HostGator Mail Gateway!

[GatorPatrick]

HostGator is proud to announce the launching of our new mail gateways! With the advent of our new gateways we condensing all of our mail into a specific set of servers which will greatly increase our control over ingoing and outgoing messages. These servers will allow us to apply better spam filtering services and serve to greatly reduce blacklisting of our shared servers by the various RBL's.

Thanks to some great and innovative software design derived by our CTO Dave C. along with a few other of our upper tier admins we have created a system which will not only increase speed but also decrease issues across the board with everything from delays to mails ending up in spam folders.

We ask that any users using the default cpanel "mailbox" please create a proper mailbox through the Add/Remove/Manage accounts feature in the Mail subsection in cpanel. We have had some issues concerning boxtrapper + the default cpanel "mailbox".

For instance, if I log into cpanel at http://hostgator.com/cpanel with the username patrick and I usually check my e-mail by just clicking the "webmail" icon in cpanel I would need to change.

I should be logging into http://mydomain.com/webmail with the full e-mail address and password.

As we roll this system out we ask that you please keep an eye on your e-mail and let us know if you see any gateway related errors popping up. You can tell if they are from our gateway because the word "gateway" will appear somewhere in the headers. If you do believe you have found issues with your e-mail relating to the gateway please e-mail us at support@hostgator.com or submit a ticket using our support gateway: http://support.hostgator.com

Thank you for choosing Hostgator!

[YukonMaster]

Good stuff

[Sam]

Cool

[eGlide]

Ah, so this explains why this morning we are flooded with spam that used to be blocked by the Spam Assassin settings on our account.

I no longer see the X-Spam headers in messages so I am going assume that HostGator has now taken over deciding what is spam and what is not. Have they disabled or ignore the Spam Assassin settings in our shared account?

How long will it be for the new gateways and spam filters to learn to block that garbage?

I have a very low tolerance for the non-edible variety of spam.

[gregsass]

My SpamAssassin is working today the same as it has been. Although, since June, when I was averaging around 44 spams per day, I'm now up to around 113. These are not significant numbers until you compare this to the fact this domain normally receives on average about 50-60 emails a day. SpamAssassin catches most of these, but there are always a few that slip through that need some adjustments to the config file to catch future ones. This is based on some basic, manually collected numbers, that I pull into a spreadsheet.

[gregsass]

Sometime within the last 24 hours, I am now seeing what eGlide is saying. The way I have my account set up, all mail marked as spam is forward to another account. In that account, messages are now coming through with the subject line altered (which I really don't like) but the SpamAssassin information as I have it configured, is coming through in the X-Spam-Report.

I too, have a low tolerance for spam, like eGlide. And I appreciated all that HostGator is doing to fight it. However, we need more information about what we can do to configure the spam filtering from a shared domain perspective and/or per mailbox.

[gregsass]

I'm not sure what is happening, but last night, between 11:16 and 11:19 PM CT, spam email received by my account started showing up the way it had been - the way I have SpamAssassin configured. The subject lines are no longer modified. The new message headers are gone. I'm assuming HostGator made some more changes. It would be nice to know what happened.

[rfay]

I just sent out some test emails from my shared/reseller accounts (on corvette) and looked at the headers at the other end. It appears that the outgoing server is different for each message. I'm sure this is done to avoid blacklisting.

Doesn't this completely break the SPF records that I have set up? No longer is the mail being sent out through a host that I have specified in my SPF.

Please let me know how this is supposed to work...

[GatorBrent]

The mail gateway changes wouldn't have anything to do with the spam. The problem you saw was that we upgraded spamasassin to cpanel's latest version which resulted in a huge mess....

1. Anyone that went over their mail quotas and had spam assasin on caused the servers load to go hawire because it kept checking , checking, and checking the same over quota message.

2. The other problem was that the way cpanel now does it nobody can overwrite their custom message. It checks all spam messages for everyone and rewrites the subject to it's own. Since most people didn't rewrite and the new version has all rewriting this caused another huge load issue on all the boxes.

We ended up downgrading till these issues can be worked out with cpanel. Unfortunately because of the upgrade it deleted all custom messages so you will need to go in and add that back in.

So again anything inbound wouldn't be related to the mail gateway this only affects outbound mail.


I'm asking dave to update you on the spf issue as I don't fully understand that myself. Something about we can have a max of 10 and were at nine now.

[GatorDaveC]

Originally Posted by rfay

I just sent out some test emails from my shared/reseller accounts (on corvette) and looked at the headers at the other end. It appears that the outgoing server is different for each message. I'm sure this is done to avoid blacklisting.

Doesn't this completely break the SPF records that I have set up? No longer is the mail being sent out through a host that I have specified in my SPF.

Please let me know how this is supposed to work...

No this shouldn't break SPF. We have a list of the IPs we allow for the mail to be sent from.

Originally we were using A records for SPF which was using almost all of the allowed DNS queries allowed.

I have recently changed the SPF records to use /16's which gives us 7 IP4 entries, and passes without a problem.

By using IP4, you should be able to use your own custom SPF records without hitting the DNS query limit.

If you wish to test your SPF records, there are many online tools to check for valid record, dnsstuff.com is just one of the few places that have an SPF tool.

The current SPF on websitewelcome.com is "v=spf1 a mx ip4:64.5.0.0/16 ip4:67.18.0.0/16 ip4:69.41.0.0/16 ip4:69.56.0.0/16 ip4:69.93.0.0/16 ip4:70.85.0.0/16 ip4:74.52.0.0/16".

[rfay]

This SPF approach is not what was previously recommended, so yes, it does break all of our existing SPF records. Previously, it was recommended to set up a default SPF template in WHM (based on the domain only) and use that. Perhaps you could recommend a correct setting for an SPF for a domain on a given reseller host. For example, "test.com" on corvette. It looks to me like there's a whole tutorial coming, perhaps with different information for each host?

[MikeC]

Originally Posted by GatorDaveC

....
Originally we were using A records for SPF which was using almost all of the allowed DNS queries allowed.

I have recently changed the SPF records to use /16's which gives us 7 IP4 entries, and passes without a problem.
....

for making that change, it should now be viable for us to use an 'include:websitewelcome.com' in our custom SPF records to get them back working again.

[River]

so for example php mails sent by for example the forum system phpbb also now goes through the gateways?

I had some problems with hotmail for my forums because if the phpbb forum system sent mail to someone that registred on my forums using hotmail, Hotmail would regard the the automatic registration verification mail sent by phpbb forum as spam.. it would not even put it in the hotmail spam folder, it never got through at all..

maybe these problems will now go away?

[jerome]

For several of my domains I had cleared the default SPF record since they primarily used Google Apps for email, but also send some email directly from their web sites. An empty SPF seemed a better way to go than a wrong one, and I haven't yet had the time to figure out what the custom SPF record should be.

But with this change Hostgator came along gave me SPF records where I had cleared them. Since they use "-all" I am now getting SPF "hard" fails on email messages sent.

I'm sure others are having the same problem, they just don't know it yet.

Seems to me a more neutral option than "-all" should have been used.
And where DNS records were no longer set to defaults (SFP and/or MX), Hostgator should have given users email notification of this change.

[rfay]

My SPF records were not updated, either on gator269 or on corvette. They remain the same as they were before the rollout.

Dave - Can you please give us a (new) official "How SPF records should be configured at Hostgator" ?

Thanks,
-Randy

[MikeC]

Originally Posted by jerome

.... Hostgator came along gave me SPF records where I had cleared them. Since they use "-all" I am now getting SPF "hard" fails on email messages sent.

Ewwww, just noticed like you pointed out, that my domains that did not have an SPF record now have ones. This was a VERY BAD MOVE by HG. I didn't have SPF records on those domains for a reason and HG should not have messed with them in any way, with or without notice.

Well, I'm off to clear those bad SPF records.....

[Dwight]

Originally Posted by MikeC

Ewwww, just noticed like you pointed out, that my domains that did not have an SPF record now have ones. This was a VERY BAD MOVE by HG. I didn't have SPF records on those domains for a reason and HG should not have messed with them in any way, with or without notice.

Well, I'm off to clear those bad SPF records.....

How do you know if you have a SPF record, and if you do, how do you remove it? I have the same set up as you and I don't want my gmail bouncing.

[slapshotw]

Go to dnsstuff.com tools, and do a DNS Lookup of type: txt or type: spf on your domain.

[MikeC]

Originally Posted by Dwight

.... and if you do, how do you remove it?

Go to WHM, edit the DNS zone records for those domains and clear out the line that looks like this:

yourdomain.com. 14400 IN TXT "v=spf1 a mx include:websitewelcome.com -all"

Or contact HG support and ask them to remove the SPF record from your domain(s).

OK, I just moved my client's site over this weekend and am now finding this about the email. SPF's aren't my strong suit so I'm going to ask.

This is what I get when looking up the info for my client's domain:

theirdomainname.com 1TXTv=spf1 a mx include:websitewelcome.com -all14400s

All their email accounts are forwarders only as the officers prefer this over keeping up with an extra email account. My question is will this affect their ability to receive email? I'm not worried about their sending any as it would be done through their own respective accounts like Yahoo, Charter, etc.

Oh and by the way, DNSStuff.com is asking for membership to use ANY of their tools now. I found this info off WHT's forums and going to http://network-tools.com/ which worked just as well.

[MikeC]

Originally Posted by Merlinslair

My question is will this affect their ability to receive email?

No, it should not. SPF is about controlling what servers can send email 'from' a given domain.

OK, thanks much for the information.

[River]

if you're on shared hosting account, can you do anything about spf records then? or do I have to with this new system?

apparently hotmail regards mails sent from my phpbb system as spam, and the explanation was something about spf...

maybe this gateway changed it?

[GatorDaveC]

My SPF records were not updated, either on gator269 or on corvette. They remain the same as they were before the rollout.

Dave - Can you please give us a (new) official "How SPF records should be configured at Hostgator" ?

It looks like your SPF record already exists your reseller account, unless you have already updated it.
MikeC provided a good howto for changing your DNS Zones in WHM.

if you're on shared hosting account, can you do anything about spf records then? or do I have to with this new system?

apparently hotmail regards mails sent from my phpbb system as spam, and the explanation was something about spf...

maybe this gateway changed it?

You will have to get you zone modified by support if you are a Shared client. As for PHPBB, were you sending out e-mail as the servers hostname, or your domain name? PM me the Headers so I can take a look. Please try resending a PHPBB e-mail as well, to see if its still going in the spam box.

[rfay]

I'm not seeing *less* mail returned for blacklisting, I'm seeing about the same level.

But today for the first time I received a bounce "Remote host said: 550 5.0.0 <iglesias@uci.edu>... We do not accept mail from
your network (websitewelcome.com) due to excessive spam. Call (949) 824-2222
for more info.
Giving up on 128.200.1.227."

(Yes, I have opened a ticket on this)

So it looks like we're now seeing the entire mail system blacklisted....

I have moved my personal mail to Google Apps this week - it was easy, and the spam filtering is good. And I have not gotten a single one of these bounces off of my personal mail, and no complaints of undelivered mail.

-Randy