I am responding as the postmaster for Timico. I am aware that our out going mail relays (which include the IP address you show) is almost always in the list at backscatter.org – that’s currently the only list it’s in, so can’t comment about the 2nd list. I’d like to point out that Tref’s post is very little to do with policies for mail relays, and more to do with MXes. In small installations often the responsibilities blur, but the rules and restrictions for MXes is completely different. Due to the nature of our business, we relay mail for our customers who do often have poorly setup Exchange servers. These Exchange servers (I’m picking on exchange because 90% of the time, it’s Exchange) accept mail for non-existant users, and then generate NDRs and relay them out via our relays. We of course have a responsibility to our customers to deliver these emails – this is what puts us in backscatter.org, and we’ll likely to be there for a long time. I expect this is the case with many ISPs out going mail relays. This being said, Timico have been good enough to provide our team with the resources in both time and money to upgrade our entire mail platform – and part of this process is getting customers to fix their own mail servers. I have reduced the number of bounces we delivery significantly as part of this effort.

We do occasionally get spam relayed though our servers, as customers sometimes do get compromised – but we are quick to detect these issues and respond. As part of the new platform we are building, automatic systems will be put in place to aid in early detection of such problems. We handle many millions of mail connections a day across a range of legacy mail systems, so this isn’t a simple problem to solve – but we are getting there.

Timico are committed to reducing the spam issue, and as you can see we are putting significant effort into the problem. If anyone does have any concerns about the Timico mail systems, please email the postmaster team at postmaster@timico.net, or visit our postmaster website at http://postmaster.timico.net

I hardly feel you are qualified to give advice on spam best practices.