.org
Dec 7, 2022, 6:24:14 PM12/7/22
to 2600 Australia
In a move likely related to the same stupid Australian so
called anti-spam laws passed earlier this year, which means
a {possibly} rogue west european nation now decides who
Australians are allowed to send emails to and filters all of
Australia's emails (isnt that technically a national
security risk now if telstra forwards all Australian email
to western europe to filter it?)
..gmail is now as standard policy; blocking emails sent from
Australian IP addresses based on a stupidly strict ruleset.
Have a website with a sign up page? Ye the confirmation
emails will be blocked. Because you are not gmail.
Run a online store? Ye your customers wont be getting their
confirmation emails anymore, or you wont get the emails
telling you that you made a sale. Unless of course you ship
your entire commerce server and mail server over to the USA,
and share an IP.
Use telstra? ye you probably are having random problems
sending or receiving emails now.
In my case I have a mining pool that new users cannot sign
up for anymore - and I now really struggle to send or
receive orders emails from my suppliers.
The Australian anti-spam laws involved also now mean small
businesses that run their own email server likely cannot
send emails anymore, they will all bounce because they don't
use one of the "big guys" as their email provider.
The offending rule in pseudo code seems to be something like:
If {<sender geoip>==Australia || <receiver
geoip>==Australia} && {{MX SMTP server IP != MX POP3 server
IP} || {mailserver != gmail|hotmail|yahoo|optus} || {{email
to} > 1 recipient} || {attachment > 5m}} then bounce.
It is probably slightly more complex (if attachment (at all)
and more than one recipient or an Australian destination
email address bounces too sometimes)
Bizarrely there is another layer to filtering. For example
I can send an email, to 1 person - But if i attach a pdf
invoice or CC it to a second person it will get sent to
their junk/spam folder.
If I send using my on site server, or my ISP's outbound
server it would never make it at all - not even filtered as
potential spam. It is just dropped. Not even a bounce
message 50% of the time. The other 50% of the time i get
some smart ass bounce message from my mail server telling me
my email to telstra email address <blah> has been blocked
due to the ruleset of some west european filtering company
<x> that has rejected my message.
At least the destination server is polite enough to
apologetically tell my mail server why it hates me half the
time.
I got around it by reconfiguring all my mail servers to
operate in and out from my US based hosting server, on the
same IP. (painful exercise, since my outbound mail is now
slower) but now even those are getting filtered or dropped
if I try to email any Australian email address.
Basically if you for example use the telstra outbound mail
server IP, and it is not the same IP as your bigpond
incoming server IP, your outgoing emails will be dropped -
often at random. A common scenario I get with many confused
clients at the moment.
This means many telstra business and commander systems
clients email are probably not working reliably right now.
It either classifies legitimate incoming messages from
clients/suppliers as spam, or doesn't let you send them to
begin with.
In my case my website which handles the member notification
alerts, which although is the same domain, is a physically
different IP and subdomain to my email server. So my
outbound messages get randomly dropped. Or some days not so
random, they all get dropped. I also get the same issue on
an ecommerce website which I cannot operate now. I can't
fix this because my server needs the ability to do certain
things that if I shipped it wholesale to the USA would no
longer br practical or economically viable.
Another common scenario I am seeing is some telstra
customers can send large bulk messages or oversized
attachments, but other customers get their mailbox blocked
if they try to send something with an attachment over 5mb or
to more than 1 person. (which means i get all the old
codgers complaining their email isnt working when they try
to forward some stupid meme video to all their friends,
because of course a friend sent it to them to begin with
from another telstra email address)
The biggest irritation is gmail seems to be on board with
this absurdity too. I cant even send emails using my ISPs
mail server anymore.
Basically it has killed internet innovation, DIY online
commerce, and made it very difficult to be paid for work
since most modern customers and suppliers deal almost
exclusively using email to even operate in Australia now.
--
New and improved 2600... well.. ..we drew on some flames and polished it a bit..
--
Google - making sure, life is no more, than 1984...
--
called anti-spam laws passed earlier this year, which means
a {possibly} rogue west european nation now decides who
Australians are allowed to send emails to and filters all of
Australia's emails (isnt that technically a national
security risk now if telstra forwards all Australian email
to western europe to filter it?)
..gmail is now as standard policy; blocking emails sent from
Australian IP addresses based on a stupidly strict ruleset.
Have a website with a sign up page? Ye the confirmation
emails will be blocked. Because you are not gmail.
Run a online store? Ye your customers wont be getting their
confirmation emails anymore, or you wont get the emails
telling you that you made a sale. Unless of course you ship
your entire commerce server and mail server over to the USA,
and share an IP.
Use telstra? ye you probably are having random problems
sending or receiving emails now.
In my case I have a mining pool that new users cannot sign
up for anymore - and I now really struggle to send or
receive orders emails from my suppliers.
The Australian anti-spam laws involved also now mean small
businesses that run their own email server likely cannot
send emails anymore, they will all bounce because they don't
use one of the "big guys" as their email provider.
The offending rule in pseudo code seems to be something like:
If {<sender geoip>==Australia || <receiver
geoip>==Australia} && {{MX SMTP server IP != MX POP3 server
IP} || {mailserver != gmail|hotmail|yahoo|optus} || {{email
to} > 1 recipient} || {attachment > 5m}} then bounce.
It is probably slightly more complex (if attachment (at all)
and more than one recipient or an Australian destination
email address bounces too sometimes)
Bizarrely there is another layer to filtering. For example
I can send an email, to 1 person - But if i attach a pdf
invoice or CC it to a second person it will get sent to
their junk/spam folder.
If I send using my on site server, or my ISP's outbound
server it would never make it at all - not even filtered as
potential spam. It is just dropped. Not even a bounce
message 50% of the time. The other 50% of the time i get
some smart ass bounce message from my mail server telling me
my email to telstra email address <blah> has been blocked
due to the ruleset of some west european filtering company
<x> that has rejected my message.
At least the destination server is polite enough to
apologetically tell my mail server why it hates me half the
time.
I got around it by reconfiguring all my mail servers to
operate in and out from my US based hosting server, on the
same IP. (painful exercise, since my outbound mail is now
slower) but now even those are getting filtered or dropped
if I try to email any Australian email address.
Basically if you for example use the telstra outbound mail
server IP, and it is not the same IP as your bigpond
incoming server IP, your outgoing emails will be dropped -
often at random. A common scenario I get with many confused
clients at the moment.
This means many telstra business and commander systems
clients email are probably not working reliably right now.
It either classifies legitimate incoming messages from
clients/suppliers as spam, or doesn't let you send them to
begin with.
In my case my website which handles the member notification
alerts, which although is the same domain, is a physically
different IP and subdomain to my email server. So my
outbound messages get randomly dropped. Or some days not so
random, they all get dropped. I also get the same issue on
an ecommerce website which I cannot operate now. I can't
fix this because my server needs the ability to do certain
things that if I shipped it wholesale to the USA would no
longer br practical or economically viable.
Another common scenario I am seeing is some telstra
customers can send large bulk messages or oversized
attachments, but other customers get their mailbox blocked
if they try to send something with an attachment over 5mb or
to more than 1 person. (which means i get all the old
codgers complaining their email isnt working when they try
to forward some stupid meme video to all their friends,
because of course a friend sent it to them to begin with
from another telstra email address)
The biggest irritation is gmail seems to be on board with
this absurdity too. I cant even send emails using my ISPs
mail server anymore.
Basically it has killed internet innovation, DIY online
commerce, and made it very difficult to be paid for work
since most modern customers and suppliers deal almost
exclusively using email to even operate in Australia now.
--
New and improved 2600... well.. ..we drew on some flames and polished it a bit..
--
Google - making sure, life is no more, than 1984...
--
Damien Gardner
Dec 8, 2022, 4:48:40 AM12/8/22
to 2600-au...@googlegroups.com
Is that what it's doing?
I've been seeing a LOT of rejects of emails going out ipv6 to google destinations, citing incorrect reverse DNS configuration, or incorrect SPF configuration, but on investigation, reverse dns is PERFECT, as is the SPF. AND the email delivers fine 5 minutes later if I force a retry. It has been driving me truly insane, as I'm not getting things like 'Hey the UPS just detected a power loss and is shutting down the 3d printers in the garage', you know, stuff I want to know....
--
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Patrick Webster
Dec 20, 2022, 6:44:50 PM12/20/22
to 2600-au...@googlegroups.com
I noticed a lot of SPF blocked emails too, because IIRC the RFC has a string length limit for the record.
Almost every vendor appears to have fully expanded and interpreted the SPF record regardless of size in the past.
But more recently, some aussie ISPs send SPF rejects now as the record gets cut off when RFC enforced. Might be a popular vendor product which is doing it, not sure. Affecting a lot of people.
-Patrick
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/2600-australia/CAOL3_0T1Z7edEj_L_quAeGt90%3DK0MTKOinjKmarjvir9GVyVog%40mail.gmail.com.
Sid E
Dec 21, 2022, 6:40:21 AM12/21/22
to 2600-australia
Popular vendor product...
Like the Gmail app? I have a filter for 2600 specifically, and only found this message after looking for scammers.
Totally not pointing fingers at Google, just saying I agree.
Sid
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/2600-australia/CAJN6cdeUeCzaH-6%3DsHE4tpXAJGeCm6DdogEV8%2B-MgWZpfgqOLQ%40mail.gmail.com.
ad...@reviews.wox.org
Jan 4, 2023, 1:25:36 AM1/4/23
to 2600-au...@googlegroups.com
Ye, although it is vague about WHY, if
you look over the totally useless suggested "help" page on some of
the rejects, it also mentions the possibility of PTR records not
matching the MX being the cause.
That is a crock, since most of my ips
dont ptr to my mx, never have, never needed to, and most of THOSE
emails still work. Would be a pretty stupid policy anyway, most
small sole traders often only have access to at best 2 or 3
borrowed static IPs from a data centre or an ISP, and they usually
use the PTR as advertising so it wont match your MX anyway, just
tell you its static.what.ever.stupid.isp.c0m or
lease.ring.node.stupid.data.centre.c0m.
Having near-root node access to the
DNS root servers for a 'valid' PTR, usually requires fully owning
the IP or ip block if my previous playing with my DNS servers was
any indication. That is fckn expensive in Australia.
On 21/12/2022 10:40 pm, Sid E wrote:
Popular vendor product...
Like the Gmail app? I have a filter for 2600 specifically, and only found this message after looking for scammers.
Totally not pointing fingers at Google, just saying I agree.
Sid
On Wed, 21 Dec 2022, 10:44 am Patrick Webster, <pat...@aushack.com> wrote:
I noticed a lot of SPF blocked emails too, because IIRC the RFC has a string length limit for the record.
Almost every vendor appears to have fully expanded and interpreted the SPF record regardless of size in the past.
But more recently, some aussie ISPs send SPF rejects now as the record gets cut off when RFC enforced. Might be a popular vendor product which is doing it, not sure. Affecting a lot of people.
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