Bizarre Spam Problem?
Here is the thing: I have an email address (boris@ipan.nl) which works fine. Saskia also has an email address (saskia@ipan.nl) and that doesn’t work fine.
Some people (30%) get an immediate error from their SMTP or MAIL server. It says:
Cannot send message using the server mail.xs4all.nl
The server response was: 5.1.1 <saskia@ipan.nl>… No such user
The interesting thing is that the mailserver seems to reject the emailaddress right away without even accepting it. Normally email just gets delivered at the server where the domain is hosted and rejected there with a nice bounce mail.
But not with saskia@ipan.nl. Even MacAffee marks the emailaddress as invalid in your emailapplication. My hosting company doesn’t understand it and neither do I.
Who does?
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11 Responses to “Bizarre Spam Problem?”
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It looks like a standard SMTP error that servers spit out when they encounter an unknown internal e-mail address. See http://8help.osu.edu/1268.html
I’d try fixing it the ‘windows-way’: download all e-mail that may still be on the server to her pc, delete the e-mail account and then create it again. But hey, I’m no expert. ;)
Hi Roel; we actually tried that. Didn’t help one bit. In fact, all new emailaddresses we create seem to have the same problem.
Which mailserver gives you this response? Is that ipan.nl/mail.ipan.nl or some other server? If it’s the latter I guess there has been an DNS-error for ipan.nl and sometimes, on some nameservers, those can take a while before they’re totally evaporated… But maybe I’m totally wrong.
Can you give the extensive/verbose error-message including all the mumbo-jumbo? I tried to get the error myself, but Saskia kindly answers my testmail ^_^
Mark: the problem is with the xs4all or planet mailserver. Those domains reject the email not ipan.nl or mail.ipan.nl. The only error people get is the error I posted on the article (including the screenshot). It seems that if you telnet to the xs4all server and try to deliver mail that way you also get that error…
Yes, all right, but why would xs4all or planet handle the mail? ipan-mail should be sent to ipan.nl. The DNS-entries over at xs4all and planet could be wrong (they maybe think the ipan-mail is handled somewhere else)
I’m no expert in reading domainname and DNS-info, but from what I get, it seems that xs4all thinks ipan-mail is handled by xs4all themselves (but again, I could be wrong… any hoster reading this? ;-))
Query about ipan.nl for record types MX
Trying ipan.nl at server ns.xs4all.nl …
Query done, 4 answers, authoritative status: no error
ipan.nl 86400 IN MX 100 mx3.xs4all.nl
ipan.nl 86400 IN MX 100 mx4.xs4all.nl
ipan.nl 86400 IN MX 100 mx1.xs4all.nl
ipan.nl 86400 IN MX 100 mx2.xs4all.nl
Authority information:
ipan.nl 86400 IN NS ns.xs4all.nl
ipan.nl 86400 IN NS ns2.xs4all.nl
Query about ipan.nl for record types MX
Trying ipan.nl at server ns1.rokscom.net …
Query done, 1 answer, authoritative status: no error
ipan.nl 86400 IN MX 10 mail.ipan.nl
Additional information:
mail.ipan.nl 86400 IN A 213.247.51.100
The MX-records @ns.xs4all.nl are probably there because at one time the ipan.nl domain was hosted at XS4ALL. The rockscom MX-records seem to be reflecting the truth.
I’ve tried sending mail to saskia@ipan.nl through the XS4ALL mail server and it rejected it too. A response like “No such user” implies that the mail server believes that it is authoritative for that domain, which in this case is clearly not correct.
Does XS4ALL have a history with this domain ? I’m tempted to believe that they have hosted email for this domain somewhere in the past and have been reluctant to remove the domain from their mail and DNS server. That would explain the strange MX-records their DNS server returns and the fact that their mail server believes that it’s authoritative for the domain.
indeed, that’s my guess too… that this domain has been hosted by xs4all before and they changed/removed the A-record but not the MX-record… or such ;-)
Can anybody with an xs4all-account (and xs4all smtp-server) try to mail Boris? If that mail is received succesfully by Boris, than there’s even actually a machine actively accepting/rejecting ipan-mail (in the xs4all network). The machine accepting Boris’ mail (and forwarding?) and rejecting Sandra’s mail should then be visible in the mailheaders.
Otherwise I’d say that it’s just the dns-error somewhere at xs4all…
The xs4all mailserver now responds with a better looking message:
rcpt to: saskia@ipan.nl
553 5.3.0 saskia@ipan.nl… Relaying denied,Authenticate with your username and password first
Seems this problem is solved. Boris, care to fill us in on the details ? :-)
Oops, I’ve been a little over-enthusiastic I guess. When I contact the mail server from an XS4ALL connection it still returns “no such user”.
Hans: yes, Xs4ALL only allows authenticated use of its mailservers to prevent spammers abusing the system.
: I can’t believe it happened. The other day I jogged backward and put on eight pounds!