Abuse Reports – Roller Network

Before reporting a suspected abuse incident, please take a moment and read about our services and how this impacts abuse reports. Any violation of our acceptable use policy should be reported to <abuse@rollernet.us>. You must include the full headers of the offending message in any abuse report. Reports that do not contain sufficient information, or are excessively redacted, will be ignored.

Important: Any message originated by our services (such as SMTP Submission) will have various “X-Rollernet*” headers. If it doesn’t, or if they’re forged, we did not handle the message. These headers must be included with abuse reports. Reports that do not include complete headers will be ignored.

How the Roller Network Works

Since we offer a variety of SMTP services, our mail servers will often appear between the final destination mail server and the originating mail server. When reading headers containing our servers, consider the system that connected to us, not that we connected to you.

Header Analysis

Every message that is processed by the Roller Network is tagged with an extra header that includes the address of this page. An example of “Received” headers from an SMTP Redirection session between gmail and a test domain is as follows:

For every message that passes through the Roller Network, we add an “X-Rollernet-Abuse” header. Other X-Rollernet headers may appear depending on how the message was handled. In the example above, mail.mattinen.org is the final destination. Our server, mail2.rollernet.us, is acting as an intermediary. You can verify this is an SMTP Redirection domain by checking the MX records:

;; QUESTION SECTION
:;rollernet.us.              IN      MX

;; ANSWER SECTION:
rollernet.us.       43200   IN      MX      10 mail.rollernet.us.
rollernet.us.       43200   IN      MX      10 mail2.rollernet.us.

As you can see, the final destination as far as gmail is concerned is the Roller Network, but the account owner must have SMTP Redirection configured for the domain to send it to its real destination. SMTP Redirection is typically used to send mail to a nonstandard port or to hide the real destination server for any number of reasons.

This is NOT a result of an open relay; if the domain were to be disabled in the account manager, the servers would return a “relaying denied” error.

SMTP Redirection Abuse

As with anything on the internet, there are those who try to come up with creative ways to abuse services.

If you suspect someone is using our services to relay spam to your server utilizing our SMTP redirection service, please notify us immediately. A good indication of this type of abuse is seeing that our servers accepted mail for a domain that you don’t control, but we’re trying to relay those messages to your server.

Open Relay Abuse Reports

At no time will the Roller Network ever accept a message that is not destined for a domain entered by an account holder. If a message was relayed for a particular domain, someone entered it in our database and probably has MX records pointed at our servers.

Most open relay reports we get are from online tests are trying to relay to them using a domain that they set up on their Roller Network account. Since we are configured to relay mail for that domain, these tests will falsely indicate an open relay.

If you have a Roller Network account, and you have set up domains for secondary MX, our mail servers will accept any mail that is destined for that domain. They will either relay it immediately if the primary MX is responding, or hold it in the queue to be relayed later. This is normal for a mail exchanger; it is not acting like an open relay. You can see this effect in action by removing (or disabling) domains in the account manager and trying to relay mail through our servers to your domain.

Abuse Reports for Originating Email

To report an account utilizing our SMTP Submission service as abusive (i.e. if they are spamming), you must include the full headers of the offending message. If we don’t have enough information to track the account that submitted the message, we can’t help you.

Stopping Spam: Enable Filtering

If you are having a spam problem through our servers you should consider enabling some of the filtering options available in the account manager. By default, all of our filtering options are disabled, and our servers will relay anything that is destined for a domain that has been configured for a mail service. Most of the abuse reports we receive are of this nature, and in cases like this, we suggest that the account owner should enable some filtering for their domains.

SMTP Bounce Messages and Joe Jobs

Please see our backscatter prevention policy.

Virus Reports

Due to the many options available with our filters, it is possible for the account owner to disable the anti-virus filter. Any filtering performed by the Roller Network is at the sole discretion of the account holder. If you are receiving unwanted viruses through email you should probably consider enabling the anti-virus filter.

Filing an Abuse Report

If you believe you have a valid abuse claim, please submit it to <abuse@rollernet.us. Make sure you include the entire message with full headers, any relevant log messages, and additional information you may have. Please indicate your time zone if it is not apparent in the logs or headers. Account holders will be able to access logging information through the account manager, but in some cases, we can provide more detailed information upon request.

When filing an abuse report, DO NOT use foul language, legal threats, or any other uncivil and offensive behavior. Reports that do are typically fake and we will ignore them. Our policy is to investigate and respond to all abuse reports within 7 days.