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by Crosseye_Jack 2213 days ago
As someone who has set up many SMTP servers even on very new domain names. Yhe only issue I've actually come across is outlook.com who happily will whitelist if you poke them via their support once you you have dkim and spf set up.

EDIT: if you are working from IPs that may not be clean (and in an IPv4 world thats prob true) many DNSBLs will work with you to remove your ip's from their lists if you are actually nice and polite with them. Just check your IP's before your set up your network so they have a heads up that someone will be on the other end of any complaints.

That has always works for me.

3 comments

In my experience, ATT is the worst. They've been blocking me for well over a decade. They're the only provider who has ignored every contact attempt I've made.

I don't care, from my perspective they're irrelevant. The last person I communicated who used their MX died recently, and otherwise ATT can bite me. But in a fit of annoyance several years ago I did configure my servers to deliver a heartfelt custom 550 response to ATT MXes.

IIRC AT&T is handled by Yahoo so pester them at https://io.help.yahoo.com/contact/index?page=contactform&loc...

EDIT: https://www.att.com/esupport/postmaster/digital-signature/ checked the AT&T support about delievery. Seems like they do use Yahoo these days.

Yahoo made a deal with them to service the mail services SBC bought/built that were rolled up into att.net. That is one of several mail services associated with them, and not the one I'm talking about.

I'm talking about the ones managed by Synacor, formerly managed by an ATT spinoff with a bland name I can't remember. I still have my notebook logging my (lack of) progress, which happened over several years and involved a bunch of entities - partners and internal spinoffs.

Trust me, I know how to google "att email".

I wasn't saying you didn't know any googlefu. just when you said ATT my head went to "oh you are dealing with their consumers... should thought I would C+P the link thats helped me in the past.

EDIT: As a follow up. I used to have contacts with BlueYonder, Sky and BT All ISP's that used to manager their own email systems but outsourced them to gmail and yahoo so my peronsal contacts within those companies for email have died off. It wasn't a slight on you. just one geek to another trying to help.

I think that came off as a lot snippier than intended, apologies.

All I meant is that I spent entirely too much time researching the web of entities supporting the Death Star's SMTP needs through the last decade, who on Linkedin listing those companies might be attached to the production technical team, etc. At some point I started joking that I knew knew more about their corporate structure than anyone not suing them or working in their legal department.

outlook.com is indeed the worst. Got a pointer how to make this whitelist happen @outlook? Got SPF and DKIM setup since I started my personal mailserver, but still piggybacking of my old University's open relay (on campus) to get my mail to land in outlook inboxes...
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/supportrequestform/8ad56...

And if you get rejected with your first request, pester them with a follow up saying something like "Hey, I'm, a cloud customer. I don't control the whole IP range. I ask you to reconsider the initial rejection."

That's always worked for me with outlook. Takes a few days (which is why I say do it as soon as you know what your IP range is)

Be nice and polite (from what I understand real humans read that request) be honest with what you have done as of time of writing the requyest and what you are planning to do.

But be persistent with them and they will basically grant you a whitelist unless you start fucking up.

What about Gmail.