iBleugh

So, I use iBurst. I've mentioned this politely. They still have not managed to solve their open relay problem, or even give me feedback on how its going. Tonight I'm emailing their customer support manager this:
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Dear Mr Hall,

I have repeatedly reported this particular issue to your iburst technical help desk - with no luck. It seems they either don't understand the problem, are completely incapable of fixing the problem, or simply don't care.

Many of my friends use Livejournal (www.livejournal.com), a blogging site. Much of my personal online activity revolves around reading and commenting on these blogs. Unfortunately, Livejournal does not allow me to comment, when I am connecting via iBurst. This is NOT a setting on my pc. I am NOT running any kind of mailserver. I can post comments quite happily from the same unit through my work link, just not through iBurst.

I have reported this error at least three times, most recently around November the 14th. A customer service consultant did phone me after that, to tell me that they were working on the problem, and then.....nothing.

The problem is still occuring - it seems at least one of your relays is an open relay, so anyone accessing the internet via that relay is banned from commenting in an attempt to reduce spam. This has to be affecting more people than just me.

This is the error message I get while trying to upload comments to the livejournal site:

One or more errors occurred processing your request. Please go back, correct the necessary information, and submit your data again.

* Your IP address (196.2.124.251) is detected as an open proxy (a common source of spam) so comment access is denied. If you do not believe you're accessing the net through an open proxy, please contact your ISP or this site's tech support to help resolve the problem.

This ip address resolves as:
Server: ns-cache-01.jhb.wbs.co.za
Address: 196.30.31.193

Name: wbs-196-2-124-251.wbs.co.za
Address: 196.2.124.251

Definately your problem.

Sincerely,

Why I don't comment

Most of my friends have livejournal accounts. This appears to be an
accident of history. Anyway, I use iBurst to access the 'net. (Because Telkom, don't-get-me-started, took over 5 MONTHS to install just a normal phone line in
our house, and an adsl line would have taken some months more). But iBurst apparently,
at least from my location, accesses the 'net via some dodgy relays. Sooo, if I try to post to a livejournal account, I get the following message:


Your IP address (196.2.124.251) is detected as an open proxy (a common source of spam) so comment access is denied. If you do not believe you're accessing the net through an open proxy, please contact your ISP or this site's tech support to help resolve the problem.


Now I have asked them to fix this, repeatedly - but it seems that they don't understand the problem. *sigh*. So I'm going to keep this site updated with my progress. That way, eventually, when I have a real category of the ills of iburst, I will mail just the URL of the latest, scathing blog-post to their tech-support, and possibly to some of their marketing people too.

Anyway, as of today, I have mailed them at least twice - and have spoken directly to their sysadmin once, in the past few months. No progress.