Fastmail and Namecheap Domain Setup Issue

[Gankaku]

Hi guys, long time no post

I have a setup that I've had forever. A domain at Namecheap, forwarded to my fastmail account. It's been like this for years, no issue.

Two days ago, I received a message from Namecheap: "Please be informed that the domain "Gankaku's domain" was locked due to the email abuse that caused a negative impact on our forwarding servers. To prevent further abusive activity we were forced to disable forwarding and lock the domain.

In order to have the domain unlocked, it is required to confirm that the issue will be handled and will not reoccur in the future. In particular, it is advised to unsubscribe from the sender mailbox."

They told me they will unlock it if I promised not to do it again. The thing is, I did not do anything. I never forward emails from this domain. I get a handful of email and a handful of spam from it. That's about it. It's all in my Fastmail inbox.

What can I do to make sure my domain isn't banned from Namecheap? Someone has done some email forwarding - they said it was 500 emails. So far, I'm getting canned messages from them, but I really want to talk to one of them. I don't think there's anything I can do specifically, but I'm asking here to see.

They told me to unsubscribe from the email, but I cannot see who sent emails because...they're not in my forwarded email folder, of course, and I haven't received a huge amount of emails to myself either. I asked them if they could give me the offending email address (I sign up to each website with a different name - website1@mydomain, website2@mydomain - but they did not respond to that question.

I thought domain providers were supposed to put something in place to prevent this, and not blame the customer and ask them to do something they cannot? Or am I wrong?

Thanks for any help.

[hadaso]

Originally Posted by Gankaku

... A domain at Namecheap, forwarded to my fastmail account. It's been like this for years, no issue.
... I never forward emails from this domain. ... It's all in my Fastmail inbox.
...
Someone has done some email forwarding - they said it was 500 emails. ....

This is confusing. You say that you are forwarding the mail sent to that domain to your Fastmail account. You also say that you never forward mail from this domain. This seems to contradict the first statement, unless the second statement is about forwarding the email received at Fastmail to yet another destination.
Then there's also a statement about someone that has forwarded about 500 messages, and it's not clear who thet someone is, and from where to where those 500 messages were forwarded. Were they forwarded from someone to your domain (that is to Namecheaps's mail servers that are then supposed to forward it to Fastmail) or were they forwarded from Fastmail to elsewhere (after being received at Namecheap for yur domain and forwarded by Namecheap to Fastmail) or are they referring to 500 messages that were forwarded from Namecheap to Fastmail (after being received at Namecheap that handles receipt of mail to your domain. In this case the someone that has forwarded the 500 messages was Namecheap).


All my domains are registered at Namecheap and are received at Fastmail, but I don't use Namecheap's forwarding. I host the domains at Fastmail (including DNS for the domains) so I don't know much about Namecheap's email forwarding.

[trikotret]

Originally Posted by Gankaku

Hi guys, long time no post

I have a setup that I've had forever. A domain at Namecheap, forwarded to my fastmail account. It's been like this for years, no issue.

Two days ago, I received a message from Namecheap: "Please be informed that the domain "Gankaku's domain" was locked due to the email abuse that caused a negative impact on our forwarding servers. To prevent further abusive activity we were forced to disable forwarding and lock the domain.

In order to have the domain unlocked, it is required to confirm that the issue will be handled and will not reoccur in the future. In particular, it is advised to unsubscribe from the sender mailbox."

They told me they will unlock it if I promised not to do it again. The thing is, I did not do anything. I never forward emails from this domain. I get a handful of email and a handful of spam from it. That's about it. It's all in my Fastmail inbox.

What can I do to make sure my domain isn't banned from Namecheap? Someone has done some email forwarding - they said it was 500 emails. So far, I'm getting canned messages from them, but I really want to talk to one of them. I don't think there's anything I can do specifically, but I'm asking here to see.

They told me to unsubscribe from the email, but I cannot see who sent emails because...they're not in my forwarded email folder, of course, and I haven't received a huge amount of emails to myself either. I asked them if they could give me the offending email address (I sign up to each website with a different name - website1@mydomain, website2@mydomain - but they did not respond to that question.

I thought domain providers were supposed to put something in place to prevent this, and not blame the customer and ask them to do something they cannot? Or am I wrong?

Thanks for any help.

Use Cloudflare. They also have free email forwarding that I use with them. I also forward my emails to fastmail. I got over 300 forwarded emails in a few days with no problem.

[Gankaku]

Originally Posted by hadaso

This is confusing. You say that you are forwarding the mail sent to that domain to your Fastmail account. You also say that you never forward mail from this domain. This seems to contradict the first statement, unless the second statement is about forwarding the email received at Fastmail to yet another destination..

I was so confused too. I still am a little. I had a catchall sending all mail to Fastmail. Then yesterday afternoon, after this post, it seems they actually turned it off after they "opened my account" (still doesn't send the email to fastmail.) They accused me of forwarding too many emails, or getting too many email forwards. I tried to get clarification, but it never came.

They said I have to re-set up my email forwarding and promise that it never happens again. I told them I've followed their TOS since day one and didn't do anything wrong.

Aren't they supposed to catch stuff like this themselves (too many emails from one address, for example) and just cut them off? I can't do anything about it, because I have no info on where they came from....

Anyway I guess I'll be working on this today, setting up forwarding again.

Also you asked "Were they forwarded from someone to your domain (that is to Namecheaps's mail servers that are then supposed to forward it to Fastmail)" -- I took their email to mean this. Then they told me, one of your email addresses has too many emails going to it. I told them I have years and years of websites - unless they tell me which it is, I can't do anything about it. They acted like I was supposed to know, but I never received them. Maybe Fastmail filtered them out. I just don't know.

[Gankaku]

Originally Posted by trikotret

Use Cloudflare. They also have free email forwarding that I use with them. I also forward my emails to fastmail. I got over 300 forwarded emails in a few days with no problem.

Thank you. I love Namecheap, but I will keep that in mind if it happens again. I will have to move all my domains if it does. How am I supposed to stop spoofing or whatever it's called - I thought they were supposed to do that on their end...

[trikotret]

Originally Posted by Gankaku

I was so confused too. I still am a little. I had a catchall sending all mail to Fastmail. Then yesterday afternoon, after this post, it seems they actually turned it off after they "opened my account" (still doesn't send the email to fastmail.) They accused me of forwarding too many emails, or getting too many email forwards. I tried to get clarification, but it never came.

They said I have to re-set up my email forwarding and promise that it never happens again. I told them I've followed their TOS since day one and didn't do anything wrong.

Aren't they supposed to catch stuff like this themselves (too many emails from one address, for example) and just cut them off? I can't do anything about it, because I have no info on where they came from....

Anyway I guess I'll be working on this today, setting up forwarding again.

Just switch the cloudflare.