Judu,

Can you please try connecting to verizon manually via telnet to send them an email, and record and post back the session results?

From a DOS prompt on your SMTP server (it's important you perform this from your SMTP server itself), can you issue the commands in red below? Verizon's response is in blue.

Roberto F.
LogSat Software

telnet relay.verizon.net 25
  220 sc003pub.verizon.net MailPass SMTP server v1.1.1 - 121803235448JY ready Wed, 4 Feb 2004 22:01:36 -0600
EHLO judu
  250-sc003pub.verizon.net
MAIL FROM:<someone@ bhs1.org>
  250 Sender <someone@ bhs1.org> OK
RCPT TO:postmaster@verizon.net
  250 Recipient <postmaster@verizon.net> Ok
DATA
  354 Ok Send data ending with <CRLF>.<CRLF>
From: someone@bhs1.org
To: postmaster@verizon.com
Subject: test

test
.
  250 Message received: 20040205040136.FKOZ6907.mta015.verizon.net@judu
QUIT

I too have been plagued by the blocking of sending emails to verizon.net customers from my domain bhs1.org

I have un checked the " Reject if empty "Mail From"" and still having problems.

Running Spam Filter v.1.2.0.212 (REGISTERED)

Any assistance would be greatly appreciated, thanks

Judu

Your message did not reach some or all of the intended recipients.

      Subject: 
      Sent: 2/4/2004 6:04 PM

The following recipient(s) could not be reached:

      abuse@verizon.net on 2/4/2004 6:05 PM
            Unable to deliver the message due to a communications failure
 The MTS-ID of the original message is: c=US;a= ;p=Berkshire Health;l=BHSNT-040204230419Z-94515
            MSEXCH:IMS:Berkshire Health Systems:BHSMAIL:BHSNT 3550 (000B09AA) 550 You are not allowed to send mail:sc002pub.verizon.net

i noted the same problems with lamer postmaster on several european isp`s too.

so i changed the ehlo banner (welcome) of logsat in :

.this systems complies strict with rfc 821/22smtp and rfc 1912rdns, but blank senders are dropped.

afterwards, no more questions asked by lamer postmaster anymore.... :-)

Well after months I have finally found out why our domain is not allowed to send email to any verizon.net address!  Back in Oct 03 they started using Brightmail and started performing a 'sender verification' check.  This is not an SMTP VRFY but rather their system once you do a MAIL FROM to them instantly makes a connection back to your domain to verify that it can send a message to the sender!  But whichever moron configured this forgot to configure the test system to put a 'MAIL FROM' email address in the test, so when Spamfilter ISP blocks the request because Mail from is empty, it immediately causes Verizon to block accepting the message you are trying to send the Verizon endloser.

Since Logsat Spamfilter ISP has in realtime has an activity log, I was able to attempt a connection to relay.verizon.net, put a MAIL FROM: ddd@alexanders.net and on my Spamfilter it displays the error!

01/09/04 13:31:38:718 -- (1928) Resolving 206.46.170.180 - sc004pub.verizon.net
01/09/04 13:31:38:718 -- (1928) - Empty Mail From -
01/09/04 13:31:38:718 -- (1928) 206.46.170.180 - Mail from:  To: ddd@alexanders.net will be disconnected
01/09/04 13:31:38:718 -- (1928) Disconnect

So now how do we get Verizon to fix their end so we can continue to refuse 'null sender' addresses?

For the time being I have configured Spamfilter ISP to quarantine blank senders, but I would rather have it not quarantine such messages and 'refuse the connection'.

What is so idiotic is Verizon is checking and making sure our Mail-From is legit, yet they don't want to play by the same rules and allow us to do the same checking when their system does a test with a blank from address!