Eircom silently dropping some emails sent via their system

80s Synth Pop

Hi Eircom,

Since the end of May I've seen several examples where emails never arrive. No NDR is generated either - they just vanish.

The recipients are using a wide rage of systems (Google Apps, Office 365, email server in their office etc.) and the senders are always different but the one thing they have in common is they are sending via mail1.eircom.net.

For example, the sender may send an email via mail1.eircom.net CCing three people in the same comapny however one of the people may not receive it.

There is something up...

Sponge Bob

You will have to come up with examples so they can trace it, their anti spam system has come up with doozies in the past so it is possible but they will need to grind their logs.

eircom email is reliable in general. I doubt they want to change that.

80s Synth Pop

Sure, I've forwarded a few examples to to master.support@eircom of server logs showing the hand over to mail1.eircom.net as well as the headers of messages that were received by some recipients but not others.

I should have said the purpose of this post was to see if there were any other people out there seeing the same problem? i.e. you can't trust mail1.eircom.net at the moment to deliver your email..

Sponge Bob

mail1 has been known to reject messages with error messages referring to content of sent email .....more than accept message from sender and then discard it.

80s Synth Pop

absolutely, that's why it's bizarre - there's no NDR generated so the sender thinks the message was sent but instead it is sent to some blackhole..

Alun

I've had some issues with my email provider with non receipt of emails from eircom clients and after querying it it's always boiled down to one or more of eircom's outgoing mail servers being on a blacklist for excessive spam.

Regarding the randomness of it, it should be noted that mail1.eircom.net doesn't actually send anything, there's a whole raft of mail servers behind a load balancer that actually send the mails, and it's a random choice which one you get. Why there's no NDR generated I don't know, presumably so as not to warn off potential spammers.

Eircom really should be on top of this, but any attempts I've made to report such blacklisting have been ignored, so I don't bother any moire.

80s Synth Pop

Everyday we still get reports of missing emails and every time the sender is using mail1.eircom.net. The emails vanish. This is still an issue for many many people and companies. Getting the SMTP logs out of Eircom to prove they delivered is impossible (one can only assume they know the emails were dropped so cannot provide the SMTP logs). No NDR, nothing, the emails just disappear.

java

80s Synth Pop wrote: »

Getting the SMTP logs out of Eircom to prove they delivered is impossible (one can only assume they know the emails were dropped so cannot provide the SMTP logs). No NDR, nothing, the emails just disappear.

I'm not having problems with mail1.eircom.net but in the past I have gotten smtp logs from eircom when I questioned delivery. They do give these logs once you can prove ownership of the from mailbox/domain.

80s Synth Pop

If you send enough email you will eventually hit the problem - you may of already experienced the problem and never known about it because there is no NDR.

Alun

Based on my experience, you'd have more luck contacting the mail service providers of the recipients and asking them if they're blocking any of eircom's outgoing mail servers, i.e. not mail1.eircom.net, but mailxx.svc.cra.dublin.eircom.net where 'xx' is a 2 digit number. They're all in the 159.134.118.0/24 subnet as far as I know.

Armed with that information you might be able to get eircom's abuse department interested but it will probably take a bit of effort.

80s Synth Pop

I appreciate the feedback but the messages are not even leaving the Eircom network so they are not hitting the recipients mailservers to be rejected.

Alun

80s Synth Pop wrote: »

I appreciate the feedback but the messages are not even leaving the Eircom network so they are not hitting the recipients mailservers to be rejected.

You might know this in the case of a locally administered mail server, although even in those cases, it's not uncommon for them to be configured to use blacklists and the administrators to be unaware of that. In some cases there's also another mail server as an intermediate step which could be rejecting stuff.

For any other situation, i.e. where you're using a commercial mail service like Gmail or Hotmail, or even hosted email services from your hosting company you'd not know whether your incoming server rejected anything unless you specifically asked them.

80s Synth Pop

Yes right - we have many examples of recipient mail servers that we look after for clients and can prove there is no trace of the missing message hitting the firewall or mail server. It confirms no delivery attempt was made.

In the case of third party recipients where we have no access (like Google Apps, Microsoft Office 365), actually you would be surprised how helpful the big corporation have been. We had the Google Apps team looking and they found no trace of the email hitting. Finally, even Microsoft Office 365 were exceptional at helping with their level three support engineer asking Eircom every day for two weeks for the SMTP logs to prove a delivery attempt was made but Eircom never gave the logs. In the end, Microsoft gave up too and closed the ticket saying the email delivery was never attempted and the problem is with Eircom.

Alun

You could just have said all that to start with

java

80s Synth Pop wrote: »

I appreciate the feedback but the messages are not even leaving the Eircom network so they are not hitting the recipients mailservers to be rejected.

You don't know that for sure until you see the logs. It is possible the recipients mailserver is rejecting the mail.

java

80s Synth Pop wrote: »

Finally, even Microsoft Office 365 were exceptional at helping with their level three support engineer asking Eircom every day for two weeks for the SMTP logs to prove a delivery attempt was made but Eircom never gave the logs. In the end, Microsoft gave up too and closed the ticket saying the email delivery was never attempted and the problem is with Eircom.

eircom (and any provider) will not give logs to a third party. Its a data protection issue. The customer is the only person who can request logs.