The main reason that I joined this list was because my posts from the mailing
list that I administrate quit coming through.  When I spoke with my ISP I was
told that filters on relay mail had been added and that nothing could be done
short of the people running my host changing their software over to Majordomo.
I'm surprised and confused to see that the posts from this list are coming
through just fine.  The filters were lifted for about a week and then re-applied
on New Years Day.  By that time I had changed everything over to an AOL account
that I only use as an extra email address.  At this time I am very concerned
that other subscribers posts will be filtered and the list will die or have to
be moved.

Here is a copy of the letter that I received from the administrator of my ISP
here in Indy.  Although I am at a not well versed in any of this yet perhaps it
would explain some of the problems with the Virgin.Net situation.


Patrick Rainbolt wrote:
>        The only thing we did was allow people to send null's (or no
>userids) as valid user names. This means that the listserve that started
>working are not setup correctly according to RFC822 protocols or the
>gateway they are going through is sending out the user name as a null. We
>will leave this like this for a couple weeks but since it is a security
>hole it will eventually be plugged. We currently are discussing the
>posibility of allowing null's as user name but nothing set in stone as of
>yet.

This is the copy of one of the bounces that I eventually downloaded.

>Reason: Have been trying to send to indy.net for 2 days.  Will continue to
>try and send.

Steve Pruitt (Beyond Help) wrote:

> I'm getting the same errors for a number of subscribers. I tried writing to
> [log in to unmask] directly and got the same error. They seem to have
> installed the standard anti-spammer filter to prevent relaying, and made the
> common error of filtering everything. Eventually they'll figure it out and
> fix it.
>
> Steve Pruitt
>
> > ----------
> > From:         James Chamier[SMTP:[log in to unmask]]
> > Reply To:     LISTSERV list owners' forum
> > Sent:         Friday, January 02, 1998 8:23 AM
> > To:   [log in to unmask]
> > Subject:      VIRGIN.NET error?
> >
> > As part of my daily error monitoring report, I am receving the following
> > errors:
> >
> > >  Subscriber Name <[log in to unmask]>
> > >  Last error was: Mailer smtp.VIRGIN.NET said: "550 relaying mail to
> > VIRGIN.NET
> > >                  is not allowed"
> > >
> >
> > I'm receiving one of these errors for each of my subscribers from this
> > domain,
> > although I can successfully send mail directly to the subscriber.
> >
> > Any hints?  I'm guessing that its a config error on their server, since
> > they
> > should accept  mail to themselves !   Does LISTSERV do anything here they
> > should
> > be aware of?
> >
> > Thanks,
> > James
> >
> > --
> > James Chamier, [log in to unmask], http://www.chamier.demon.co.uk
> >