Dan said:
Hi,
My outgoing messages get tagged as spam by many spam filters because
of "Bogus HELO" headers.
I am using an ISP's SMTP server for sending mail; is there any way to
configure TCP/IP on my end (Windows XP Pro) to solve the problem?
Basically, I need my machine name to show up as a fully-resolved
name, not just the single-word name that I've assigned to it locally.
Thanks,
-dan
If you are using the same ISP for e-mail as you used to post this message
(Comcast), what about Comcast's add of the Received header is considered
bogus? When I send a message using Comcast's SMTP server, the first
Received header (the one it added) look like:
Received: from <myHostname>
(c-<myIPaddrs>.<state>.client2.attbi.com[<myIPaddrs>])
by comcast.net (sccrmhc11) with SMTP
id <someAlphanumericString>
(Authid: <myAccountName>);
Wed, 6 Oct 2004 17:13:32 +0000
I'm one of those AT&T customers that got forcibly migrated to Comcast when
Comcast bought out the broadband services of AT&T. That's why attbi.com
is still listed for hosts in the route (I keep asking they change this but
they are lazy). The <myHostname> is whatever the e-mail client claimed it
was in the HELO command to the SMTP server. I can't think of why spam
filters would trigger on the hostname of the sending client. According to
RFC 2821 for the HELO or EHLO commands:
"The argument field contains the fully-qualified domain name of the SMTP
client if one is available. In situations in which the SMTP client system
does not have a meaningful domain name (e.g., when its address is
dynamically allocated and no reverse mapping record is available), the
client SHOULD send an address literal (see section 4.1.3), optionally
followed by information that will help to identify the client system."
Well, since you are the customer getting a dynamically assigned IP address
from Comcast's DHCP server then you don't have a FQDN to report in the
HELO command. Might be different if you had a registered domain name and
were assigned a static IP address from your ISP. Notice that the RFC says
an address literal (dotted decimal) *SHOULD* be used. That doesn't make
it a requirement and most times an alphnumeric string is used which is the
local hostname (probably because the sender doesn't want to divulge their
internal IP addressing scheme or reveal their internal IP addresses). The
stuff inside the parenthesis (i.e., "(ipname [ipaddrs])") at the end of
the "from" section of the Received header are added by the receiving SMTP
server to identify who really connected to it (and I don't think there
really is a standard that dictates the format of this SMTP server added
sender information).
Maybe changing your hostname would help. The spam filter shouldn't
trigger on it but maybe it does, so using a hostname of "SPAM" would be a
bad idea.
--
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