[RESOLVED] February 2021 -- issues with email delivery

Some of you may have noticed you are not receiving emails from atWar currently... things like password reset emails, turn notifications, etc. This is NOT a technical problem on atWar's end. Rather, its an issue being caused by a certain 3rd party which we are fighting against. (More about this below, if you want to know...)

So far we know users of the following email services are affected by this:

• Microsoft-hosted email services (like @outlook.com, @hotmail.com, @live.com, @msn.com etc.)
  
• GMX (@gmx.net, @gmx.de, @gmx.fr, etc.) Update Feb.25: GMX responded and said they are accepting our emails again.
  

If your email address is at one of these services, you will not be able to receive emails from us until this issue is resolved. If you need to contact us, I recommend using the atWar chat system and asking a moderator for assistance. (You can use the /report command in game.) If you can't login due to a forgotten password, use a guest or alt account to reach a moderator.

(Other email services like gmail are so far working fine...)

---

Why is this happening?

It's because the IP address of atWar's mail server is currently blacklisted by one particular spam blacklist, called UCEPROTECTL3.

There are probably 30+ popular spam blacklists maintained by various organizations... all except UCEPROTECT show that we are clean. That's because atWar doesn't send spam. We do everything the right way, according to the rules.

In fact, even UCEPROTECT says that it is not a ban against us specifically -- they decided to ban our entire host! Quote from their own website:

Lainaa:

As you should know now: It is not you, it is your complete provider which got UCEPROTECT-Level 3 listed.
Your IP 104.248.84.59 was NOT part of abusive action, but you are the one that has freely chosen your provider.
By tolerating or ignoring that your provider doesn't care about abusers you are indirectly also supporting the global spam with your money.
Seen from this point of view, you really shouldn't wonder about the consequences.

How's that for a wonderfully arrogant statement?

Our mail server is hosted at Digital Ocean. If you're not familiar with it, Digital Ocean is one of the largest cloud server providers in the United States. In other words, because we happen to use one of the largest providers in the U.S. (with over 2.4 million IP addresses included in this ban, according to them), we are somehow part of the problem and must be punished?



...But wait, they are so nice they give us a solution to "fix" this. All we have to do is "whitelist" our IP address with them, all for the low low price of just 25 CHF per month!



I ask you, how is this legal? They create the problem, then offer to fix it for a "fee"... is that not the very definition of blackmail?

Needless to say, I will not be paying it. I do not respond to blackmail, end of story. So what else am I doing about it? Well, at the moment I've been contacting the various email providers' (Microsoft, GMX) postmasters asking them to 1) unban our IP address and 2) consider not using UCEPROTECT at all. Like I said, there are many more reputable spam blacklists to choose from.

I'm not too hopeful at this point, but it's a start. After all, my company is just a tiny speck on the internet landscape.... nobody really cares about us. However we are certainly not the only ones affected by this issue... if enough backlash is generated against UCEPROTECT, the situation will be resolved for everyone sooner or later.

Like I said, every server hosted at Digital Ocean is effected by this, which means 2+ million servers. So far Digital Ocean doesn't seem to want to get involved -- their support has been dismissive about doing anything. I think the really correct solution is for the various email providers to stop using UCEPROTECT completely -- they are behaving like complete and total scammers.

If not, then we *could* use an email sending service (like SendGrid, MailGun, etc.) but I prefer not to since 1) those services cost money and 2) it seems ridiculous in principle that we should have to give up our own perfectly working email server just because 1 random somebody says so.

Another option is I could move our mail server to a different provider other than Digital Ocean. I actually maintain several mail servers already at various providers, and the non-Digital Ocean ones have not had any problem like this so far. I would rather not do this because 1) its a lot of unnecessary work and 2) again, its ridiculous that we should have to move our server just because 1 random somebody says so. However if it comes to be that there really is no other solution, I may end up moving the server (and grumbling about it, but whatever). I would rather spend the time to do that, than pay anything to these UCEPROTECT blackmailers.

Such are the joys of being in the tech business.

Kirjoittanut Dave, 24.02.2021 at 04:42

Our mail server is hosted at Digital Ocean. If you're not familiar with it, Digital Ocean is one of the largest cloud server providers in the United States. In other words, because we happen to use one of the largest providers in the U.S. (with over 2.4 million IP addresses included in this ban, according to them), we are somehow part of the problem and must be punished?

This is how a myth about AW servers being hosted in Siberia, Djibouti or Afghanistan ends.

Kirjoittanut Bisexual, 24.02.2021 at 05:26

Kirjoittanut Dave, 24.02.2021 at 04:42

Our mail server is hosted at Digital Ocean. If you're not familiar with it, Digital Ocean is one of the largest cloud server providers in the United States. In other words, because we happen to use one of the largest providers in the U.S. (with over 2.4 million IP addresses included in this ban, according to them), we are somehow part of the problem and must be punished?

The myth about AW servers being hosted in Siberia and Afghanistan has just died.

That's only the mail server. The main AW servers are still in Djibouti, as always.

This reminds me of tech support ransomware scams. Congrats on the persecution.

Dave help pls
i bought all flags 1 by 1 for 3.6k pcs ahjkjlökjljkjhk didnt buy -90%

Kirjoittanut 31TENGRI69, 24.02.2021 at 07:33

Dave help pls
i bought all flags 1 by 1 for 3.6k pcs ahjkjlökjljkjhk didnt buy -90%

Dude why didn't you just PM me? Instead of spamming my thread with unrelated crap...

Kirjoittanut Dave, 24.02.2021 at 10:05

Kirjoittanut 31TENGRI69, 24.02.2021 at 07:33

Dave help pls
i bought all flags 1 by 1 for 3.6k pcs ahjkjlökjljkjhk didnt buy -90%

Dude why didn't you just PM me? Instead of spamming my thread with unrelated crap...

Because he wanted attention

Kirjoittanut Waffel, 24.02.2021 at 11:23

Kirjoittanut Dave, 24.02.2021 at 10:05

Kirjoittanut 31TENGRI69, 24.02.2021 at 07:33

Dave help pls
i bought all flags 1 by 1 for 3.6k pcs ahjkjlökjljkjhk didnt buy -90%

Dude why didn't you just PM me? Instead of spamming my thread with unrelated crap...

Because he wanted attention

true

Digital ocean pretty cheap and ez to use and besides who even uses ms or gmx for their stuff anyway

I have this issue for over a year, cant receive emails from atwar when i ask for password change or smth. But good that its gonna be resolved!

Sue them. I don't know how the US justice system works. But, you could claim lost revenue due to them not letting you advertise, and if you win (which you probably will, because this looks quite shady) they'll pay the court fees (I think that's how it works in the US). But again, I don't know how expensive it will be to take them to court. It seems that UCEPROTECT is no doubt, an extortion scheme. If Microsoft suddenly blacklisted google on it's firewall and then asked for a fee, then they wouldn't even exist anymore.

You should at least report it somewhere (maybe FCC?). You could even try getting a lawyer to see if you can fuck them over somehow, or at least get some perspective.

Kirjoittanut Zoe, 25.02.2021 at 09:39

Sue them. I don't know how the US justice system works. But, you could claim lost revenue due to them not letting you advertise, and if you win (which you probably will, because this looks quite shady) they'll pay the court fees (I think that's how it works in the US). But again, I don't know how expensive it will be to take them to court. It seems that UCEPROTECT is no doubt, an extortion scheme. If Microsoft suddenly blacklisted google on it's firewall and then asked for a fee, then they wouldn't even exist anymore.

You should at least report it somewhere (maybe FCC?). You could even try getting a lawyer to see if you can fuck them over somehow, or at least get some perspective.

Sueing is for the wealthy, Dave might be a mega-millionaire but he's not Jeff Bezos.

Kirjoittanut Zoe, 25.02.2021 at 09:39

yeah USA doesn't have a loser pays system if I remember correctly, there might be some random states that have it though

I don't have an opinion on it but I found a good reason on quora:

"Pauline Hughes isn't much impressed with the "loser pays" system. Her husband, William, died of complications of a gallbladder surgery in a London hospital. She sued the hospital for malpractice, won a verdict at trial, but lost it on appeal. In the end, Mrs. Hughes owed her lawyers $150,000, contingent fees being illegal in Britain. What's worse, she also was liable for the bills of the hospital's lawyers, leaving her not only with a dead husband but $300,000 in debt." Francis J. Carney, "Loser Pays"--Justice for the Poorest and the Richest, Others Need Not Apply, Utah B.J., MAY 1995, at 18.

One can make money by randomly blacklisting IP's all willy-nilly like and all servers from a provider? I am in the wrong business. More seriously, people should complain to Microsoft and GMX about using a service such as UCEPROTECTL3. That's just extortion.

Do you have stats for At-War users' email client? @outlook.com @hotmail.com "Now that is a name I haven't heard in a long time"

Kirjoittanut ITSGG1122, 25.02.2021 at 09:29

I have this issue for over a year, cant receive emails from atwar when i ask for password change or smth. But good that its gonna be resolved!

What I'm talking about only started happening within the last few weeks. If you haven't received atWar emails in over a year it must be due to some other cause.

Kirjoittanut Zoe, 25.02.2021 at 09:39

Sue them. I don't know how the US justice system works. But, you could claim lost revenue due to them not letting you advertise, and if you win (which you probably will, because this looks quite shady) they'll pay the court fees (I think that's how it works in the US). But again, I don't know how expensive it will be to take them to court. It seems that UCEPROTECT is no doubt, an extortion scheme. If Microsoft suddenly blacklisted google on it's firewall and then asked for a fee, then they wouldn't even exist anymore.

You should at least report it somewhere (maybe FCC?). You could even try getting a lawyer to see if you can fuck them over somehow, or at least get some perspective.

I would really, really love to sue them, but, sadly, lawsuits are fucking expensive. Plus with the whole international aspect (since those guys are based in Switzerland) would make it even more so. It's probably not feasible for me.

Digital Ocean is a big company, they've got plenty of money for lawyers... we need to get somebody like them to sue the bastards for us.

Kirjoittanut Sid, 25.02.2021 at 15:34

Sueing is for the wealthy, Dave might be a mega-millionaire but he's not Jeff Bezos.

^^ facts

Kirjoittanut Cipher_Trap, 25.02.2021 at 17:28

One can make money by randomly blacklisting IP's all willy-nilly like and all servers from a provider? I am in the wrong business. More seriously, people should complain to Microsoft and GMX about using a service such as UCEPROTECTL3. That's just extortion.

Do you have stats for At-War users' email client? @outlook.com @hotmail.com "Now that is a name I haven't heard in a long time"

Yup. I'm in the wrong business too.

Good question about stats, so I checked. We have:

Total registered users on atWar (as of today): 718,129
Of those, total who have provided an email address: 604,121

Of the email addresses provided, common providers include:
@gmail: 292,389 (48%)
@hotmail: 118,544 (20%)
@yahoo: 44,348 (7%)
@live.com: 13,130 (2%)
@outlook: 11,887 (2%)
@yandex: 7,673 (1%)
@mail.ru: 5,234 (<1%)
@gmx: 3,790 (<1%)
@aol: 3,721 (<1%)
@icloud: 3,081 (<1%)

Thankfully GMX is a pretty tiny percentage. Also @outlook and @live.com (another Microsoft service I forgot about) are pretty small. Hotmail is a bitch tho... 20% of people still use that for some reason. (No offense to any hotmail users, but seriously?)

Kirjoittanut Dave, 25.02.2021 at 18:56

@hotmail: 118,544 (20%)
Thankfully GMX is a pretty tiny percentage. Also @outlook and @live.com (another Microsoft service I forgot about) are pretty small. Hotmail is a bitch tho... 20% of people still use that for some reason. (No offense to any hotmail users, but seriously?)

What?
The clear sign of how old we became is that hotmail seems like antique provider These hotmail users are probably 2011-2014 registered players, hardly anyone uses hotmail nowadays. (can a new hotmail adress even be registered now?)

I am the 20%!

Hotmail i think is dead now every new user is @outlook.

Also agreed with pavle those hotmail accounts are the old guys like me. They also most likely ones to come back for a check if a email is sent to them due to nostalgia.

What's wrong with using @hotmail?

Kirjoittanut Dave, 25.02.2021 at 18:56

Kirjoittanut Cipher_Trap, 25.02.2021 at 17:28

One can make money by randomly blacklisting IP's all willy-nilly like and all servers from a provider? I am in the wrong business. More seriously, people should complain to Microsoft and GMX about using a service such as UCEPROTECTL3. That's just extortion.

Do you have stats for At-War users' email client? @outlook.com @hotmail.com "Now that is a name I haven't heard in a long time"

Yup. I'm in the wrong business too.

Good question about stats, so I checked. We have:

Total registered users on atWar (as of today): 718,129
Of those, total who have provided an email address: 604,121

Of the email addresses provided, common providers include:
@gmail: 292,389 (48%)
@hotmail: 118,544 (20%)
@yahoo: 44,348 (7%)
@live.com: 13,130 (2%)
@outlook: 11,887 (2%)
@yandex: 7,673 (1%)
@mail.ru: 5,234 (<1%)
@gmx: 3,790 (<1%)
@aol: 3,721 (<1%)
@icloud: 3,081 (<1%)

Thankfully GMX is a pretty tiny percentage. Also @outlook and @live.com (another Microsoft service I forgot about) are pretty small. Hotmail is a bitch tho... 20% of people still use that for some reason. (No offense to any hotmail users, but seriously?)

I have been using hotmail since i was a child and because of that hotmail is my spam e mail that i use in games probably it's same for most of the users.

Kirjoittanut JUGERS2, 25.02.2021 at 20:02

Also agreed with pavle those hotmail accounts are the old guys like me. They also most likely ones to come back for a check if a email is sent to them due to nostalgia.

true true.

I like my gmails

Im hotmail xaxaxaxaxa damn im old :C

But yea i wouldent pay that shit, choose whatever option is best for you, i dont really care about not geting emails from atwar xD dont think i ever have anyways

I updated my original post because GMX is no longer blocking us. However the issue still is ongoing with Microsoft-hosted email servers (hotmail, outlook.com, live.com, msn.com, etc.)

Can you add some kind of two-factor verification?

Happy to hear that GMX doesn't block this anymore. But Microsoft... it's going to be hard to even reach out to them.

Kirjoittanut Dave, 24.02.2021 at 04:42

Some of you may have noticed you are not receiving emails from atWar currently... things like password reset emails, turn notifications, etc. This is NOT a technical problem on atWar's end. Rather, its an issue being caused by a certain 3rd party which we are fighting against. (More about this below, if you want to know...)

So far we know users of the following email services are affected by this:

• Microsoft-hosted email services (like @outlook.com, @hotmail.com, @live.com, @msn.com etc.)
  
• GMX (@gmx.net, @gmx.de, @gmx.fr, etc.) Update Feb.25: GMX responded and said they are accepting our emails again.
  

If your email address is at one of these services, you will not be able to receive emails from us until this issue is resolved. If you need to contact us, I recommend using the atWar chat system and asking a moderator for assistance. (You can use the /report command in game.) If you can't login due to a forgotten password, use a guest or alt account to reach a moderator.

(Other email services like gmail are so far working fine...)

---

Why is this happening?

It's because the IP address of atWar's mail server is currently blacklisted by one particular spam blacklist, called UCEPROTECTL3.

There are probably 30+ popular spam blacklists maintained by various organizations... all except UCEPROTECT show that we are clean. That's because atWar doesn't send spam. We do everything the right way, according to the rules.

In fact, even UCEPROTECT says that it is not a ban against us specifically -- they decided to ban our entire host! Quote from their own website:

Lainaa:

As you should know now: It is not you, it is your complete provider which got UCEPROTECT-Level 3 listed.
Your IP 104.248.84.59 was NOT part of abusive action, but you are the one that has freely chosen your provider.
By tolerating or ignoring that your provider doesn't care about abusers you are indirectly also supporting the global spam with your money.
Seen from this point of view, you really shouldn't wonder about the consequences.

How's that for a wonderfully arrogant statement?

Our mail server is hosted at Digital Ocean. If you're not familiar with it, Digital Ocean is one of the largest cloud server providers in the United States. In other words, because we happen to use one of the largest providers in the U.S. (with over 2.4 million IP addresses included in this ban, according to them), we are somehow part of the problem and must be punished?



...But wait, they are so nice they give us a solution to "fix" this. All we have to do is "whitelist" our IP address with them, all for the low low price of just 25 CHF per month!



I ask you, how is this legal? They create the problem, then offer to fix it for a "fee"... is that not the very definition of blackmail?

Needless to say, I will not be paying it. I do not respond to blackmail, end of story. So what else am I doing about it? Well, at the moment I've been contacting the various email providers' (Microsoft, GMX) postmasters asking them to 1) unban our IP address and 2) consider not using UCEPROTECT at all. Like I said, there are many more reputable spam blacklists to choose from.

I'm not too hopeful at this point, but it's a start. After all, my company is just a tiny speck on the internet landscape.... nobody really cares about us. However we are certainly not the only ones affected by this issue... if enough backlash is generated against UCEPROTECT, the situation will be resolved for everyone sooner or later.

Like I said, every server hosted at Digital Ocean is effected by this, which means 2+ million servers. So far Digital Ocean doesn't seem to want to get involved -- their support has been dismissive about doing anything. I think the really correct solution is for the various email providers to stop using UCEPROTECT completely -- they are behaving like complete and total scammers.

If not, then we *could* use an email sending service (like SendGrid, MailGun, etc.) but I prefer not to since 1) those services cost money and 2) it seems ridiculous in principle that we should have to give up our own perfectly working email server just because 1 random somebody says so.

Another option is I could move our mail server to a different provider other than Digital Ocean. I actually maintain several mail servers already at various providers, and the non-Digital Ocean ones have not had any problem like this so far. I would rather not do this because 1) its a lot of unnecessary work and 2) again, its ridiculous that we should have to move our server just because 1 random somebody says so. However if it comes to be that there really is no other solution, I may end up moving the server (and grumbling about it, but whatever). I would rather spend the time to do that, than pay anything to these UCEPROTECT blackmailers.

Such are the joys of being in the tech business.

from what i think that isn't blackmail. they are ppl who try to extract money from you. might be some kind of scammer. and reality check i also started receiving emails from aw now but i had earlier muted it. meh seems gud