more Wonky email

[marcusmarcusrc]

Like desireearmfeldt I have also experienced recent email wonkiness.

Including one email (from an MIT account, no less) that was bounced by spamscreen despite the fact that I disabled spam filtering last week.


Text of Bounce:

From: MAILER-DAEMON@MIT.EDU (Mail Delivery System)
Date: July 20, 2006 2:56:45 PM EDT
Subject: Undelivered Mail Returned to Sender

This is the Spam Firewall at spamscreen.mit.edu.

I'm sorry to inform you that the message below could not be delivered.
When delivery was attempted, the following error was returned.

<msarofim@alum.mit.edu>: host ALUM-1.mit.edu[18.7.7.79] said: 503 5.0.0 Need
MAIL command (in reply to DATA command)
Reporting-MTA: dns; spamscreen.mit.edu
Arrival-Date: Thu, 20 Jul 2006 14:56:44 -0400 (EDT)

Final-Recipient: rfc822; msarofim@alum.mit.edu
Action: failed
Status: 5.0.0
Diagnostic-Code: X-Spam-Firewall; host ALUM-1.mit.edu[18.7.7.79] said: 503
5.0.0 Need MAIL command (in reply to DATA command)



Email Forwarding for Life Page:
Spam Filtering
Spam filtering is currently disabled. Email sent to "msarofim@alum.mit.edu" is not filtered for unsolicited email (spam).



So is this something different than usual spam filtering?

Comments

[firstfrost.livejournal.com]

So, alum.mit.edu has what seems to be called a "barracuda box" - a dedicated machine that runs Spamassassin, bought from a vendor, which does their spam filtering. It is this barracuda box which is having serious problems. The problems have been reported to the network group, though in an amusing turn of fate, reporting the problems took longer than it should because if you just forward the whole thing, the RT queue for the network group marks it as spam and doesn't open a case. Oops. So you have to send the complaint to a different group and have them refile it.

Anyway, all I know at the moment is that it's been reported and not yet solved.

[medyani.livejournal.com]

maybe you should get an account with a less techno-savvy place. ;)

[firstfrost.livejournal.com]

The problem with the barracuda box is (I believe) fixed now. If people see that same weird bounce (about needing MAIL before RCPT) again, we've been given license to page. :)