Sent emails bounced with 'Nemesis' problem

[#1]

Over the last 24 hours I have had emails to two contacts bounced multiple times. They are contacts I have been emailing successfully & regularly for a number of years. Emails to other contacts seem to be delivered OK.

The initial bounced email had PDF & XL attachments but since then even a simple text 'testing' email is bounced.

I am using a personalised email address registered through my web host (like john@myname.org.uk) but I am using relay.plus.net as my outgoing mail server. I have been using this setup for about 4 years and it has mainly worked OK until now.

Any insight or suggestions please. I am puzzled as to what is happening and why only on two unconnected emails. I though maybe it would fix itself but it's been happening for over 24 hours now.

The emails are returned with a message like this: (I've removed the actual names)

Reporting-MTA: dns; avasout02 [212.159.14.17]
Received-From-MTA: dns; Jonxxx [99.999.99.99]
Arrival-Date: Sat, 10 Feb 2018 11:42:41 +0000

Final-recipient: rfc822; xxxxxx@iname.com
Diagnostic-Code: smtp; 554-mail.com (mxgmxus007) Nemesis ESMTP Service not available

Last-attempt-Date: Sat, 10 Feb 2018 11:42:41 +0000

The other email  is xxx@gmx.co.uk

[#2]

I have the identical problem.  It appears to be because the remote server i.e. at the email recipent's ISP, is considering all emails from plusnet as spam.  This could be due to abnormally high traffic levels at plusnet, or an error in the DNS code.  The latter seems unlikely since we can send to some recipients.

It would be good to have some response from customer support, but i am not hopeful !

[#3]

Hi Folks

Yes I'm getting this too, specifically with a mail.com contact.  On Monday the email went after 3 resends but not today.

I contacted mail.com, received an automated reply asking me to send the error details, which I did and relay.plus.net then rejected me for sending spam!!!.

Someone from plusnet will read this and reply - they've always been good in the past.

Andy

[#4]

Just to add I'm am also having trouble sending to GMX, on Monday emails went at the second attempt but since then all have bounced. My ip address is a static one issued by Plusnet.

Steve

[#5]

Just to update, as the original poster,  ... The problem emails eventually started going through after about 48 hours. Still no idea why they stopped or why they restarted! The problem has not recurred to date

[#6]

Unfortunately still not working for me, I've done some checking and apparently my ip in the 80.229.x.x range is on the Spamhaus Zen PBL list, as I only use normal email software and don't run a mailserver I take it Plusnet need to put in the request to have it removed from the list and not me.

Steve

[#7]

My 80.229.xxx.xxx IP has been on that list for many months now. I did ask if it could be remover but was advised that it shouldn't cause any issues unless I start to run a mail server.

[#8]

I'm running a mail server on a Synology NAS and it tells me it's on 91.x.x.x,which is not on the spamhaus. I guess that's good but it still no work!

[#9]

Forgot to add. To/from Gmail and my own domain working fine.

[#10]

I've contacted GMX I'll report back what they say.

Steve

[#11]

Reply from GMX just received:

Dear Steve,

Thank you for your message.

It seems that emails from this email server were rejected because the PTR Resource Record (PTR-RR) of the IP address does not follow our guidelines. Possible reasons for this can be:

- The PTR-RR states that the IP address was dynamically allocated.
- The PTR-RR is a generic standard entry of your provider. Please allocate an independent and fully qualified domain name (Fully Qualified Domain Name - FQDN) to your email server and enter the corresponding valid PTR-RR.
- Individual rejection of the PTR-RR for system protection reasons.

Please contact the administrator of this system who should then contact our Postmaster at: https://postmaster.gmx.com/en/contact

Best regards.

Your mail.com Support Team

Hope that means something to someone as it's completely over my head.

Steve

[#12]

@steve_arnold GMX refer to "this email server"; if you use a standard email client that isn't an email server so they shouldn't be referring to your IP. Your email client should be configured to send emails via relay.plus.net which *is* an email server and that server carries out authentication to validate you before passing the email to the GMX server.

From your earlier comments it seems sometimes GMX accept emails sent via relay.plus.net, sometimes they don't. Do you have the headers from a returned message that they rejected? Generally these are embedded in the body of the rejection message.

[#13]

Content of last bounce, emails redacted:

 This is an automatically generated Delivery Status Notification. 

Delivery to the following recipients failed permanently:

 * @xxxxxx@gmx.co.uk

Reason: A message that you sent to the following recipient could not be delivered due to a permanent error. ** The remote server ?? responded with: ** xxxxxx@gmx.co.uk ??:?? This message was created automatically by mail delivery software on the server .



Reporting-MTA: dns; avasout04 [212.159.14.19]
Received-From-MTA: dns; [192.168.1.100] [80.229.xxx.xxx]
Arrival-Date: Wed, 14 Feb 2018 19:16:58 +0000


Final-recipient: rfc822; xxxxxx@gmx.co.uk
Diagnostic-Code: smtp; 554-gmx.net (mxgmx017) Nemesis ESMTP Service not available

Last-attempt-Date: Wed, 14 Feb 2018 19:16:58 +0000




Received: from [192.168.1.100] ([80.229.xxx.xxx])
 by smtp with ESMTP
 id m2Y5eyBntlfqam2Y6elNyE; Wed, 14 Feb 2018 19:16:58 +0000
X-CM-Score: 0.00
X-CNFS-Analysis: v=2.3 cv=JdWSU3CV c=1 sm=1 tr=0
 a=PAEqQyJP2UmHTn95Mvzntw==:117 a=PAEqQyJP2UmHTn95Mvzntw==:17
 a=IkcTkHD0fZMA:10 a=6k3yiS8A-Q29w6Ng7soA:9 a=QEXdDO2ut3YA:10
To: xxxxx <xxxxxxxx@gmx.co.uk>
From: xxxxx <xxxx@xxxxxx.plus.com>
Subject: another test
Message-ID: <8bd6bc09-1909-d4ff-3569-648d544c76f1@xxxxxx.plus.com>
Date: Wed, 14 Feb 2018 19:16:58 +0000
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; rv:52.0) Gecko/20100101
 Thunderbird/52.6.0
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8; format=flowed
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Content-Language: en-GB
X-CMAE-Envelope: MS4wfM5H534LFg3tDhU/XY1fpKW6vaT9Q9aCU0Tj0547NUOFFFRI0tJYfMY0Y6iXbQbWWygDCaseA2qZTuBKD2twgbe0cYfiUrZQZHS/qNXIxB4S9uTTBoc0
 jUCMWksn3OjaktAjnXWhZFg6O2sIoUhjZAYUK+EgjwhwCW9MGvK24hbtLjJx5ByHK+YQLJoE3Zxwng==

[#14]

@steve_arnold Thanks, in context it's a bit easier to work out where the messages originate but some knowledge of how the process works helps.

Because the GMX server refuses to accept the messages the Plusnet MTA, avasout04.plus.net, trying to deliver it to them can only return it to you. The message came from you so that is what avasout04 reports as 'received-from'.

The message would be offered to GMX by avasout04, which should have identified itself to them as avasout04.plus.net with the IP 212.159.14.19. If we look that up using its URL and in reverse via its IP we get

C:\>nslookup avasout04.plus.net
Server:  dsldevice.lan
Address:  fe80::9e97:26ff:fe94:acb8

Non-authoritative answer:
Name:    avasout04.plus.net
Address:  212.159.14.19


C:\>nslookup 212.159.14.19
Server:  dsldevice.lan
Address:  fe80::9e97:26ff:fe94:acb8

Name:    avasout04.plus.net
Address:  212.159.14.

Both forward and reverse look-ups match so I would expect GMX to accept the message. Not doing so suggests they do not trust avasout04.plus.net (or whichever avasoutnn is used) - have they confirmed that?

[#15]

Hi,

Post 11 was a copy and paste of the complete reply, I've now replied to them asking if they don't trust avasout04.plus.net, I've checked all the bounces I've received and they all refer to avasout04.plus.net.

Steve