Cannot figure out why "some" of our eMails are being filtered by Hotmail/Yahoo + probably by others. We host our Exchange Server, Registrar is GoDaddy and the ISP is Verizon. Let's see if anybody can come up with a suggestion and/or if what we are doing will solve the problem. Exchange Server Name: mail.zenRx.org IP Address: 72.85.245.162 AOL's reverse DNS Lookup was occasionally was giving DXDOMAIN http://postmaster.aol.com/cgi-bin/plugh/rdns.pl One out of six or so, but lateley it is "Success", but the outgoing mail still looks like spam. We know that the PTR Record with Verizon and SPF record with GoDaddy is Perfect. Go Daddy said, Verizon should create a Reverse DNS Record; and we are waiting for them to create the record and implement the change on Monday Morning. Can somebody tell me that the Reverse DNS Record is the right solution, and how come things have changed all of a sudden. Everything has been working OK for a while and suddenly outgoing mails are not perfect. Thanks for replies and suggestions. Travis McGee

On Sat, 24 Jul 2010 18:19:36 +0000, Travis McGee wrote: > > >Cannot figure out why "some" of our eMails are being filtered by Hotmail/Yahoo + probably by others. We host our Exchange Server, Registrar is GoDaddy and the ISP is Verizon. > >Let's see if anybody can come up with a suggestion and/or if what we are doing will solve the problem. > >Exchange Server Name: mail.zenRx.org IP Address: 72.85.245.162 > >AOL's reverse DNS Lookup was occasionally was giving DXDOMAIN http://postmaster.aol.com/cgi-bin/plugh/rdns.pl One out of six or so, but lateley it is "Success", but the outgoing mail still looks like spam. DXDOMAIN??? Did you mean NXDOMAIN? The only time that's really meaningful is when the error is returned from an authoritative DNS (ns1.verizon.net, for example). One can only assume that the web page is using a reliable DNS resolver. >We know that the PTR Record with Verizon and SPF record with GoDaddy is Perfect. Why use the "ptr:" mechanism? If 72.85.245.162 is your outflow server and that's the only machine you authorize to sen e-mail on behalf of your domain then the SPF TXT record can be shortenened to just: v=spf1 ip4:72.85.245.162 -all >Go Daddy said, Verizon should create a Reverse DNS Record; and we are waiting for them to create the record and implement the change on Monday Morning. There's already a correct PTR record for that IP address. >Can somebody tell me that the Reverse DNS Record is the right solution, and how come things have changed all of a sudden. Everything has been working OK for a while and suddenly outgoing mails are not perfect. Thanks for replies and suggestions. Are you thinking that the only reasons why an e-mail might be categorized as spam is that DNS records are incorrect? Far from it. Message content is what defines spam. Everything else is useful in determining the reputation of the sender, which should be used in the overall assessment of the message's "spamminess". So, perhaps it's the message contents that are the problem? --- Rich Matheisen MCSE+I, Exchange MVP --- Rich Matheisen MCSE+I, Exchange MVP

Hi, As per Mr. Rich Matheisen check your MX records or even you dont have configured your MX records or you dont have than try to use smart host for delivery of your emails. Hope this will help you. Regards. Shafaquat Ali.M.C.I.T.P Exchange 2007/2010, M.C.I.T.P Windows Server 2008, M.C.T.S OCS Server 2007 R2, Phone: +923008210320

I have to reinterate Rich's feedback. Make sure that you have a good SPF record created. For some receiving systems, the PTR record is very important. If the IP address from which you receive mail does not have a PTR record, then they may reject your e-mail. If the messages are only rejected part of the time, this is probably because other factors (besides a missing PTR or SPF record) are contributing to the rejecting. The missing SPF record might put much of your mail over the rejection threshold. Microsoft has a great tool for helping you analyze some of the factors that would cause mail to be rejected. Visit the Exchange Connectivity Analyzer: https://www.testexchangeconnectivity.com/Default.aspx Perform the Outbound SMTP E-mail test.Jim McBee - Blog - http://mostlyexchange.blogspot.com

Euroka Moment - Found the reason Still don't know what that occosional DXDOMAIN error was from postmaster.aol.com Reverse DNS Check thingy....(which I don't get anymore) but, when I was testing the outgoing messages, I was typing in the Subject/Message things like "aaaaa", "test", "testing", "kjljlkj" stuff quickly. Looks like both Hotmail and Yahoo are filtering on the content and if the message body or subject looks gibberish, they send them to Junk Mail folder. I always used to test stuff like this and it was consistent in the past [not going to junk] ... this must be a new filter that they implemented, I guess. Travis McGee

On Fri, 30 Jul 2010 20:12:37 +0000, Travis McGee wrote: >Euroka Moment - Found the reason > >Still don't know what that occosional DXDOMAIN error was from postmaster.aol.com Reverse DNS Check thingy....(which I don't get anymore) > >but, when I was testing the outgoing messages, I was typing in the Subject/Message things like "aaaaa", "test", "testing", "kjljlkj" stuff quickly. Looks like both Hotmail and Yahoo are filtering on the content and if the message body or subject looks gibberish, they send them to Junk Mail folder. That's what I suggested on the 24th in the last paragraph of my answer to your post. >I always used to test stuff like this and it was consistent in the past [not going to junk] ... this must be a new filter that they implemented, I guess. Statistical filters are pretty effective at picking up message contents like that. Use only a few words in the message and you may find that they're "guilty" words. Add more text and you'll add more "innocent" words to the message. When there are more innocent words (with scores that rank them as very likely to be unused in most spam) in the message the probability of the message being spam is decreased. This is, of course, a very simplified explanation of how, say, a Bayesian filter works. --- Rich Matheisen MCSE+I, Exchange MVP --- Rich Matheisen MCSE+I, Exchange MVP