reply to Gene's reply-to address

[Paul Howarth]

Gene Heskett wrote:
> And verizon strikes again.  My apologies Alexander.  But I am 
> subscribed to this list and the list comes in fine.  They (verizon) 
> are not, IIRC, properly honoring a reverse lookup, and those MTA's 
> that require that, per the rfc, will hang it up.   Or at least thats 
> what I've been told.
> 
> I've bitched, lots of people have bitched, but verizon seems adamant 
> in their refusal to conform to the rfc's.  They only closed their 
> open relay status last fall after over a million of us were defined 
> on half the friggin planets RBL lists.  They screwed with it for 
> several months before that faded away, and now they've been seducing 
> the canine again, no service for about 10 hours total in the past 7 
> days, with no explanations offered when you call.

Do you have a reference for this (reverse lookups) anywhere? I can see 
two different problems with Verizon's mail servers at present, but they 
don't include reverse lookups:

1. For outgoing mail, they have stopped supporting AUTH LOGIN (RFC 
2554). Given that AUTH LOGIN sends credentials in plain text (well, 
base64 encoded) over the network, there is at least *some* justification 
for this.

2. For incoming mail, they're blocking much of Europe by IP address. The 
google URL I posted earlier has meny references to this, and it's much 
less defensible. They're also using a home-brewed sender verification 
scheme that can appear at times to be indistinguishable from a 
dictionary attack.

> I'd get somebody else for an ISP, but in this little piece of the 
> planet, they are the *only* game in town if you don't want to go back 
> to dialup at $30 more a month.  Cable can supply in the surrounding 
> areas, at about 2x the $$ a month but not here.  I tossed them and 
> got a Dish, $20 a month cheaper.  But that doesn't get me internet 
> access either.

I'm quite happy with my own ISP and the services they provide, and if it 
wasn't for the fact that I'm such a geek, I'd be using their mail, DNS, 
web etc. services. However, I choose not to; I run my own servers for 
these services for my domain, and thus do not suffer from any cock-ups 
other than my own - I use my ISP for connectivity only. I guess that 
would be an option for you too?

Paul.