[RndTbl] Shaw email - new woes

[Trevor Cordes]

Great, Shaw is playing with email things again :-(

All of a sudden all emails from my box (on a shaw cable modem) outgoing 
(via Shaw's recommended smarthost) were being blocked by Shaw.  They 
blocked me from 1am to 4:30pm.

I've been using this setup for 10+ years and never had a problem.  They 
must have switched to a new email outsource service or something.

Even funnier, what triggered it seems to be this: I'm trying to help my 
customer with Spam problems and the RT ticket he made (and hence email 
subject) had the word "Spam" and Shaw barfed it back and started the 
blocking without warning:

=========================
Date: Fri, 24 Apr 2015 01:07:55 -0500
From: Mail Delivery Subsystem <MAILER-DAEMON at tecnopolis.ca>
Subject: Returned mail: see transcript for details

The original message was received at Fri, 24 Apr 2015 01:07:54 -0500
from localhost.localdomain [127.0.0.1]

   ----- The following addresses had permanent fatal errors -----
<customer at mycustomer.com>
    (reason: 552 5.2.0 lWmIYQYgD7S0qlWmJYSEv0 spam rejected)

   ----- Transcript of session follows -----
... while talking to shawmail.wp.shawcable.net:
>>> DATA    
<<< 552 5.2.0 lWmIYQYgD7S0qlWmJYSEv0 spam rejected
554 5.0.0 Service unavailable

[...]
Subject: [Tecnopolis #2173] Spam Possible
=========================

Hahaha.  Pathetic.  So any email that wants to talk about spam and has
that word in the subject is blocked?  What if I want to talk about
viagra or rolex, is that blocked too?

All subsequent emails for the whole day got a bounce:

=========================
The original message was received at Fri, 24 Apr 2015 02:54:59 -0500
from localhost.localdomain [127.0.0.1]

   ----- The following addresses had permanent fatal errors -----
<customer at mycustomer.com>
    (reason: 554 mo23.dcs.int.inet shaw.ca ESMTP server not available)

   ----- Transcript of session follows -----
... while talking to shawmail.wp.shawcable.net:
<<< 554 mo23.dcs.int.inet shaw.ca ESMTP server not available
554 5.0.0 Service unavailable
=========================

WTF is mo23.dcs.int.inet?  Looks new to me.

Anyhow, after a call to a clueless tech rep telling me I'm unsupported 
because I run sendmail *simply as an outgoing mail MTA pointing directly 
to their smart host* and an email to their (hopefully) more advanced 
techs, I got nowhere until it magically fixed itself at 4:30.  I probably 
hit their BL timeout or something.

I dare anyone on the Shaw network using normal SMTP outgoing to send an 
email with the subject of "sp*m" (I dare not spell it out in full, he who 
can't be named and all that).  Let me know if they block you for a day and 
whether you get anywhere with tech support.

Shame on Shaw.  Almost getting as bad as MTS.  Wait a minute, no one can 
get *that* bad (MS Live mail anyone?). :-)