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Not sure why we have been rate limited?

Mugz
Hi, We noticed this message in mail queue after gmail was not reciving our email. It says the ip has been rate limited due to too many unsolicited email. There are only a few emails going out of the server, in fact there must have been less than 20 so far today. There are people trying to relay email through the server but failing due to the settings I put in place with CSF.
Please turn on SMTP Authentication in your mail client. mail-pa0-f54.google.com [209.85.220.54]:35302 is not permitted to relay through this server without authentication.
Some email message being sent in to our clients are being stopped:
From: E-Exams-GCSE-A_AS_Levels-OU-Others-owner@yahoogroups.com - The mail server could not deliver mail to client@clientsite.co.uk. The account or domain may not exist, they may be blacklisted, or missing the proper dns entries.
The relay section shows the top account as having 10 relays. I set up all of my clients WHM accounts and never set autoresponders. I'm at a loss as to figure out why I am being rate limited after testing 5 emails? Surely there is something more going on? Thanks

Comments

5 comments

Date Votes
  • Mugz
    We were just rate limited again after sending about 5 emails to gmail addresses.
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  • Infopro
    I've seen gmail rate limiting when a user has set the default address in their cPanel, to a gmail account. Forwarding all email to gmail is a bad idea for this reason. Forwarded email is not scanned, just forwarded on. The default email address should be set to fail, not forward anything. How can you know for sure your server has only sent 5 emails? Please turn on SMTP Authentication in your mail client.
    This one is important too.
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  • Mugz
    There was one account actually (I apologize) that all mail is being forwarded......... to a gmail address. Come to think of it, when we had an issue with the last ip, it was probably this account that had a stack of messages queued up that initially got it rate limited. Since it needs to be a forwarded address (the client makes heavy use of Gmail and does not use google apps), I'm gonna try creating the forwarder on my hosts shared hosting and then change the mail record so it runs through the shared hosting instead of my server to avoid it affecting other clients. I'll update this post soon if it makes a difference! Thanks for your help.
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  • Infopro
    This is what I'm talking about: Default Address - Documentation - cPanel Documentation If that "Default Address" located here: cPanel > Email > Default Address ..is set to forward to a valid account (gmail in this case), any and all emails that get send to sue@ jim@ bob@ andrew@ admin@ support@, @yourdomain.com get forwarded on without checks. Spammers do that sort of thing, hoping to hit a valid email account. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dictionary_attack Even if that's setup proper, if the user has a forwarder setup here: cPanel > Email > Forwarders ..and is forwarding only valid email to a gmail account from that email list, or he just gets a lot of email for example, gmail won't like it. Forwarded email is not scanned for spam at your server, its just forwarded on.
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  • Mugz
    Hi, Just providing an update in case it helps anyone.. I set my per domain email limits in whm to a low number - 30 which is reasonable for normal use. This has led to me discovering two accounts using the server to send bulk emails when checking the mail queue. At least now, they are queued up rather than blasting hotmail, gmail e.t.c.. We are not set up to be a mailing list provider (I know there's all sorts of paid whitelist things you can do) so we are going to give the client's training in using mailchimp as it get's the load off our server. Additionally, the major mail providers are likely to see these emails as spam I guess, since they have no unsubscribe link? Thanks
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