Hi,

I have a box, with hostname server_domain.com (for the purpose of
explaining the problem). And, it has bunch of virtual hosts on it. And,
I am trying to send email from one of these virtual domains:
mydomain.com from PHP/Apache, but emails I am sending are always tagged
as junk/bulk/spam by Hotmail & Yahoo.

I have tried setting -f to poster@mydomain.com, which is the same
address as From. But, still they end up in the junk folder. I am
suspecting that the first Received contains nobody@localhost, and that
is the one causing this, but I have no idea how I can fix this.

BTW, I am not sending spam, but only authorization/administration
emails that users have consented to, from these domains.

And, I don't want to connect to SMTP because my MX records are not
hosted on this machine (pointing to another server), and it would be
too slow if I do that.

Could you please tell, what I should be doing to avoid this, and have
my users receive these emails properly?

Here are the relevant headers from this e-mail:

From: test@mydomain.com
Return-Path: <poster@mydomain.com>

Received: from server_domain.com (server_domain.com [70.70.70.70])
(using TLSv1 with cipher DHE-RSA-AES256-SHA (256/256 bits)) (No client
certificate requested) by xyz.net (Postfix) with ESMTP id 7EEC633F4B6
for <my@email.address.com>; Sat, 20 Jan 2007 05:34:54 -0500 (EST)

Received: from server_domain.com (none [127.0.0.1]) by
server_domain.com (8.13.1/8.13.1) with ESMTP id l0KAUkDB003609 for
<my@email.address.com>; Sat, 20 Jan 2007 12:30:46 +0200

Received: (from nobody@localhost) by server_domain.com
(8.13.1/8.13.1/Submit) id l0KAUkVd003608; Sat, 20 Jan 2007 12:30:46
+020


Thanks a ton!

Newbie wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I have a box, with hostname server_domain.com (for the purpose of
> explaining the problem). And, it has bunch of virtual hosts on it. And,
> I am trying to send email from one of these virtual domains:
> mydomain.com from PHP/Apache, but emails I am sending are always tagged
> as junk/bulk/spam by Hotmail & Yahoo.
>
> I have tried setting -f to poster@mydomain.com, which is the same
> address as From. But, still they end up in the junk folder. I am
> suspecting that the first Received contains nobody@localhost, and that
> is the one causing this, but I have no idea how I can fix this.
>
> BTW, I am not sending spam, but only authorization/administration
> emails that users have consented to, from these domains.
>
> And, I don't want to connect to SMTP because my MX records are not
> hosted on this machine (pointing to another server), and it would be
> too slow if I do that.
>
> Could you please tell, what I should be doing to avoid this, and have
> my users receive these emails properly?
>
> Here are the relevant headers from this e-mail:
>
> From: test@mydomain.com
> Return-Path: <poster@mydomain.com>
>
> Received: from server_domain.com (server_domain.com [70.70.70.70])
> (using TLSv1 with cipher DHE-RSA-AES256-SHA (256/256 bits)) (No client
> certificate requested) by xyz.net (Postfix) with ESMTP id 7EEC633F4B6
> for <my@email.address.com>; Sat, 20 Jan 2007 05:34:54 -0500 (EST)
>
> Received: from server_domain.com (none [127.0.0.1]) by
> server_domain.com (8.13.1/8.13.1) with ESMTP id l0KAUkDB003609 for
> <my@email.address.com>; Sat, 20 Jan 2007 12:30:46 +0200
>
> Received: (from nobody@localhost) by server_domain.com
> (8.13.1/8.13.1/Submit) id l0KAUkVd003608; Sat, 20 Jan 2007 12:30:46
> +020
>
>
> Thanks a ton!

With the received path munged, it doesn't provide any information that
would be usefull for tracking down the problem. The problem is either
the sending IP address or the content. Get a hotmail account and try
sending a non-spammy message to yourself, if that is rejected the
problem is your IP address. I think it unlikely that hotmail or Yahoo
is paying attention to the headers - they are easily forged. My guess
is that you have a dynamic IP address and need to relay through your
ISP to get your mail accepted. Slow is better than never.

See also http://www.nber.org/sys-admin/smarthost.html

Dan Feenberg