Subject: Resolution for Case ID: 96796642

From: [email-masked]
Date: Mon, 31 Jan 2005 23:08:24 -0600

Dear Robert Stephens:  

We have identified a resolution for your Case 96796642  created on 01/30/2005  8:02PM .  Please review the resolution below for your case to confirm that the issue is resolved.  If we do not hear from you, we will assume that this case can be closed.

Case ID: 96796642 

Problem Summary: email 

Problem Description: Member ID: darwinday; Domain: sbcglobal.net
Connection Type: DSL
Description: Dear support persons,

Yesterday I talked with your call screening "robot" and several support persons about why our SMTP  connection is not working normally.   When we send emails, SMTP is asking for the password immediately, and only modest numbers of messages are sent before the mail server asks for the password again.   The case IDs were 96547548 and later 96734480.

I was told it is possible that our email sending is being throttled because we are considered a spammer, but the helpline people did not have access to that information.  We were given your email address as a place that could provide answers. 

The bottom line question will be "Is our SMTP being throttled, and if so, how can we end that?"

But first let me tell you about what we are doing.  Darwin Day Celebration is a nonprofit corporation (501(c)3 status applied for in 2004 and expected this year) that is doing science education about evolution and Charles Darwin.  We are encouraging and publicizing educational celebrations close to February 12, which is Charles Darwin's birthday and which our friends call "Darwin Day".  We are working toward a worldwide celebration of Science and Humanity, on Darwin's birthday in 2009, the 200th anniversary of his birth.  We have been doing this at the Web site http://DarwinDay.org since the year 2000. Last summer we moved that most public site to HostRocket for web hosting, due to their available software and human support.  The Darwin Day effort has thousands of  people who have been involved, holding events at locations around the world.  Browse http://darwinday.org/home/2004.html to see the events registered last year or http://darwinday.org/dispevent/index.php for the e!
 vents registered so far this year.

For availability and financial reasons, we have our current DSL line through SBC Global, though we thought that this DSL line was just providing a neutral connection to the Internet.  We had been using the SBC DSL line with the settings for Earthlink, which is the Web hosting organization to our corporate site DarwinDayCelebration.org from which we send most of our emails.  We presumed that since SBC knew that the DSL wire came from our office, we were authenticated.  In any case, doing SMTP through the SBC DSL line with Eathlink settings worked fine.  Recently we were told by Earthlink, that we should change our SMTP mail server to correspond to the ownership of the DSL line.  So we switched the SMTP setting to smtp.sbcglobal.yahoo.com and offered authentication by using [email-masked] and its password.  Immediately we saw the problem of multiple requests for the password.  We were told by your support people that there was no problem from our use of the account rs!
 [email-masked] as the Sender on our emails.  Dr.  Robert Stephens, a former scientist, businessman, city councilman and mayor of Menlo Park, California, is the primary founder of Darwin Day Celebration, Inc. and is the signatory on most of our emails.

We are sending to science educators, liberal religious groups, and religious nonbelievers, whom we feel have a natural interest in evolution and the cultural significance of Darwin's publications.  We have been building credibility for the Darwin Day idea for nearly 5 years online, and we are so well respected and pointed to that, if you do a Google search for the broad term "Darwin", we appear midway on the second page of the Google search results.

We do not believe that our messages would be called spam by reasonable definitions.  Our emails are clear honest messages in plain text, describing our effort and inviting the recipients to visit our DarwinDay.org web site. We customize our messages to the interests and beliefs of subgroups of our people.  On the Bayesian spam detection systems we score very low on spam characteristics.  We are not a commercial operation, nor raising money through the Internet.  We do not engage in any deception.  We can send you samples of our messages, if you are interested.  On all but the most personal correspondence, we end with an offer to unsubscribe any email address that clicks to reply to the [email-masked] address, as well as honoring any requests sent by other means.  We now have over 49 names in an "unsubscribed" database table that we check against before mailing, and we are scrupulous about entering any new unsubscribe request.

In the past two months, with February 12 coming, we sent approximately 8,300 emails to remind and alert people about the Darwin Day effort.   But since a week ago when we changed our SMTP from Earthlink's settings and started using the SBC DSL mail server, we have been having these failures of the SMTP protocol.

So, as promised, the bottom line question:   Is our SMTP being throttled, and if so, how can we end that?

Sincerely,

David Harris, Database Architect,
and
Robert J. (Bob) Stephens, Ph. D.
Emeritus Director, Cell Biology Program,  SRI International, formerly Stanford Research Institute.
Chairman of the Board, Darwin Day Celebration, a Nonprofit Corp.
http://darwinday.org::BRAND_OF_MODEM::your SpeedStream::MODEM_SPEED::DSL speed::ALT_EMAIL::[email-masked]::TELEPHONE_EXT::
E-mail Client: Other
Web Browser: Netscape 7.x
Brand of Computer: Dell
Operating System: Win XP
Processor Speed: Greater than 1Ghz
RAM: Greater than 512MB 

Case Status: Closed 

Solution Details: We have received your email addressing your concern regarding not being able to send e-mail using third party SMTP servers.  We share your concern and apologize for the inconvenience this has caused.

Robert, we would like to inform you that SBC Internet Services (SBCIS) is taking positive steps to help combat junk email and spam. In addition to network upgrades, free spam filtering and anti-virus software, SBC is implementing outbound SMTP port controls to ensure the SBC network is as reliable as possible for our Members.

In an effort to help protect our Members from spammers and viruses, SBC Internet Services has block Port 25 for dynamic DSL and Dial Members.  Filtering Port 25 will help cut down the amount of spamming and viruses that are, unknowingly, sent by computers already infected by viruses.  SBC Internet is proactively trying to elevate some Member complaints about receiving Spam and virus email.  A single infected computer can send millions of email messages in only a few hours.

In order to opt-out from the Port 25 filtering, we suggest that you submit the online form by visiting the link below:

http://help.sbcglobal.net/servabuse.php

We hope that the above information is helpful for you.  If you need further assistance or have any other concern, please feel free to contact us again.  We will be glad to assist you.  Please know that we value you as a member and our prime concern is to ensure you are satisfied with our service.

If you have further inquiries, please don't hesitate to review our online support pages at http://www.sbcis.com.  Here you may find answers to many of the most common questions asked by our members.  You may also contact our Live Chat Support at http://help.sbcglobal.net/ by clicking at Online Chat under the Contact us section, which is available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. 
 
Sincerely,
 
Alina Jones
SBCIS Customer Support
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