Best Practises

Information Details

Normally, the reason you have reached this page is because a mail server has sent you a message when it rejected an email from you, or one of your users.

• If you are an email or network operator, you can continue reading this section
• If you are a user sending email and it got blocked, you should read this section instead

Information for Email and Network Operators

The days are long gone when you could just leave your servers open and trust to the good will of internet users, and just the same we now have a responsibility to be good net citizens ourselves, by following some Best Practises that help everyone work together, to make it easier to identify responsible operators, and to work together to help stop abuses where they occur. And email and network operators have a special place, as one of the most common forms of abuse is Spam, and with a few simple Best Practises, you can help to stop it's prolification. As well, as more and more operators start insisting that if you want to have your users and servers communicate with them, you should followup simple Best Practises as well.

There are many good resources online, and we have included links to some herein, but we have also included special pages of references to certain best practices as they affect email delivery. Most users of LinuxMagic Email Servers by default have Best Practises enabled, and as well they require others to comply with Best Practises to help tell the difference between responsible email administrators, and the more unsavoury types; and to tell the differences between legitimate email servers and the many forms of Trojans and Bots on infected PC's and compromised servers that masquerade as email servers.

We hope that the following information helps you, and if you find that your email is being blocked for some reason by a LinuxMagic 'MagicMail' email server, this should help you fix the problem and get you conforming to Best Practises at the same time.

Here are some specific pages available regarding issues that can block email delivery.

• Valid MAIL FROM: Address
• Require FULL email of recipient
• Require email with domain, not IP
• Require Server Identification (HELO)
• Server Identification (HELO) must be valid
• Server Identification (HELO) 'should' resolve
• Email Addresses should be formatted correctly
• Server IP must resolve
• Server IP DNS naming conventions (1)
• Server IP DNS naming conventions (2)
• Known Sender Forgery (KSF)® - Anti Phishing

Some other interesting reading, related to why messages could be blocked by MagicMail server, that are not really 'Best Practises' per se, but may be helpful to email operators are also listed here.

• Empowering the Users
• The Power of IP Reputation
• What is spam? A Simple Explanation and what it takes to stop it..

Need help with YOUR email servers? Visit MagicMail Servers or for custom work on most other email services see LinuxMagic's main site.

If you are the one sending the message, and you were blocked with this message, it is most likely that you do not have your email client set up correctly, and you should read the next section.

Information for users. Why was my email blocked?

If your email was blocked, and you were directed here then it usually is one of two reasons. Either you do not have your email client correctly configured, or your email provider does not have their email server configured to 'Best Practises'.

Normally this should never affect you, as it is meant for mail server to mail server communication. But sometimes when your email client is misconfigured, it may appear as if you are an email server instead of a customer to your outbound email server (SMTP)
This can sometimes be hard to tell which is the problem, but if you have problems sending, always check 3 things first.

• Did you type the email address correctly?
• Do you have your account settings correct? (Especially 'Outbound Email' (SMTP) settings)
• Are you using SMTP authentication? This helps your ISP tell that you are a customer and ignore certain rules

If it isn't one of the above, you should contact your email administrator or ISP.

Normally, these rules will only block spammers who have 'hacked' or compromised personal computers like yours and try to send blanket email blasts to real email servers. Since most email servers follow best practices, and most spam tools don't, it is helpful to tell.. Are you a customer? Are you an end user? Spammers try to pretend they are email servers using hijacked PC's around the world. If your settings are correct, and your ISP's settings are correct, and the ISP isn't leaking spam, then you should normally never get email blocked. servers, especially in companies that may have many different email servers at one location.

Please check that you use the correct method to connect to your ISP in your email client, or contact the administrator of your outbound email server, or ISP for more information.

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