email

Cannot Receive Email from Sender – DENIED_RDNS_MISSING

The sender mail server has no reverse DNS entry. You can verify the reverse DNS setting here: Check rDNS

The reverse DNS of your IP Address is typical of a dynamic/residential IP Address. Please have it updated to something unique like mail.example.com, or use the mail servers your ISP provides for residential customer traffic.

rDNS must be in the form of a fully-qualified domain name. rDNS containing in-addr.arpa are not acceptable, as these are merely placeholders for a valid PTR record. rDNS consisting of IP addresses are also not acceptable, as they do not correctly establish the relationship between domain and IP address.

rDNS that may be similar to dynamic IP space (containing pool, dhcp, dyn, etc.) may be treated as suspect, and should therefore should be changed to reflect a fully-qualified domain name with standard reverse DNS.

Problems forwarding to Gmail / AOL / Other email address

Re: Forwarded emails not arriving, no bounce message

Many free email services such as Gmail, AOL, Hotmail (and ISPs) are constantly tightening up their spam systems and are being increasingly particular about which emails they allow in to their system.

If you find that forwarding email to one of these addresses is simply ‘disappearing’, ie. no bounce message then you can be safe in assuming that your email alias (address) is temporarily blocked from the target mail system.

Why does this happen?

Let’s assume you are doing all the right things. ie Your SPF record is correctly set, your MX records are correct.

When forwarding emails from your parked domain name, you are also forwarding SPAM to your destination email address. If you send enough SPAM messages then you will block your own alias. Often the block is only in place for a limited time, for example 24 hours. Then it will start working again and once you have forwarded enough SPAM the block is re-applied. Does this sound like the problem you are experiencing?

What can you do?

  • If you are receiving SPAM to your forwarding alias then try a new alias. This will be a suitable solution until you again start receiving SPAM to this new alias.
  • Try to keep your alias names as unexposed as possible to reduce the SPAM sent to them.
  • Create a Mailbox for your alias. The Mailbox will receive 100% of emails sent to it.
  • Do not use forwarding aliases for important or mission critical applications, use a Mailbox.
If you require any  further assistance or advice do not hesitate to contact support.
External resources:

Plesk: AtMail search does not work

AtMailRe: Search doesn’t work in AtMail, AtMail search returns no results

AtMail is a great webmail application that has a high level of functionality, an attractive looking interface and many useful integrated features.

One of these feature includes a bug that causes the “Search” function to return no results for any search!

To fix it, you need SSH Root access to your dedicated server console. If you want to get down and dirty, edit the following two lines:

Change Line 364: $before = "$BeforeDay-$BeforeMonth-$BeforeYear";
Change Line 369: $after = "$AfterDay-$AfterMonth-$AfterYear";

Alternatively, run the following two SED commands and the lines containing the bugs will be automatically fixed.

# sed 's/20$BeforeYear/$BeforeYear/g' /var/www/atmail/search.php > /var/www/atmail/search.php.new
# sed 's/20$AfterYear/$AfterYear/g' /var/www/atmail/search.php.new > /var/www/atmail/search.php
# rm -f /var/www/atmail/search.php.new

Happy searching!

Problems forwarding to AOL email addresses

AOL is constantly tightening their network to reduce spam through the network and to their users. Unfortunately this can cause problems for anyone using email forwarding addresses to their AOL accounts.

To increase your change of being able to send through the AOL network please check the following:

  1. Ensure that your forwarding email addresses are added to your AOL Safe Senders List.
  2. Check that you have a valid SPF DNS record. This is a DNS entry looking something familiar to:
    “@ IN TXT v=spf1 a:microlite1.com ~all”
  3. Ensure that your mail server IP has a reverse DNS pointer set. AOL will not allow connections from IPs that do not contain a reverse pointer. You can test this by entering the IP address or domain name here: Check Reverse DNS Pointer
  4. If you forward email to AOL from email aliases then be aware that any spam you forward to your AOL address will be marked as originating from your forwarding address and not the original address. This may result in AOL blocking your domain name in the error of assuming that it is sending SPAM into the AOL network.
  5. If you receive SPAM in your AOL inbox that is forwarded from one of your own domain names DO NOT MARK IT AS SPAM. This will result in your own domain name being blocked on the AOL network. AOL will then not allow and connections from your domain name to the AOL network.

External resources:

It is EASY to block your own domain name from sending email through the AOL mail network. If you get “Deferred: Connection refused by yourdomain.com” with your domain name in the message, you are blocked.

If you suspect that you have blocked your own domain name through the AOL network then simply await for the block to expire or contact AOL and attempt an early unblock of your domain name through the AOL support network.

My email header shows random domains in the hostname section

Re: Why does my email appear to come from domains unrelated to my account?

This is because you are using a shared hosting account. This means that your account is on a web server that also has other hosting accounts. This is normal and how shared hosting works. It means you do not have the expense of leasing your own dedicated IP address which we provide with Pro Hosting accounts.

Because the IP address is shared between all shared hosting accounts, any application that attempts to “reverse” the IP address to a hostname will erraneously pick up any domain name that is using that particular IP address because the IP address is not allocated to any single domain but to the server and all domains on that server.

If you use VPS hosting, Dedicated server hosting or Pro hosting you will not have this issue as the IP address that your site uses will be unique to your site and not shared with any other sites.