Stupid forum email restrictions?

[stroberaver]

Umm, not really sure where to post this, but this seems like the closest forum.

I'm in need of some detailed technical advice on a new, good quality battery charger (I use several sets of NiMHs in torches and my flashgun, as well as the crappy ones in my cordless phone and various other bits and pieces - and wanted to know which charger would be best for reconditioning/analysing them and maximising their capacity).

So I tried to register at the candlepower forums using the usual address I use for forums and stuff (it's a blueyonder address). And I get the message that "The administrator has banned your email address. To contact the administrator click here".

When I click "here", the relevant part is this:

If you get a notification while trying to register that your email address has been banned, try another email client such as gmail, hotmail or yahoo. There are many reasons why you would receive this notification that have nothing to do with your own personal email address. It is your email client. I cannot and will not "fix" that. Try another email client.

Now I'm no expert on emails and forum software... but is this not complete bull? There's nothing wrong with the blueyonder address I use for forums and mailing lists! I have no desire to create a new gmail or yahoo address just for this forum - it's just yet another address to look after.

[SiM]

Set up a new gmail address and forward all mail to your blueyonder. That will take about 5 mins to set up

[stroberaver]

Oh, I know there's ways round it - thanks nonetheless.

It's that the explanation as to why my email is "banned" smelt... well, like a cow farmer's yard. Is there any valid technical reason behind their claims, or is it in fact just that they've banned an entire, legitimate and widely used email domain?

[Funkstar]

For a start, that error message sounds like complete rubbish to me.

Gmail, Hotmail and Yahoo are not email clients, Outlook, Outlook Express and Thunderbird are email clients. And how on earth would the client have any effect on a forum.

No, it sounds like the owner has banned all blueyonder addresses for some reason.

Seems stupid to me. Forums are more likely to ban Yahoo, hotmail or gmail domains because of their free nature and spam on them.

[SiM]

What the webmaster said is complete bull actually. It doesn't make sense lol.
I guess when they tried to banned one person with a blueyonder email, they ended up banned all blueyonder emails...

Well after you have learned about battery chargers, make sure you come back here and share your knowledge with us...

[sammyc]

there is quite a lot of useful stuff on Battery Logic UK my experience.. have heaps of info & clear answers to FAQ and they say they'll answer any queries so they might be worth a look. i think it's all uniross but most of the info applies to rechargeables in general shd think even if you then look at other places.
out of interest - anyone tried usbcells?

[dave87]

You might find the forum admin has had a problem with the activation emails being blocked on blueyonder's spam filters. Hence blocking it. Not condoning it, but might explain it.

[peterb]

It is still badly worded - the message implies that it is the mail client that is at fault. Perhaps the authentication e mail bounced at some point in the delivery chain. If that is the case, the message is pointless as it points the user in the wrong direction.

[Phil_P]

And how on earth would the client have any effect on a forum.

It is still badly worded - the message implies that it is the mail client that is at fault. Perhaps the authentication e mail bounced at some point in the delivery chain. If that is the case, the message is pointless as it points the user in the wrong direction.

Agreed, but to address Funkstar's comment above, it is perfectly conceivable for an email server to reject mail from mis-configured email clients. My own email server frequently takes exception to mail from mis-configured Outlook and Outlook Express clients that have been mis-configured and don't HELO with a FQDN hostname as required by the RFC specifications. In fact, checking my logs shows that about 30% of all incoming mail to my server (~1000 messages per day) is rejected on this basis so I would say that mis-configured email clients are far more common than one might at first suspect. It's useful to drop mail from such mis-configured email clients as most are spambots, not genuine/legitimate mail clients, but it does happen.

For example, here's one from earlier today in my logs trying to HELO with my own server's IP address:

Mar 24 02:17:54 jessie postfix/smtpd[9502]: connect from unknown[193.200.50.2]
Mar 24 02:17:54 jessie postfix/smtpd[9502]: NOQUEUE: reject: RCPT from unknown[193.200.50.2]: 504 5.5.2 <xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx>: Helo command rejected: need fully-qualified hostname; from=<support@microsoft.com> to=<support@microsoft.com> proto=SMTP helo=<xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx>