Email rejections

[INTRAL]

Hi -

I'm running Wingate 6.2 and using it as a mail gateway to an Exchange server box behind it. It's working great. One problem - incoming mail from certain domains are getting bounced back to the sender. I'm trying to reduce the huge amount of spam we receive so I have all the options on the Email/Receiving/Untrusted Sender section enabled: block invalid sender domain, block blank return path, block numeric ip address, etc. are all on. Spam is now at a manageable level. But, again, certain domains are getting their email bounced back from my server.

Here's the text of a non-delivery report sent from an external sender to my domain:

Recipient address: rrodes@intral.com Reason: Server rejected MAIL FROM address.
Diagnostic code: smtp;550 Your IP address failed validation. You cannot
deliver for the domain you specified (jaycoinc.net)
Remote system: dns;mail.intral.com

Fyi - the user 'rrodes' does have a valid address and handler set up in Wingate.

So my question - I assume either the "Block invalid sender domain" or "Block spoofed sender address" setting is keeping the email from being delivered to my server. Which one? How do I fix this problem? If the problem is with activating the "Block spoofed sender address" setting, I know that that setting includes an additional window to enter overides and also mentions that some domains may be blocked if this setting is turned on. For this case, should I enter an overide? If so, what's the difference between "SMTP Sender" and "SMTP Sending Agent" and what would the correct syntax that I should enter in order to not perform the spoofed sender test for the domain "jaycoinc.net" above and/or any other domain that are getting NDR's from my server.

By the way, former WinProxy user. Great product - stable, good interface, and it works. One suggestion - you need an integrated spam filter with keyword checking, etc. But I've evaluated a bunch of others and Wingate was the best. if you need a reference or anything from me let me know.

Thanks for the help.

Bob Orenberg
INTRAL Corporation
Boston, MA 02210

[adrien]

Hi Bob

The setting that causes that particular error is the "block spoofed sender address" setting.

If there are only a small number of senders being blocked, you can add exceptions to allow them, otherwise you might find it a bit safer (although a lot more spam) to turn it into a list to check, rather than a list to not check.

We actually have an anti-spam product in development here for the next release of WinGate which pretty much makes this redundant as well anyway (we turned off all other checking on our server with the AntiSpam running).

Anyway, re your other questions, the SMTP sending agent is the name that the sender identifies itself in the HELO or EHLO command. This is sent when the sender first connects.

The SMTP sender on the other hand is the email address that the mail is being sent from using the MAIL FROM command.

If you're wanting to allow senders from a domain, I'd set up an exclusion so that the SMTP sender address contains the domain you are wanting to allow.

Regards

Adrien

[INTRAL]

Adrien -

Thanks for the reply. So if I enter in an exception, it will display as "SMTP Sender equals ..." Do I enter in the entire email address of the sender or just the domain name?

Second question - how does the licensing work? I have a 25-user version. I have 17 users set up in the "Users" tab in Gatekeeper. But in Email/Domain/Addresses, I have 29 actual email addresses set up. One for each user plus a few others such as group email addresses, webmaster, info, etc. All of these are valid email addresses and are all set up in my Exchange server box to deliver mail to the correct user(s). Does your licensing count users or email addresses? Am I violating the license with 29 distinct email addresses? I set up an email handler for each address but they all use the default settings for the domain; I don't need special email handlers to filter attachments, etc. for any of the users.

Also, what does setting up users actually do? Do I really need to set up a user if I've set up email addresses for each one? Are the users set up just for acceessing the Gatekeeper application? If so, I don't need any other users to access the application, just me.

Again, thanks for the info.

[adrien]

"equals" will be an exact match (albeit case-sensitive). To match on just the domain part of the email address, you'd use "contains", instead of "equals" when you set up the exception criterion.

Licensing is based on IPs concurrently using WinGate, we don't limit number of user accounts or email addresses, only concurrently connected different machines (and users if using Terminal services functionality combined with Multi-user IPs in WinGate)

User accounts are primarily used to set per-user policy, gather accounting information etc.

[INTRAL]

Adrien -

Thanks for the additional information.

Sorry to keep bothering you with this but we're getting killed with spam and although we do have desktop spam filters, I'd really prefer to stop it at the gateway. And turning on the "Block spoofed sender address" setting helped quite a bit. But again, that setting does block some of the domains with which we communicate.

So please confirm:

The correct syntax for an entire email address would be:

SMTP Sender equals user@domain.com.
And the email address is case-sensitive?

The correct sytax for just a domain would be:

SMTP Sender contains domain.com

Is there any documentation on this? Is this a common procedure for your other users in order to reduce spam?

Thanks again for the help,
Bob