Dissapearing Forwarders Print

My email forwards to (aol.com/comcast.net/hotmail.com/google.com/yahoo.com/att.net) keep disappearing!

In a shared hosting environment, we occasionally run across mail server issues where one domain is no longer accepting emails from the server, citing the server as a spam source. While this could still be true, in the case of sites on the server becoming exploited for spamming purposes, we are finding out that the majority of the issues are being caused by email forwards to these domains! This is because the domain which is refusing mail, most likely is scanning all incoming email for spam content, and then blocking any IPs which have a high spam to ham (legit mail) ratio, indicating a spammer. This is usually a good method for mail filtering, however, if the server is primarily forwarding a particular domain's spam to a remote host, they will incorrectly identify the server as a spammer, since the server is the last IP to handle the message, before delivering it to the remote domain.

Because of this, if we notice that the forwards are primarily causing the issue, we may be forced to remove forwards to that domain on an hourly basis to ensure that mail delivery for the entire domain does not get impacted. This is only done to ensure the majority of the server is able to send mail to that domain. We understand that this may be an inconvenience to some of the users, but the majority of the users would rather want to be able to communicate with users on other networks, rather then receive spotty mail delivery in favor of only having to check one inbox for all mail. We would recommend that you instead set your email client to POP your mail from your hosting account, as well as check your normal ISP's mail.

Please submit a ticket in our Abuse / Security department for further assistance