Slashdot Mirror
Verizon's Aggressive New Spam Filter Causing Problems
aviancarrier writes "Verizon DSL has turned on a very aggressive spam filter that is blocking lots of long-time legitimate emails. Emails get bounced with an error: 'XX@verizon.net: host relay.verizon.net[206.46.232.11] said: 550 Email from your Email Service Provider is currently blocked by Verizon Online's anti-spam system. The email "sender" or Email Service Provider may visit http://www.verizon.net/whitelist and request removal of the block.' That whitelist web page lets you request one address at a time to be whitelisted with no guarantee for their response time to process it. I have tested multiple email sources and only one got through. As a VZ customer, I just spent 28 minutes on a call to tech support, eventually got a supervisor who knows nothing about the new spam feature, and would only agree to email a manager who doesn't work weekends about it. I warned her that VZ has a public relations problem but she was too clueless to understand." Many users have submitted this problem so it seems to be a pretty far reaching problem. There is also a discussion going on over at Google about this problem.
Having worked in tech support for a large company, I can assure you that the position of supervisor for a tech support call centre really doesn't have nearly as much influence on coprorate public relations as you seem to think that it has.
Most of the people in her position would be surprised to find out that any one from the head office even knows that they exist, let alone cares about what they do or asks their opinion on issues like PR. It's normal to be annoyed when a company like Verizon screws up like this, but lashing out at the tech support staff just because they're the easist people to reach really doesn't help anybody.
> I used to send all my email out of my own mailserver, out of my home firewall/router/"box-in-a-closet" machine.
/16 alone. Sorry that it's come to residential accounts being treated like second class citizens, but we gave this class of account YEARS to clean up its act, and it's only gotten worse.
> The worst offender that I've found so far is Comcast;
Sorry, but you're sending email from a residential IP with a rdns of something like "dsl-123-234-12-56.dyn.myisp.net" and you're calling comcast the offender?
The days of running your own mail server on a residential account are over -- blame the thousands of zombie spammers on your
You can get mail hosting for like five bucks a month. It's the cost of spam. Deal with it, because we sure as hell are.
Signed,
the world's mail administrators
Done with slashdot, done with nerds, getting a life.
Saying a phone line tech support manager is bad at her job because she can't do anything about an engineering 'feature' in under two days is impossibly naive.
there is no need to sign your posts. this isn't usenet. your username is right there above your post. stop it.
It's the fact that there is nothing to distinguish his email server from any of the hundreds (thousands?) of zombies on that same network.
In cases such as this, the best solution is for the home user to over-comply. And that means learning about relaying and getting a relay account on a server that does not look like a zombie.This is not about anyone being an idiot.
This is about making it as easy as possible for the other competent email admins to see that you are not a zombie.
The more concessions you expect from all of them, the more problems you'll face.
From that page:
That's very nice, but it doesn't seem like a very intelligent way to measure customer service. As a trivial example, suppose you want to know your credit card balance. A decently programmed voice response system can give you that information quickly and clearly, and in much less time than it would take to get the same data from a human. If you're lucky, the IVR won't even try to sell you something that you don't need.
Yes, I know that there are times when the available pre-programmed options are not useful and speaking to a representative is the only option. But do you want to have to wait in queue for an agent who has to handle ninety-twelve "what is my balance?" calls before it's your turn? Now ask yourself why the call centers are being outsourced to overseas providers
This "I only will deal with a human" attitude is pointless. Better to demand that corporations fix their IVR systems, because they're not going away. (And maybe I'll get hired to write more VUI specs instead of having to implement what 'the business' thinks it wants.)
Slightly disreputable, albeit gregarious