Reverse DNS. A fun little attempt to stem the ever growing tide of spam.

Downside, it'll block you too, if you don't plan for it.

Check your bounceback messages, if you see a notice about "lookup", "reverse DNS", "Reverse lookup", "RDNS" or anything else involving reverse, lookup, or dns, (or in the case of AOL and comcast, a URL that explains that you don't have a reverse DNS entry) then you probably need to add a reverse DNS entry .

How do you do that?
Send us the IP and mailserver that you are sending from, and we can add it into DNS. After about 30 minutes, you should be able to send without getting those pesky bounceback messages.

[andphe]

Should I send a ticket for each domain that I admin? there is not way that I can make this changes via WHM myself?

[DanL@Spry]

andphe -

Reverse DNS entry edits are not available through any control panel applications, however, we will gladly assist you with multiple reverse DNS entries in a single ticket.

Please contact Spry support at your next convenience.

[jjjm]

Was just reading this and wondered, can reverse DNS stop spoofing? We've gotten messages saying our domain name has been blacklisted because someone has used it to send out spam. Or, do you know any way to put a stop to this?

[DanL@Spry]

Note: From the time this thread was originally created, the My.Spry.com Control Center has been updated to support reverse DNS configuration.

You might consider implementing the Sender Policy Framework to ensure that your e-mail server and domain are not erroneously identified as spam origins, however, you would also want to maintain a close watch on e-mail sent from your e-mail server to confirm that there are not any exploitable mailer scripts which spammers' bots may be taking advantage of.

[jjjm]

Thanks, that's very informative and sounds like just the thing we need. His current isp is not allowing the use of its smtp anyway, so I'm thinking what we need to do is shut down the use of his domain name for email use totally. I'd thought there should be a way to use his own smtp, but I don't think I'm clever enough to figure out a way so he does not have to use web-based mail for sending. And, in any case it's been spoofed enough that it's been blacklisted so he cannot ascertain whether the mail he DOES send makes it to its destination.

Oh, I should probably also mention that he uses an email forwarding service so no mail is going or coming directly, anyway. As for keeping a "close watch on email sent from your email server" -- is there an automatic log or something? Pardon my ignorance, but you KNOW you are dealing with vps rookies sometimes, don't you? ;-)

[DanL@Spry]

Originally Posted by jjjm

As for keeping a "close watch on email sent from your email server" -- is there an automatic log or something?

The log file's name will vary depending upon the Mail Transfer Agent (MTA) installed and log files will appear in /var/log/ by default.

Originally Posted by jjjm

Pardon my ignorance, but you KNOW you are dealing with vps rookies sometimes, don't you?

There's nothing wrong with not knowing if you're prepared to learn