Note to Benchmark Email

You host your corporate domain on Google.

Feb 29 02:33:48 x postfix/smtp[1754322]: 906C87E505: to=<[email protected]>, relay=aspmx.l.google.com[142.251.12.27]:25, delay=2.2, delays=0.02/0.01/1.1/1.1, dsn=2.0.0, status=sent (250 2.0.0 OK  1709174028 q18-20020a635c12000000b005dc4eb22ed9si419918pgb.166 - gsmtp)

This typically results in mail from very infrequent senders (such as our support address) being spam-foldered or otherwise helpfully ignored.

If you wish to continue the conversation and eventually achieve a delisting, you must make sure you receive our responses. At least you had the decency to write to us from an address that appears to exist. We will not try to jump through any hoops to maintain communications with you.

Open Access Text is OMICS

$ host oatext.com.rhsbl.scientificspam.net
oatext.com.rhsbl.scientificspam.net has address 127.0.1.2
$ host -t txt oatext.com.rhsbl.scientificspam.net
oatext.com.rhsbl.scientificspam.net descriptive text "[OMICS] oatext.com is OMICS http://www.scientificspam.net/?p=437 [email protected] 20201125"

This has to do with Open Access Text Ltd, a UK company with company number 10976481, and their predecessor, the now-defunct Open Access Text Global Ltd, a UK company with company number 09001633, dissolved in November 2018.

This is in response to a website comment that was left earlier under one of our explanatory articles. The comment was briefly approved but upon second thoughts will be removed from public view.

July 2022 service outage

As of yesterday, July 6, 2022, we have a service outage. The master DNS server lost connectivity to the Internet, it took a long time to get it back, and meanwhile, the secondary DNS servers’ copies of the zones expired. The master DNS server is back online but the Internet service provider was kind enough to implement a firewalling that wasn’t asked for that prevents the secondaries from connecting to it on port 53, so the zone can’t be refreshed and has been discarded. We will report when the service is back online.

Note to KVC Hosting

We replied to your ticket about 28 hours ago. If your ticket system discards replies, that’s something we can’t help with. You have a reply, now go read it.

Apr 11 19:30:09 x postfix/smtp[22232]: CC4D713E055: to=<[email protected]>, relay=kvchosting.net[38.123.253.150]:25, delay=45, delays=0.07/0.02/20/24, dsn=2.0.0, status=sent (250 OK id=1ndzji-0002fv-Sq)

How to win friends and influence people

Somebody wrote in asking about a single IP listing that is a part of a /24. Our reply is that it’s an escalation listing against a customer of $PROVIDER that is somebody else but the people writing in, and would they please send $PROVIDER to talk to us directly. The response is worth quoting in its entirety. Needless to say, responses like this get no traction with us. Nobody owes this person anything as a result of their choices, and if they’d like to operate a blocklist with their own principles, they can always start a new one. There’s room for more.

$PROVIDER certainly knows about it. Pushing anyone to change its provider the way $OTHER_BLOCKLIST is doing is not the right way forward. There are many reasons we can’t change provider. For instance because other provider is listed in other similar lists (like $OTHER_BLOCKLIST). And there are more other technical and business and even legal reasons.

So why do you list our IP? $OTHER_BLOCKLIST motivation is clear. They want money to whitelist hostages. And because they list whole AS they get more customers. But I don’t understand your motivation.

I don’t know if you noticed but many individuals and companies started blocking $OTHER_BLOCKLIST as a protest. And I noticed some chats about collective lawsuit against $OTHER_BLOCKLIST requiring compensation for business detriment.

– anonymous correspondent to Scientific Spam

Knock yourself out, folks.

Communications is hard

From: Mail Delivery System <[email protected]>
<x@x>: host mx1.domain.example[127.5.6.7] said: 550
    5.1.1 <x@x>: Recipient address rejected: User unknown
    in virtual mailbox table (in reply to RCPT TO command)

If you do write to us, please at least bother doing it from an address that can be replied to. It’s very difficult to get the information you request to you otherwise.
The response that could not be delivered today is that your IP is included in a /24 listing that your Email Service Provider has allowed to go unattended for more than two years. Please talk to them about it.

Happy Birthday, Scientific Spam

Today marks the seventh anniversary of this project.
The decline in queries continues. In 2020, the IP address blocklist saw 1.459 billion queries, which is just short of four million a day, down from 1.7B the year before (15% less). The drop was even more marked for the domain name list, going from 1.4B to 457M (1.25M per day). If the same trend continues, by the end of 2021 we might consider the experiment concluded.