Subject: AT&T Blocking Everyone
In this example I (Randy Trahan) am the customer. Yes, this was my introduction to AT&T Tech Support.
| Customer | My brother, My mother, my wife and
God knows who else can no longer send e-mail to my AT&T address. If you
block everyone my AT&T account will be useless! They all get 550 blocked
for abuse messages. My brother sends me mail from Fluor-Daniels corporation (probably the world’s largest Engineering/Construction company). Their mail server IP address is 141.197.14.220. My wife uses NetIdentity.com. This is a very large e-mail provider. Their IP address is 64.97.157.153. The owner of this server is listed as Tucows.com, so Tucows must own NetIdentity. My mother uses RoadRunner.com in Austin Texas. Her IP address is 24.93.47.44 None of my family can send me e-mail. What is going on?????? |
| Tech Support | Individual user assigned IP addresses are not useful to us. They do not send the mail to us - they hit send and their messages are sent to their provider's email server which processes the message and sends it out. It is the IP address of the mail server that we need. You'd see that IP address on a bounce message. If your sender's are receiving bounce messages please try to obtain and post here. Once we have the right info we can be of better assistance to you. |
| Customer | I gave you the IP addresses of the
MAIL SERVERS that my brother, mother and wife’s mail providers are
using. I got these IP addresses DIRECTLY FROM BOUNCED MAIL MESSAGES they
got back from AT&T. If you go to http://www.arin.net/whois/ you can check these IP addresses out and see who owns them. Again three e-mail servers that AT&T is currently refusing mail from have the following IP addresses: 141.197.14.220 (Fluor-Daniels Corporation, LA, California) 24.93.47.44 (Road Runner, Austin, Texas) 64.97.157.153 (NetIdentity.com, or TUCOWS, Toronto, Ontario, Canada) |
| Tech Support | Please, we need to SEE the actual bounce message. Kindly post them and we'll be happy to assist you. |
| Customer | What information are you looking for
other than the IP addresses of the mail servers I can no longer receive
mail from? If I could get e-mail from my mother, brother or wife it
would be easy to have them e-mail messages to me so I could then give
them to you. I am in San Francisco. My mother is in Austin. My brother is in Kuwait. My wife is in the next room, so I will be able to get one of her bounced messages. But seriously, what more information do you need other than the IP addresses of their mail servers? |
| My Note: | This is when it dawned on me that they didn't need the IP addresses, they needed to see the IP addresses presented in a certain specific way. The addresses had to be surrounded by specific text which had magical powers to make addresses visible to Tech Support. Suddenly the novice was enlightened. |
That was not the end of the thread, but to sum it up, I got a bounced message from my wife and sent it to them. I modified the message to use the IP address of my mother's Road Runner server, and I then sent that to them. I modified the message for my brothers server and sent it a third time. They were just as happy as pigs in s * * t, but I don't know if they ever unblocked those servers. I don't use AT&T for e-mail anymore.