can't send to some hotmail addresses

Hi All,

If this is the wrong newsgroup for this question perhaps someone could
redirect me to a more appropriate group.

I am having trouble sending to hotmail accounts, but only to specific
hotmail accounts when I use my (E-Mail Removed) account. I am running Redhat
8.0 and Ximian mail.

This is what I think happened:

I was playing around with spoofing email addresses (just for fun to see if
I could do it, no
malicious motives) and so I sent emails
with spoofed addresses to a few of my hotmail accounts. I did it like
this:

$telnet localhost 25
$mail from: (E-Mail Removed)
$rcpt to: (E-Mail Removed)
data
This is a spoofed message
..
quit

This works when the "rcpt to:" account is not a hotmail account, but these
messages do not arrive at hotmail accounts. No big deal, I was just
playing around. Now I know it doesn't work for hotmail.

The trouble is I can no longer send email at all from my
(E-Mail Removed) account to hotmail accounts that
I have attempted to send emails with spoofed senders. (In the example
above I can no longer send to (E-Mail Removed) from
(E-Mail Removed)) For testing I used a
few of my own hotmail accounts and a few of my friends accounts (with
their permission) and I think I have blocked myself from sending to these
accounts. BTW, I can still send to these hotmail accounts if I send from
say my yahoo.ca account.

Does what has happened to me make sense? Did I get myself blacklisted
somehow by playing around with spoofed email addresses? Is there any way I
can tell the authorities at hotmail what I did and maybe get a pardon?

Any help is appreciated. I am not a malicious hacker, cracker or spammer.
Honest.

Thanks,

Paul

On Sat, 24 Jan 2004 00:30:48 GMT, "Paul O'Donnell"
<(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:

>Hi All,
>
>If this is the wrong newsgroup for this question perhaps someone could
>redirect me to a more appropriate group.
>
>I am having trouble sending to hotmail accounts, but only to specific
>hotmail accounts when I use my (E-Mail Removed) account. I am running Redhat
>8.0 and Ximian mail.
>
>This is what I think happened:
>
>I was playing around with spoofing email addresses (just for fun to see if
>I could do it, no
>malicious motives) and so I sent emails
>with spoofed addresses to a few of my hotmail accounts. I did it like
>this:
>
>$telnet localhost 25
>$mail from: (E-Mail Removed)
>$rcpt to: (E-Mail Removed)
>data
>This is a spoofed message
>.
>quit
>
>This works when the "rcpt to:" account is not a hotmail account, but these
>messages do not arrive at hotmail accounts. No big deal, I was just
>playing around. Now I know it doesn't work for hotmail.
>
>The trouble is I can no longer send email at all from my
>(E-Mail Removed) account to hotmail accounts that
>I have attempted to send emails with spoofed senders. (In the example
>above I can no longer send to (E-Mail Removed) from
>(E-Mail Removed)) For testing I used a
>few of my own hotmail accounts and a few of my friends accounts (with
>their permission) and I think I have blocked myself from sending to these
>accounts. BTW, I can still send to these hotmail accounts if I send from
>say my yahoo.ca account.
>
>Does what has happened to me make sense? Did I get myself blacklisted
>somehow by playing around with spoofed email addresses? Is there any way I
>can tell the authorities at hotmail what I did and maybe get a pardon?
>
>Any help is appreciated. I am not a malicious hacker, cracker or spammer.
>Honest.
>
Sounds like you've been blacklisted. You won't be doing that again
then. There again, if you're daft enough to do it once you could do it
again I suppose.
I would keep it quiet, altough it would be quite a laugh to find out
what they say when you tell them.


SJW
A.C.S. Ltd.

>>
> Sounds like you've been blacklisted. You won't be doing that again
> then. There again, if you're daft enough to do it once you could do it
> again I suppose.
> I would keep it quiet, altough it would be quite a laugh to find out
> what they say when you tell them.
>
>
> SJW
> A.C.S. Ltd.

Gee, thanks for your mean, unhelpful response. I was hoping to get some
technical understanding by posting my question, not a flame. Do you even
have a technical understanding of what I did, or did you just want to call
me daft and give me a lecture, while provided no technical knowledge at
all whatsoever?

All I was doing was experimenting so I could learn. That doesn't make me
daft, it makes me curious.

Does anyone with technical understanding have any insight? Have I in fact
been black listed? I don't see what is so daft with trying to figure out
(through experimentation)
how email address spoofing is done. The bad spammers have this knowledge,
why shouldn't the good guys like me have it? I
had no intention of trying to learn it so that I could use it maliciously.
I was simply trying to increase my understanding of what goes on behind
those spoofed messages that I get almost every day.

And if I were "black listed" would these emails not just go into the
hotmail accounts junk email folder? This did not happen.

Could someone who actually knows what is going on please help me out?

Thanks,

Paul

On Sat, 24 Jan 2004 01:22:14 GMT, "Paul O'Donnell"
<(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:

>
>>>
>> Sounds like you've been blacklisted. You won't be doing that again
>> then. There again, if you're daft enough to do it once you could do it
>> again I suppose.
>> I would keep it quiet, altough it would be quite a laugh to find out
>> what they say when you tell them.
>>
>>
>> SJW
>> A.C.S. Ltd.
>
>Gee, thanks for your mean, unhelpful response. I was hoping to get some
>technical understanding by posting my question, not a flame. Do you even
>have a technical understanding of what I did, or did you just want to call
>me daft and give me a lecture, while provided no technical knowledge at
>all whatsoever?
>
>All I was doing was experimenting so I could learn. That doesn't make me
>daft, it makes me curious.
>
>Does anyone with technical understanding have any insight? Have I in fact
>been black listed? I don't see what is so daft with trying to figure out
>(through experimentation)
>how email address spoofing is done. The bad spammers have this knowledge,
>why shouldn't the good guys like me have it? I
>had no intention of trying to learn it so that I could use it maliciously.
>I was simply trying to increase my understanding of what goes on behind
>those spoofed messages that I get almost every day.
>
>And if I were "black listed" would these emails not just go into the
>hotmail accounts junk email folder? This did not happen.
>
>Could someone who actually knows what is going on please help me out?
>
Keep your hair on, I have had problerms with mail servers before,
mainly blocking repeated attempts at sending mail from one ISP, (used
to dial up with e.g. freeserve), through anothers SMTP servers whom I
have mail accounts with, (e.g. tiscali). They seemed to block the IP
addresses for a short while, arond 20minutes or so, they semm to
think I was trying to use their server as a relay so blocked the IP as
it doesn't do it when trying to send only one. It also seemed to
happen when recieving, repeated logins also locked me out bof the
servers. Not knowing exactly how ISP's filter traffic from other
servers it would appear they look at IP addresses as opposed to ports
and services used.
This all stopped when switching all SMTP servers to match whatever ISP
I was using at the time to connect with.
Depending how many mails you sent depends on how they will have
blocked you.
Going on the basis that only the hotmail accounts have been stopped it
is obviosly hotmail blocking your IP. Can you change it to test
sending mail to hotmail accounts again?
Is the SMTP server you are using the one from your ISP or is it from
whoever your email account is with?
Could be risky calling them to explain, if you get the wrong person on
the other end of the phone it could get worse.


SJW
A.C.S. Ltd.

On Sat, 24 Jan 2004 02:37:34 +0000, Lurch wrote:

> On Sat, 24 Jan 2004 01:22:14 GMT, "Paul O'Donnell"
> <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:
>
>>
>>>>
>>> Sounds like you've been blacklisted. You won't be doing that again
>>> then. There again, if you're daft enough to do it once you could do it
>>> again I suppose.
>>> I would keep it quiet, altough it would be quite a laugh to find out
>>> what they say when you tell them.
>>>
>>>
>>> SJW
>>> A.C.S. Ltd.
>>
>>Gee, thanks for your mean, unhelpful response. I was hoping to get some
>>technical understanding by posting my question, not a flame. Do you even
>>have a technical understanding of what I did, or did you just want to call
>>me daft and give me a lecture, while provided no technical knowledge at
>>all whatsoever?
>>
>>All I was doing was experimenting so I could learn. That doesn't make me
>>daft, it makes me curious.
>>
>>Does anyone with technical understanding have any insight? Have I in fact
>>been black listed? I don't see what is so daft with trying to figure out
>>(through experimentation)
>>how email address spoofing is done. The bad spammers have this knowledge,
>>why shouldn't the good guys like me have it? I
>>had no intention of trying to learn it so that I could use it maliciously.
>>I was simply trying to increase my understanding of what goes on behind
>>those spoofed messages that I get almost every day.
>>
>>And if I were "black listed" would these emails not just go into the
>>hotmail accounts junk email folder? This did not happen.
>>
>>Could someone who actually knows what is going on please help me out?
>>
> Keep your hair on, I have had problerms with mail servers before,
> mainly blocking repeated attempts at sending mail from one ISP, (used
> to dial up with e.g. freeserve), through anothers SMTP servers whom I
> have mail accounts with, (e.g. tiscali). They seemed to block the IP
> addresses for a short while, arond 20minutes or so, they semm to
> think I was trying to use their server as a relay so blocked the IP as
> it doesn't do it when trying to send only one. It also seemed to
> happen when recieving, repeated logins also locked me out bof the
> servers. Not knowing exactly how ISP's filter traffic from other
> servers it would appear they look at IP addresses as opposed to ports
> and services used.
> This all stopped when switching all SMTP servers to match whatever ISP
> I was using at the time to connect with.
> Depending how many mails you sent depends on how they will have
> blocked you.
> Going on the basis that only the hotmail accounts have been stopped it
> is obviosly hotmail blocking your IP. Can you change it to test
> sending mail to hotmail accounts again?
> Is the SMTP server you are using the one from your ISP or is it from
> whoever your email account is with?
> Could be risky calling them to explain, if you get the wrong person on
> the other end of the phone it could get worse.
>
>
> SJW
> A.C.S. Ltd.

Thank you,

Paul

Dear Paul,

Paul O'Donnell wrote:

> All I was doing was experimenting so I could learn. That doesn't make me
> daft, it makes me curious.
>
> Does anyone with technical understanding have any insight? Have I in fact
> been black listed? I don't see what is so daft with trying to figure out
> (through experimentation) how email address spoofing is done. The bad
> spammers have this knowledge, why shouldn't the good guys like me have it?

Yep, but they are at least intelligent enough to gain this knowledge within
their own local network, without annoying administrators of FREE public
mailservers BEFORE they drop their trash.

BTW: Do you really distinguish between good and bad spammers???

> I had no intention of trying to learn it so that I could use it
> maliciously. I was simply trying to increase my understanding of what
> goes on behind those spoofed messages that I get almost every day.

Who knows? Who cares?

> And if I were "black listed" would these emails not just go into the
> hotmail accounts junk email folder? This did not happen.

....because you obviously got blacklisted. Let me translate your kind of
curiosity to common English:

"I filled some perforated letters with baking powder and sent them to some
friends of mine and myself, because I was curious if the guys in my local
post office are clever enough to recognize the difference between harmless
baking powder and biological weapons. They didn't and called the police."

Greetings from Frankfurt
Torsten Kaiser

--
XP doesn't HAVE Security holes.
XP IS a security hole.

> Yep, but they are at least intelligent enough to gain this knowledge
> within their own local network, without annoying administrators of FREE
> public mailservers BEFORE they drop their trash.
>
> BTW: Do you really distinguish between good and bad spammers???
>
>
I didn't say anything about "good spammers". Spam is spam. All spammers
are bad. However, it was not my
intention to spam anyone. I was trying an experiment by testing with my
OWN hotmail accounts and two friends hotmail accounts (with their
permission). I am not very knowledgeable about mail servers and obviously
I didn't know what I was doing. Lesson learned.

I do think that your analogy of sending baking soda in the mail is a
little extreme. However, I hear your point. I think it is actually
refreshing to learn that hotmail is on top of the problem of email address
spoofing and that they are taking action. I just wish I didn't have to
learn about this the hard way.

If hotmail has the power to recognize what I tried today as suspicious
activity and take immediate action, why then is my inbox filled everyday
with spam with spoofed email addresses? I guess the spammers know how to
do with without getting caught. I don't have the technical knowledge to
cover my tracks and I would not have tried to anyways as I did not think I
was doing anything malicious.

Paul

Paul O'Donnell wrote:

> I do think that your analogy of sending baking soda in the mail is a
> little extreme. However, I hear your point.

Sure, but that's what I compare it with: organized crime.

> I think it is actually
> refreshing to learn that hotmail is on top of the problem of email address
> spoofing and that they are taking action. I just wish I didn't have to
> learn about this the hard way.

They are commonly well-known as a provider for throw-away-adresses to be
abused for spam-traffic by senders and receipients. Their original service
of free mail as a communication medium has grown to unimportance. And
people like me, maintaining a POP filter, block hotmail as a SPAM provider
completely for incoming and outgoing mails. That's why they obviously now
take action against SPAM.

> If hotmail has the power to recognize what I tried today as suspicious
> activity and take immediate action, why then is my inbox filled everyday
> with spam with spoofed email addresses?

Learn about BIND and SMTP with and without authentication[1]. And you will
discover, that this kind of SPAM only works with an upstream provider that
willingly lets you drop your trash. Mainly in the Far East, Southern and
Northern America and Northern Africa. That's why I see organized crime in
it.

Greetings
Torsten Kaiser

[1]on your own network please!
--
XP doesn't HAVE Security holes.
XP IS a security hole.