trying to figure out why mail is bouncing

[bscott at ntisys.com]

On Thu, 30 Oct 2003, at 10:20pm, jfreeman at threeofus.com wrote:
> Below is a message I tried to send to my wife's assistant who is obviously
> using Verizon....

  One should not use Verizon for email if one wants to have trouble-free
email.  I realize it is somebody you're trying to send *to* who is using
Verizon, but that does change the fact that Verizon equals email trouble.  
There is very little you can do to change the behavior of somebody *else's*
mail exchanger.

> All messages that we send to her, no matter which smtp server we use, are
> bouncing.

  Now this is interesting:

$ host -t MX verizon.net 
verizon.net mail is handled by 0 relay.verizon.net.
$ telnet relay.verizon.net smtp
Trying 206.46.170.12...
Connected to relay.gte.net (206.46.170.12).
Escape character is '^]'.
220 sc008.verizon.net MailPass SMTP server v1.0.6 - 103003062626JY ready 
Fri, 31 Oct 2003 08:44:15 -0600
EHLO localhost
250-sc008.verizon.net
250-8BITMIME
250 SIZE 20971520
MAIL FROM:<bscott at ntisys.com>
250 Sender <bscott at ntisys.com> OK
RSET
250 Ok resetting state
MAIL FROM:<nosuchuser at ntisys.com>
550 You are not allowed to send mail:sc008.verizon.net

  It appears that Verizon is probing the listed MX for the domain given in
the SMTP reverse-path to see if the sending email address is valid.

-- 
Ben Scott <bscott at ntisys.com>
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