Major
Valued Member
Virginia, USA

# of Posts: 8

List of blocked domains?

This list of blocked domains (http://www.diplomacy.ca/cgi-bin/page?spam) seems long, and I'm surprised at certain entries in this list, like pacom.mil (a military facility in hawaii) and cia.gov (the domain for the CIA.) Also, every major financial institution I could think of made this list as well (morgan stanley, suntrust, citibank, chase)

Did somebody receive spam from these domains? Did it actually have these domains as the originating host name and not simply the name in the "From" field? I'd be alarmed if either of these domains were transmitting spam for malicious purposes, or even if they were compromised by a botnet.

- Poobslag

Valued Member
virginia

# of Posts: 1

What's more, all of *.org is blocked. It seems silly to block *.org but not *.com.

Rank: Admin
Site Administrator
Ottawa, Canada

# of Posts: 1173

Domains are blocked automatically based in inbound access attempts. Banks and financial institutions and non-profit organisations are a favourite for spammers. I'm not trying to say all of the blocked domains are the actual source, but they are the domain used by the spammer.

Once a certain threshold is reached, the next level up becomes blocked. So after a.org, b.org, etc when the count reached 500, the whole .org was blocked. Same for domains such as .ru and the many others.

.com is an exception.

Other domains are blocked due to unreliability.

gmail.com is also an exception. With gmail, this system can deliver your mail to the gmail server where you can setup to forward to any domain you choose.

It may seem silly, but I block thousands of spam messages a day (if not per hour).

Valued Member
Kenosha, WI

# of Posts: 2

I've tried to respond to the email sent from the GameMaster from my gmail account but it has been blocked. My only other accounts are also blocked (gmx.de and my work account, psu.edu: I'm a university lecturer.)

I'd love to be able to participate, but I'm not sure that it's going to be possible. I was under the impression that gmail was not blocked, but I got this:


Technical details of permanent failure:
Google tried to deliver your message, but it was rejected by the recipient domain. We recommend contacting the other email provider for further information about the cause of this error. The error that the other server returned was: 550 550 5.0.0 Blocking Spam!Mail from this domain has been blocked! (state 13).

when I tried to respond.

wbehun

Rank: Admin
Site Administrator
Ottawa, Canada

# of Posts: 1173

If you send me the date and time in a private message, I will investigate at this end. I can't see any obvious issues with sending to and receiving from gmail at this time, but with an exact example to look for I should be able to resolve it.

I do see that there was a block for google.com which I have removed. Perhaps your mail was not going out under the gmail.com domain.

Valued Member
Kenosha, WI

# of Posts: 2

Wow...thanks for the nearly immediate reply. I'll try to send again but I suspect that you're right that it has something to do with the block on google.com. If I have any other problems I know how to reach you!

Will

Rank: Admin
Site Administrator
Ottawa, Canada

# of Posts: 1173

Looks like your message got through. FYI, I'm online checking the site numerous times every day unless I'm in the hospital

Royal Highness
Contributing Member
Huntingdon

# of Posts: 132

David

Are you telling us that you do not have online access in hospital?

For god's sake man, sort it out! Do they not know who you are?

Scullers

__________________
“A diplomat is a man who always remembers a woman's birthday but never remembers her age.”

It's all about Diplomacy...

Rank: Admin
Site Administrator
Ottawa, Canada

# of Posts: 1173

It's a rule I have. No using the computer while under anesthesia. The resulting code is too hard to understand.