[CentOS] Mail server troubles

Fri Oct 9 04:29:31 UTC 2020
Rob Kampen <rkampen at kampensonline.com>

On 9/10/20 11:08 am, Stephen John Smoogen wrote:
> On Thu, 8 Oct 2020 at 17:50, Nicolas Kovacs <info at microlinux.fr> wrote:
>
>> Hi,
>>
>> This is probably a bit OT, but here goes.
>>
>> I've been running our local school's mail server since 2013, with mail
>> addresses for school staff and some teachers. The server is running CentOS
>> 7
>> with Postfix and Dovecot, and it's a nice no-bullshit configuration with
>> SPF,
>> DKIM and DMARC.
>>
>> The school sends quite a lot of email out to parents, and sometimes, mail
>> gets
>> rejected:
>>
>> --8<--------------------------------------------------------
>> <xxxxxxxx at orange.fr>: host smtp-in.orange.fr[193.252.22.65] said: 550
>> 5.2.0
>>      Mail rejete. Mail rejected. ofr_506 [506] (in reply to end of DATA
>> command)
>>
>> <yyyyyyyy at wanadoo.fr>: host smtp-in.orange.fr[193.252.22.65] said: 550
>> 5.2.0
>>      Mail rejete. Mail rejected. ofr_506 [506] (in reply to end of DATA
>> command)
>> --8<--------------------------------------------------------
>>
>> This happens randomly with the usual suspects among crappy mail providers
>> like
>> Orange, Hotmail/Live, Yahoo and the rest.
>>
>>
> So wanadoo and orange seem to send a ofr_506 because the scanned mail was
> found to be SPAM. This is independent of DKIM, SPF, DMARC but from them
> scanning the email in the DATA and saying nope. Usually that is because too
> many people complained about a set of email and the weight of email with
> that content is getting blocked. I don't know if the school moving to
> another provider will fix that as this isn't because of the IP it was sent
> from (they block before the DATA is sent in that case). [My guess is that
> someone wants to move to something else and is using this as the Casus
> Belli to do so. ]
>
> I don't really have a suggestion or solution to either problem..
>
If this reject is due to their spam filtering process, it is actually 
the email author's problem - how they make up their sentences, key words 
etc. and thus the problem will travel with them, to whatever email 
provider they choose.

Suggest they get educated in how to write an appropriate email that 
doesn't raise alarms, or they could use mailchimp (e.g. only) for their 
large group emails.

Just a final thought - are the email address headers containing multiple 
email addresses? this too can trigger blocking by some providers.