I’ve just spent about seven hours writing a long, detailed and evidence-based reply to a client who just receives nothing but BS, delay tactics and obfuscation from a South African mail service provider named Afrihost. (Please see here for the details of the never-ending Xneelo debacle, which is similar.) I am posting this here so that I can at least get some mileage out of this waste of seven hours of my life, on a Sunday.
Names and addresses have been changed or redacted to protect the guilty.
Hi Bob, Thanks for your email. You only sent one side of a supposed email exchange with Afrihost; there was no "back-and-forth" so I see no evidence, namely domains (besides your own domains, which are only one side of the equation, and hotmail.com), IP addresses, dates, times and (most importantly) bounce messages. In particular I see no evidence -- no *proof* -- on Afrihost's side that what they are saying is true. Anybody can say and claim anything they want, but it's pointless if they don't back it up with evidence. Unlike in politics, everything I have said in the past about email and everything I will say in the future (including below) is technical and backed up by hard evidence. Lying to paying clients is a complete waste of time and will not end well, but it seems that the support departments of bigger companies like Afrihost are schooled in BS and delay tactics, rather than providing actual support or admitting fault and actually fixing their broken systems. This email is long (I won't apologise) because email is complicated and this message is based on the work that Afrihost won't do to address your one puny complaint because they have a lots of other complaining customers to BS with their lies. The hours (about six so far today just to answer your email full of Afrihost lies) of work *I* have to do to give you a full and honest answer and explanation is something that doesn't increase their share price, so they won't do it. But my efforts seem to be worthless because everyone seems to believe BS these days rather than concrete proof. Here is my actual evidence / hard proof: * https://multirbl.valli.org/lookup/ucebox.co.za.html * This is a domain-based list of mail servers that are in blacklists, and this is a search based on ucebox.co.za, which shows their domain in one blacklist. * https://multirbl.valli.org/lookup/smtp.ucebox.co.za.html * This is the same as above, but with the alleged name of their sending (SMTP) server (definitions below) provided in the Afrihost message below, and the results show that their SMTP server is in the same blacklist. * https://multirbl.valli.org/lookup/197.242.159.57.html * The sub-domain smtp.ucebox.co.za resolves to twelve different IP addresses. This is a search for one of those IP addresses, and that IP address is in five blacklists! * https://multirbl.valli.org/lookup/41.76.215.28.html * Like the search above, this is a search for another of their twelve IP addresses -- both this one and the one above are random choices because I'm not repeating the search twelve times when the results for *two* of them are bad enough. This IP address is in six blacklists! A quick glance shows that the blacklists all seem to be the same (which is not surprising), so they are not in a total of 13 blacklists, just the greatest number of 6. In comparison, NinerNet's mail server is in three: https://multirbl.valli.org/lookup/178.62.195.26.html The point is not to compare numbers and say that our number is smaller and so we're better; the point is to say that we're aware of the problem, and the information we have provided on our blogs ( https://blog.niner.net/tag/email and https://status.niner.net/tag/mail ) goes towards explaining certain things. In there we explain our presence in two of the blacklists (Ascams and UCEPROTECT), which cover every single one of the IP addresses owned by our data centre; it is *not* because our mail server has done anything to be in that blacklist. The only full remedy to that problem is for us to move our mail server to another data centre with another company, which is not something that we can do on a whim and without considerable forethought and planning, but which we *will* be doing on the next move. What we do to overcome this problem is to redirect all email to certain domains through our secondary SMTP server; problem solved. It's impossible for us to know in advance what those destination domains are, but as soon as one is reported by one of our clients we direct all future messages to that domain through our secondary SMTP server. Problem *immediately* and *fully* solved. (By the way, hotmail.com is one of those domains, which is why you'll receive this via our secondary outbound/SMTP mail server.) The third blacklist (Polspam) is a Polish blacklist. It's a bit more complicated to determine why we're on that list, but my *educated* (I emphasise) guess is that we're on it for the exact same reason we're on the other two blacklists, because all of our data centre's IP addresses are blacklisted. Have you asked Afrihost why they are on at least six blacklists and what they're doing about it? I believe the answer to that question is "no", and even if you asked you will *not* get an answer, or you will be told in relatively polite terms that you don't know anything about email and that they are perfect and NinerNet is the problem ... the aforementioned BS. This is similar to the issue with another South African ISP, which we have documented exhaustively at: status.niner.net/2024/01/19/email-messages-from-xneelo-formerly-hetzner-south-africa-senders-blocked We don't get into these arguments with non-South African ISPs and mail service providers, so I'm forced to come to the conclusion that South African's don't give a damn. Definitions: * Blacklist (also "blocklist" for those that want to be politically correct): A list of servers -- usually based on their IP addresses, not domains -- that have sent spam or malware in the recent past. The full definition is broader than that (as I've partially explained above) but if you want a longer explanation than this already long email I suggest you use an Internet search engine I refer to below. Blacklists exist to remove servers from the email system that have shown problematic behaviour in the *recent* past so that legitimate receiving mail servers -- such as NinerNet's -- don't have to process "junk" email, and legitimate email receivers -- such as you -- don't have to read and process junk email. * BS: This is about as profane as I will get in communications with a client, although in situations like this it's getting more and more difficult not to turn the air blue. It's an adjective, a noun, a verb and probably various other parts of speech. If you're unclear on the meaning, that's what Internet search engines are for. * SMTP: Simple Mail Transfer Protocol. This protocol is how mail servers communicate with one another, and the term "SMTP" is also used as an adjective. * Various other colour lists: They exist, but neither Afrihost's domains nor IP addresses are in any, so I won't get into what they are and are not. I took a look at [YOUR WEBSITE]. I note that (assuming that's you) you're involved in "Compliance & Business Solutions", and that, "[You] believe that great businesses are built on strong systems, clear strategy, and full compliance." Email is all about "compliance" with "standards" which, as benign as that word sounds, are actually the non-negotiable "rules" that have to be followed to get an email message from point A to point B. Afrihost have made all sorts of claims in the email you forwarded to me, but they have not told you how you can check on those claims. On the other hand, NinerNet has shown you all the third-party evidence that backs up the claims I've made. I will address some of the things they have said: * "We’ve confirmed that the messages from [YOUR EXTERNALLY HOSTED EMAIL ADDRESS] are successfully sent and accepted by the outbound mail relay (smtp.ucebox.co.za) with a 250 OK response, indicating successful handoff.": * While I'm willing to accept that someone has made a mistake in their rush to get to the next complaint from one of their customers and I don't want to be pedantic, an "outbound mail relay" does not "accept" email messages (as far as this issue is concerned), it offers/sends them. The "250 OK response" is what they see in the logs on their mail server, but since they didn't actually provide the specific lines of the logs (with dates and times) NinerNet has absolutely no way of correlating their claims against the corresponding lines in the logs of our mail server. This is how auditing works, as you would very well know from the list of qualifications on your website. * "Additionally, the same emails are being successfully delivered to [HOTMAIL ADDRESS], which confirms there’s no issue on our end with sending or authentication (SPF, DKIM, and DMARC all pass": * Again, NinerNet is not Hotmail and doesn't know how Hotmail servers work. It does *not* confirm *anything* other than the fact that Hotmail and NinerNet handle email from blacklisted IP addresses differently. And they didn't tell you how to confirm that their claims that their "SPF, DKIM, and DMARC" all pass. I took a quick look at some of their public DNS records -- did I mention how many hours I've already spent on this reply? -- and at least one of them are broken. It's not a significant one, but if they can't get one of them right how and why should I or you assume that they got the rest of them right?! * "You may check if there is [sic] any server-side filters or rules that might be rejecting, flagging, or silently discarding these messages. if not, you may whitelist the domain at the [YOUR DOMAIN] side and check again.": * This is a good idea. I have checked whatever blacklists you might have in place through the control panel on the mail server and you don't seem to be blocking anything relevant, but you will have to log into the webmail to see if there are any filters in place there that could be causing a problem. I have looked for ucebox.co.za and the IP addresses that smtp.ucebox.co.za uses in our server-wide blacklists, and they are not there. That means that if email from their servers to our server are bouncing -- that hasn't explicitly been stated -- then they're bouncing because of the blacklists their servers are in. This means that the blacklists are working as intended and as advertised, which I consider to be a good thing. While in the control panel I had a look at the logs of email you've received at [YOUR DOMAIN], and I note four recent email messages successfully received from [YOUR EXTERNALLY HOSTED EMAIL ADDRESS]: * RE: Bank confirmation letter, Lease agreement and Invoices. * 2025-07-26 11:44:09 CAT * TEST * 2025-07-27 12:23:03 CAT * Last Test * 2025-07-27 12:23:15 CAT * test new * 2025-07-27 17:08:37 CAT Those were all successfully received, which makes me wonder why I have spent six hours writing this email. For that reason I will end this message here and claim, like Afrihost, that there is no problem. Craig On Sun, 2025-07-27 at 15:07 +0000, [NINERNET CLIENT] wrote: > Hi Craig, > > Trust you are well? Please see below emails and my back-and-forth > exchange with Afrihost. None of my emails from my [EXTERNALLY HOSTED DOMAIN] > domain is being received by our [NINERNET-HOSTED DOMAIN]. are you able to check > into it please? > > Thanks and Regards, > > [NINERNET CLIENT] > [PHONE NUMBER] > > > > From: Afrihost <hosting@afrihost.com> > Sent: 27 July 2025 16:59 > To: [NINERNET AND AFRIHOST CLIENT] > Subject: [#PXQ-982-73116]: blocked emails > > Hello there. > > Following up on the issue regarding non-delivery of emails to > [NINERNET CLIENT]: > > We’ve confirmed that the messages from [AFRIHOST-HOSTED EMAIL ADDRESS] > are successfully sent and accepted by the outbound mail relay > (smtp.ucebox.co.za) with a 250 OK response, indicating successful > handoff. > > Additionally, the same emails are being successfully delivered to > [CLIENT'S HOTMAIL ADDRESS], which confirms there’s no issue on our end > with sending or authentication (SPF, DKIM, and DMARC all pass > > You may check if there is any server-side filters or rules that might > be rejecting, flagging, or silently discarding these messages. if not > , you may whitelist the domain at the [CLIENT'S DOMAIN] side and check > again. > > Regards, > Sreehari RS > Check out some of our hosting tutorials by going to the following > link: > https://answers.afrihost.com/video-hosting -- NinerNet Communications | Craig Hartnett * https://www.niner.net | [EMAIL ADDRESS] Phone: +1 604 630 1772 | +260 96 209 8871 | 1 855 NINERNET
We do not have these discussions with our clients about ISPs and mail service providers in Europe, North America, South America, Asia or Oceania. Incompetence seems to be concentrated in South Africa.
