Email just stopped working - I'm blacklisted

https://www.washingtonpools.ca/online

no idea why its not working, however I can confirm his delima, I didnt receive my welcome email from the site listed above

I got the create account copy that you logged in

Ian,
Could you clarify something for me - is your Zen Cart store running on a server at a hosting service or on a machine attached to your router with the dynamic iP address?

Chuckl:

I can understand that using SMTP could get your IP blacklisted

What if you're using sendmail?

My Zen cart is running from a hosting company.

My host finnally admited to being on a blacklist. They said I sent the spam. I do not know how I did it. All I can think of I had copies of mail sent to my home email instead of my domain email. Not sure if this was the problem.

From My Host

I have checked the spam blacklists:

Spamcanibal have blocked a whole class c net, because they have receive one spam email and they do not have a delisting link.

UCEPROTECT wants to have money for the delisting. We will not support this kind of companies that blacklists mail servers and then require money for delisting.

Could you please tell from there you have sent the email and the recipient address and we will check the mail log.

Kind regards,
My Hosting

Back at em

Sure I will tell them. But I have no idea what happened. How did I become a "evil" spammer.?

What email?

I need to figure it out so it does not happen again.

The way I understand it, SpamCannibal have a single email received which they allege is vicious spam and justifies blocking many thousand IP addresses to prevent a recurrence. They appear to have no way to 'unblacklist' anyone, and are an open source product.
UCENET seem to be saying 'For money we can get you absolution', and like your hosting company, I wouldn't have anything to do with that.
Your hosting company want to know from you which email it was that you sent that caused all of this. Quite how you are supposed to know this is omitted, but you have clearly broken the unwritten law.
I'm also not clear on whether this 'spam' is supposed to have come from your home systems or from the shop?
Sounds like some seriously retentive people need to get out more?
I would say one email cannot constitute spam. Perhaps they could divulge the contents or the intended recipient? Something unforgiveable like 'Thanks for signing up and welcome to our web shop'.

I did a little bit more digging around after giving this some thought, and it simply gets stranger and stranger.
Any mail sent from your Zen Cart site via PHP simply goes to one of your hosts mail servers and is then sent out into the email system from there. Your shop itself does not mail anything, so I'm not sure how you could be spamming or be blacklisted.
If I check you IP address at SpamCannibal, it does not accuse you at all, it simply says 'See 77.232.66.108' which I presume might be one of your hosts mail servers?
Checking this address at SpamCannibal reveals that they object to the following email, originating from the above address:

Return-Path: [email protected]
Received: from ns2.bizsystems.net (ns2.is.bizsystems.com
[192.168.1.171])
by bzs.org (8.11.4/8.11.4) with ESMTP id l1OGAkR16385
for [email protected]; Sat, 24 Feb 2007 08:10:46 -0800
Received: from c8.servage.net (77.232.66.108.static.servage.net
[77.232.66.108] (may be forged))
by ns2.bizsystems.net (8.13.4/8.13.4) with ESMTP id l1OGAjUb020662
for [email protected]; Sat, 24 Feb 2007 08:10:46 -0800
Received: from node2.c8.servage-customer.net (node2.c8
[192.168.80.2])
by c8.servage.net (Postfix) with ESMTP id 76946A2B97D
for [email protected]; Sat, 24 Feb 2007 14:55:28 +0000 (GMT)
Received: by node2.c8.servage-customer.net (Postfix, from userid 99)
id 73B609224C; Sat, 24 Feb 2007 09:55:28 -0500 (EST)
To: [email protected]
Subject: WINNING NOTIFICATION
From: "MR.NICKY OSWARDS" <"Microsoft
AndAOLAwardTeam"@node2.c8.servage-customer.net>
Reply-To: [email protected],
[email protected], [email protected]
customer.net,
[email protected], [email protected]
customer.net
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit
Message-Id: [email protected]
Date: Sat, 24 Feb 2007 09:55:28 -0500 (EST)
X-Scanned-By: MIMEDefang 2.58 on 69.3.95.130
X-PMFLAGS: 34078848 0 1 PAZK9ANW.CNM

Microsoft And AOL Award Team
20 Craven Park, Harlesden London NW10 United Kingdom
Ref: BTD/968/05
Batch: 409978E
Dear Winner, WINNING NOTIFICATION The prestigious Micrsoft and aol
has set out and sucessfully organised a Sweepstakes marking the new
year 2007 anniversary we rolled out over 5,000.000.00 Pounds (Five
million Great Britain Pounds) for our end of year Anniversary Draws.

As far as I can see, none of that has anything to do with you or your shop. You are simply encountering difficulties because your hosting company's mail servers have been blacklisted by someone running SpamCannibal.
Perhaps 'I am unable to send email via your mail servers, please provide me with the service for which I pay' might be a better approach?

Just an update.

Still do not have email working. Talking to my host is like talking to a wall. They are getting slower and slower in their replys.

This is the last one I got> Hello Ian,

I have checked the mail log and emails are sent successfully to (customer@myhomeemail )
I would be happy to check some more emails.

Kind regards,

Obviously they are looking at the mails sent using my personal internet providers mail server. I do get conformation emails to my domain name
mail account so I have been copying them and sending them to customers that way.

Very disappointing.

Just a random thought. I wonder if this might reveal anything?

1. Find an email address that fails to receive messages from your shop.
2. Convince the hosting company to IGNORE the blacklist settings provided by SpamCannibal ... for 15 minutes while you run a test.
3. Send another email using same method that failed in step #1
4. Check to see if the email comes through.

If it does come through, then ask your hosting company why they choose to swear allegience to SpamCannibal's data. There are lots of other usable blacklist sources out there that might be better choices ...

On a sidenote, check to see whether you have Admin->Config->Email Options-> Allow Guest to Tell A Friend set to on or off. Best to leave it off so that spammers cannot use you as a source for sending junk. It's typically off since Zen Cart v1.3.0, but it's worth checking to be sure your store is set safely.

DrByte:

Just a random thought. I wonder if this might reveal anything?

1. Find an email address that fails to receive messages from your shop.
2. Convince the hosting company to IGNORE the blacklist settings provided by SpamCannibal ... for 15 minutes while you run a test.
3. Send another email using same method that failed in step #1
4. Check to see if the email comes through.

If it does come through, then ask your hosting company why they choose to swear allegience to SpamCannibal's data. There are lots of other usable blacklist sources out there that might be better choices ...

I do not think it is me that is blacklisted it is them.
My IP is random and is owned by another host that is clean.
If you type in servage.net (my domain host) in the MX toolbox http://www.mxtoolbox.com/blacklists.aspx?. they come up listed.

Whats wierd is that when I email a customer direct from my webmail account at mydomainhost.net/webmail it goes fine but out of zc no customers get mail.create acct,order conformation,coupon, nothing.

Customers still do not get mail. I have been dealing with it by copying the admin mails that are sent to my domain mail and manually sending them to customers. Bit of a pain.

I have been in contact with a mail server that gets emails sent by Zencart. They just throw them out, do not even put them in the junk mail folders.This is what they said.

I can see on our side that we received the email and forwarded it to our junk mail filtering server. It appears that the message that was sent was not properly formatted by the
sending mail server. These sorts of emails are rare, and without going into great (and somewhat confusing) detail, they are almost always viruses.

Our Operations department tells me that a bounce message was generated and
sent back to the sender of the message ([email protected]).

Does any body know what this means?
My host has switched me over to another mail server that is not blacklisted and it still does not work.

The only mis-formatting or improper formatting I have seen is from email sent from admin, or newsletters from admin when there is not a copy of email_use_8bit.php in includes/extra_configures in the admin folder tree. It is then possible to create a setup where the header says 7bit mime, and the body is 8bit and vice versa.
HTMLArea can also produce some pretty tortured html if you do a lot of inserts, deletes and changes, but that is hardly grounds for bouncing mail.
I would say have a look at the mail headers/mail source of your copies and see if there are any obvious mismatches.

Re: your comment about not being able to reach spamcannibal..

Try something real simple like CLICK on the CONTACT link on the home page at:
"www.spamcannibal.org"

:no: