Posted inExperience / Information Technology / Thank You Sir May I Have Another

Greylisting

seasoned_geek by seasoned_geek

Here’s an idea! Let’s add a new feature called Greylisting, set the default to be on, and push the update out without a word. What could possibly go wrong?

Back on 3/25/2021 at around noon I sent an email to a pimp I keep in touch with. (For those that don’t work in IT, person at consulting firm. They arrange a date, collect a fee . . . you get the idea.) I called him a few hours later because I was surprised he had not responded. He didn’t get the email. I got a phone call from him early the following morning telling me that email showed up at 1am.

A few days later there was another pimp talking to me on the phone pushing me to get a signed RTR (Right to Represent) back to him so he could present me to the client. Well, “signed” is a bit of an overstatement in today’s world. They send an email and you reply with “I confirm.” We were talking on the phone. I was replying to his email which had just come in. About half an hour later I forwarded his email to my almost never used GMail account. Replying from there got to him right away.

This morning was the last straw. I bought some stuff on eBay about 7am. I had been buying other stuff on eBay this past week and the sale confirms showed up right away. It was well after noon and I had seen nothing. In the words of Popeye “That’s all I can stands I can’t stands no more!”

CPanel menu

The boys and girls developing CPanel decided to add a new feature called “Greylisting.” This shiny new feature randomly hangs onto email from, apparently, every source that isn’t Gmail until the wee hours of the morning. They pushed this out with basically a word to no one. I didn’t find out about it until I chatted with support.

The default is ON for all domains managed by your CPanel.

What could possibly go wrong, right?

So, log into your CPanel account. If you are like me that means logging into your hosting service then choosing CPanel from their menu. You are looking for that little envelop with the exclamation mark in it that says “Configure Greylisting.” It’s in the email section of your CPanel menu. Click it and turn Greylisting off for all your domains.

If you want to read more about technical recruiters (pimps) you can start here.

Roland Hughes started his IT career in the early 1980s. He quickly became a consultant and president of Logikal Solutions, a software consulting firm specializing in OpenVMS application and C++/Qt touchscreen/embedded Linux development. Early in his career he became involved in what is now called cross platform development. Given the dearth of useful books on the subject he ventured into the world of professional author in 1995 writing the first of the "Zinc It!" book series for John Gordon Burke Publisher, Inc.

A decade later he released a massive (nearly 800 pages) tome "The Minimum You Need to Know to Be an OpenVMS Application Developer" which tried to encapsulate the essential skills gained over what was nearly a 20 year career at that point. From there "The Minimum You Need to Know" book series was born.

Three years later he wrote his first novel "Infinite Exposure" which got much notice from people involved in the banking and financial security worlds. Some of the attacks predicted in that book have since come to pass. While it was not originally intended to be a trilogy, it became the first book of "The Earth That Was" trilogy:
Infinite Exposure
Lesedi - The Greatest Lie Ever Told
John Smith - Last Known Survivor of the Microsoft Wars

When he is not consulting Roland Hughes posts about technology and sometimes politics on his blog. He also has regularly scheduled Sunday posts appearing on the Interesting Authors blog.