>Here is the response one of my admin team got when asking why she was >not getting message approvals or other admin type mail: > >-------- > The mail is not being delivered because the mailserver for the domain >MITVMA.MIT.EDU (pacific-carrier-annex.mit.edu) is in the ORBS >database as being an open relay and therefore is not allowed to send mail >to the Qwest.net domain. > Please refer to www.orbs.org for information on what ORBS is and >what you can do to get the mailserver (ip address 18.69.0.28) out of >the listing. > In the meantime, you may want to open a free webbased email account >for the purpose of exchanging mail with MIT. >------- > >First of all, can someone explain to me in English what in the world they are >talking about. Basically a mail server that is an open relay will accept outgoing mail from anywhere--for example if mail.example.edu is an open relay then I (or anyone else) could use it to send mail to an aol.com address (or any other address). A standard trick of spammers is to find a mail relay someplace and use it to send their spam--this can make it more difficult to track them down and relieves them of the time and trouble of maintaining a mail server of their own. One tricky thing when closing an open relay is to make sure that people who do need to be able to send mail using the server are still able to. ORBS maintains a database of sites that it has determined are open relays. For more information on them you can see their website; you may also wish search the SPAM-L archives (http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/spam-l.html) for ORBS. >Second, does anyone have a solution besides the obvious. Basically I'd verify that mitvma is in fact in ORBS. (There should be a link from ORBS' home page that allows you to do this.) I have occasionally been informed by mail admins that a mail server was in ORBS when in fact it wasn't and the mail wasn't being accepted for some other reason. After this your only real option is to explain the situation to the affected subscribers and turn over whatever information you have on the situation to your site administrator. Ultimately it's up to individual sites to determine what mail they accept and what they don't. If your subscribers (who are presumably paying customers) disagree with their ISP's policies of course they may wish to complain. >On the same note, HOTMAIL is either not delivering MITVMA Listserv >messages, or MITVMA is not accepting HOTMAIL messages. So this >freemail source is apparently not an option. Anyone have an inside track >on this? HOTMAIL is recognizing my admin requests with APPLE server. > >Liz Marr I'm not sure if hotmail subscribes to ORBS or not. In hotmail options there's a "Inbox Protection" feature that allows you to filter certain types of mail into a "bulk mail" folder; if you have that enabled you might want to turn it off to see what happens. Generally in dealing with free email providers I find that progress is more likely if you call them than if you send email, though it tends to be frustratingly slow in either case. It could also help to have mail server log entries in hand that show that they are blocking your email. Again it may be easier or more appropriate for your LISTSERV site manager to deal with this. Also note that there are other free email providers around that may serve your purposes, though of course it's annoying to have to maintain a half dozen or so seperate email accounts. I hope your situation is resolved soon. -- Jacob Haller, Technical Support L-Soft international, Inc http://www.lsoft.com/