Jeremy Heslop » family

1&1 tightens up Email spam rules

jeremy — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 21:45:53 +0000

I use 1and1 for my personal and business websites as well as for our clients. We’ve had a client recently that was not receiving emails from one of their colleagues and of course the other company’s IT person said it was our problem. Having been an email administrator for many years I always like to look into the bounced back messages, smtp connection info, email headers, and more to track down a problem. This particular issue was perplexing because there where not many posts on the net about it. When someone was trying to send an email to a domain hosted at 1and1 it sent this error after the RCPT TO line:

421 invalid sender domain, possibly misconfigured

I tested at http://www.wormly.com/test_smtp_server (which is a great site btw) to get test the error.

So I sent an email to 1and1 support to see if they could help. This was the very speedy response:

The circumstances you have just described is caused by a RFC-non-compliant configuration of the despatcher-domain. The MX-Server
of the domain has no registered A-record, but merely a CNAME-record this is why the e-mail is rejected by our e-mail servers.

You can find some general information about this topic here:

http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc2181.html

To provide the e-mail delivery as fast as possible again, we kindly advise you to inscribe the target domain of the CNAME-record as MX-record. For further information, please contact the provider of the despatcher-domain.

Looks like the 1and1 is blocking any non RFC compliant domains. In the rfc spec above it says:

10.3. MX and NS records

The domain name used as the value of a NS resource record, or part of
the value of a MX resource record must not be an alias.
…

Additional section processing does not include CNAME records, let alone the address records that may be associated with the canonical name derived from the alias.

So if you are a DNS admin or setup DNS for clients make sure to have the MX record for your domains be A records (they directly resolve to an ip) not CNAME records. So far I have had to email a couple of hosting companies related to this issue. I applaud 1and1 for locking down their email servers even more to thwart spam, but it would have been nice to have had a link or faq on their site explaining what was going on. Thus the reason for this lengthy blog post.

Some other posts on the web about this issues:

Useful links to test out DNS and MX records:

Aliza on the Swings

jeremy — Sun, 11 Jan 2009 21:19:46 +0000

My Wife Thinks I’m Stealing My Blog Posts!!

jeremy — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 16:00:37 +0000

I wrote a blog post yesterday about daylight savings. Check it out if you haven’t read it yet. So my wife reads the posts laughs at a few of the items in the list (especially the spending time with the special someone since she knows I’m referring to her) and then proceeds to ask me (for the second time mind you) if I came up with this list myself! Preposterous I tell you!!! Well I guess I should be flattered since she meant well and it was supposed to be a compliment. So I’ll take it as such, but it was funny that she did it almost twice in a row (She didn’t think I wrote this one either). I love you wife!

High gas prices and the financial crisis? Get cash back!

jeremy — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 19:30:41 +0000

Wouldn’t it be nice if there was an easy way to get a few extra dollars in your pocket each month to help with high gas prices for your car, truck or suv? Well if you haven’t yet gotten a Discover Card now is the time to do so.

Just this month I have gotten over $60 cash back from just using it for our everyday family purchases (diapers and formula are expensive!)

Now the most important part when getting a cash back credit card is not to spend the cash back! They try and get you to purchase more things which means you spend more money instead of just getting the cash back. Now if those items you purchase are necessary items then by all means go for it, but most of the retailers that they list you could do without.

So if I can’t spend it what do I do with it? Redeem the cash back into your discover account and now you have those extra few dollars for those high gas prices!

You can also get a Discover card called the Open Road card that gives you more cash back for gas and auto purchases than the other Discover cards.

So if you spend money (and who doesn’t) or your a small business owner and want to get a few dollars back for doing what you would do anyway click on one of the links above to get your very own card today.

An Afternoon of Photography: Janell and Caleb

jeremy — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 03:30:35 +0000

This afternoon was an extended photo session! I was able to take photos of Janell and Caleb all within two hours time. You can see the photos of Caleb on my photography site and pictures of Janell will be coming soon. But I couldn’t help but put together a quick collage of an idea that Janell and I had about shoes.

Trying out Seesmic and Josiah says HI!

jeremy — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 23:28:19 +0000

Janell and Jeff’s Wedding Pictures Posted

jeremy — Sat, 06 Sep 2008 17:39:19 +0000

I posted the pictures of Janell and Jeff’s wedding on my photography site. Check it out!

Josiah Laughing at 3 Months

jeremy — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 21:02:29 +0000

Carla was playing with Josiah on the floor and he was talking and laughing. I love it!

Beach Day and Father’s Day

jeremy — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 00:24:29 +0000

Yesterday we went to the beach with the kids. The Upper Ferry Rd ferry was running so we were able to go over that. Aliza thought going on the “boat” was neat. We then visited a little beach in Nanticoke, MD down Nanticoke Rd. Its a great beach for other kids as the water is warm and shallow with small waves. By the end Aliza was laying in the wake and jumping all around. Here is a video of the day from my wifes blog:

Today is Father’s Day and it was just as good as yesterday but without the kids. Carla and I left the kids after church with the grandparents, went to lunch, took a nap at home (lol), went to the mall, and stopped for starbucks. ALl in all a great day with the wife. Looking forward to a great week this week.

Earth Day at the Salisbury Zoo

jeremy — Sun, 20 Apr 2008 21:54:56 +0000

Chrissy recommended that Carla and I take the kids to the zoo yesterday because it was Earth Day. So we all went down to the zoo to check things out. My mom and dad were down for the weekend so they followed us. Matt and Chrissy met us there for the fun as well. Parking was crazy because the zoo was packed full, but we found a spot near the bridge and walked a ways to get there. It WAS packed yet we could get were we needed to go without to much hassle. We saw all the usual animals as well as alot of others that they brought for the day. My personal favorite was the baby screech owl. *read in Napoleon Dynamite voice* Matt said he saw a SWEET hawk before lunch that I missed. *end ND voice* We finally wrapped up a great day by visiting the Backstreet Grill around the corner on rt 12. I had an awesome bacon cheeseburger!

So check out another animoto video I made of our day.

And check out my pix on flickr: