ISP problem

[Gaard]

A few facts to get out of the way...

My ISP is Infinity Online Services. (Been using them for about 5 years)
My mother and sister both use Riverside Internet Services.


A few days ago I started to get all of my e-mail that I send to either my sister or my mom bounce back to me. This is what it says:


<< Your message has encountered delivery problems
to the following recipient(s):

lewmare@mail.riverview.net
Delivery failed
553 5.3.0 Email Rejected - Open spam relay - see http://www.riverview.net/openrelay.php?type=osirusoft


Sent: MAIL FROM:<mwarner@ionline.com>
Received:553 5.3.0 Email Rejected - Open spam relay - see http://www.riverview.net/openrelay.php?type=osirusoft >>



So I went to the address given in the e-mail above and it says something about a problem with my ISP. I also called my mom and had her contact her ISP and explain the problem. They also said it was a problem with my ISP...something about a different Riverside(Riverview) user must've complained about getting spam from an Infinity user, so Infinity is blacklisted.

So I contact my ISP (Infinity) and forward the above e-mail to them. This is the reply I got:


<< Mike,

The person your sending to is at an ISP using spews.relays.osirusoft.com,
very liberal blacklist, run by a group of people that are upset with Sprint.
Since the list is not automatically maintained, and the owners can manually
add hosts to the blacklist, the list is rarely used by ISPs. Sprint is
working to get it removed at this time.

Thanks,
Amy Pickard
Internet Support Technician
Local Internet Services, Inc. >>



So basically Riverside is saying it's Infinity's problem and Infinity is saying it's not.

Any suggestions?

 

[bozo1]

Well, the problem is a little bit of both but mostly it's your ISP's fault.

riverview.net is using osirusoft to check incoming mail to see if it is coming from a listed site. Sites get listed for a number of reasons - mainly either being an open relay which allows spammers to bounce their junk off their servers (usually without the ISP/firm knowning about it) or by being a known haven for spammers. My ISP occasionally gets listed because one of their customers is running a mail server that is misconfigured as an open relay. Once my ISP finds out about it, they help their customer configure their server properly and then they work on getting themselves removed from the blackhole list which may take a few days.

According to the bounce message, ionline is listed because they (or one of their customers) is/was acting as an open relay which is BAD.

Now them saying that these lists are rarely used is not true. Many ISP's use these lists. Many companies use these lists. I did at my company. It's not riverview's fault here.

What needs to happen is ionline needs to find out why they are listed, resolve the problem and get unlisted.