Open Relays

An open mail relay is a mail server that allows anyone from anywhere on the Internet to send email through it to a remote recipient. When a mail server is an open mail relay, spammers will often use the mail server and the Internet connection it uses to send their own spam. For this reason, any mail server with an open relay is considered suspect and gets added to spammer blacklists such as Spamhaus, SORBS, and DSBL.

If you have an open relay and you're using an IP address leased from XMission it is likely that you will not only get your own server blacklisted but that you will also get XMission's mail server blacklisted as well. This is unacceptable since thousands of people can be adversely affected. As a result, it is against XMission Policy for customers to have open relays.

To avoid getting your mail server black-listed, you must be sure that it does not operate as an open mail relay. Basically, a mail server needs to have two rules to be secure from being used as a relay.

• It should accept only incoming mail that it delivers locally, based on email address.
• It should deliver only outgoing mail that originates locally, based on IP address.

XMission now checks to see if any servers on its network are an open relay. If you have recieved an email from XMission stating that your mail server is an open relay, or if you have not taken any precautions to ensure that your mail server is not one, secure your mail server by following the instructions at:

http://www.mail-abuse.com/an_sec3rdparty.html

After securing your mail server you may submit it for testing at http://stats.xmission.com/relaytest.cgi