554 transaction fail

  • Thread starter Thread starter Sal
  • Start date Start date
S

Sal

I am using outlook as mal program and my AOL account on it but I am getting
this error too often which requires me to log to aol, do image challenge and
then use outlook for a few hours until i getthe same message again and have
to go to the same routine.
 
Sal said:
I am using outlook as mal program and my AOL account on it but I am getting
this error too often which requires me to log to aol, do image challenge and
then use outlook for a few hours until i getthe same message again and have
to go to the same routine.
Click to expand...

The CAPTCHA security interrupt will interfere with logging in using
either a local e-mail client or when using their webmail interface.
Nothing you can do if AOl has decided to spew this security interrupt
more than a couple times per year. Complain to AOL. Maybe they're
targeting your account. Have you changed your password just in case
someone is abusing your account?
 
Bummer.

Have you queried AOL to see what their requirements are for using their mail
server to send? They have extensive help files.

--
Milly Staples [MVP - Outlook]

Post all replies to the group to keep the discussion intact.
ALWAYS post your Outlook version.
How to ask a question: http://support.microsoft.com/KB/555375


After furious head scratching, Sal asked:

| I am using outlook as mal program and my AOL account on it but I am
| getting this error too often which requires me to log to aol, do
| image challenge and then use outlook for a few hours until i getthe
| same message again and have to go to the same routine.
 
Thanks. I have spent hours trying to get help from aol but no help has
arrived. I have looked at their site ut dont see help there either. You
mentioned CAPTCHA, what is this?
 
maybe because I am so tired of it, I have not seen the light on their help
files. Can someone help me focus where I should look?
 
Sal said:
Thanks. I have spent hours trying to get help from aol but no help
has arrived. I have looked at their site ut dont see help there
either. You mentioned CAPTCHA, what is this?
Click to expand...

Never heard of Google?

http://www.google.com/search?q=captcha

Yahoo, Hotmail, and it looks like also AOL will insert a CAPTCHA page
during the login.

CAPTCHA = Completely Automatic Public Turing test to tell Computers and
Humans Apart
(www.acronymfinder.com works to find definitions for acronyms)
Hey, I didn't come up with this acronym.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CAPTCHA

The security page or insert will show you an image. It is usually (but
sometimes not well) designed to thwart being scanned. There is no text
in the content but humans will see a pattern within the image that looks
like text. They then enter those characters into an input box. If they
guess correct, you pass their test. In trying to make the embedded text
hard to scan out of the image, like with OCR, it can be quite difficult
at times to read their image. Rather than use an image, some site
prefer to use a math test. They ask you to input the result of a simple
math equation (can't be made too difficult considering some morons
wandering the Internet). They may use text or an image (which is much
easier to read) to show the text for the equation. You do some addition
and subtraction to get the answer, and if you input the correct answer
then they figure a human entered the value.

They will occasionally spew out this security interruption to make sure
a human is using their service and not some spambot. However, because
the login has this interfering CAPTCHA process, the login won't proceed
until the test is completed. That means your local e-mail client will
fail its login until you use the webmail interface to your e-mail
account to pass the CAPTCHA test. Once passed, your e-mail client or
their webmail client will work normally for the login process - until
the next time they want to ensure a human is using their service.

At one time, I had Hotmail interfere with their CAPTCHA test somewhere
around 3 times in 2 weeks and then it went away for many months, then
reappeared once and disappeared again for so long that I don't remember
when it last happened. Yahoo Mail nailed me for 6 times in one week,
disappeared for just over 6 months, reoccured once, and it was 8 months
before it happened again. These were for free accounts. Don't know if
they do this for paid accounts (since spammers aren't going to pay to
spam). But then I don't know what algorithm they use for when they
determine they will check if a human is using their service.

There's even social engineering going on to get past the CAPTCHA test
and let spammers create and abuse free accounts. The one that I read
about (but this can be used anywhere) was, I think, at some porn site
where users had to do a CAPTCHA test to get at some content. The image
they were shown was actually retrieved by their program from Gmail's
CAPTCHA login process. When the user entered the text from the CAPTCHA
image at the porn site, their program entered that text at the Gmail
site to complete the signup.
 
Sal said:
I am using outlook as mal program and my AOL account on it but I am getting
this error too often which requires me to log to aol, do image challenge and
then use outlook for a few hours until i getthe same message again and have
to go to the same routine.
Click to expand...

Is that ALL that the error says? And WHERE does the error occur? Was
it in a error status dialog presented to you by your e-mail client? Or
was it an e-mail sent back to your mailbox (so you are reading an e-mail
to see that error)?

If the error is in a status dialog by your e-mail client, there is a
problem during the mail session established between your e-mail client
and the mail server. If you retrieved an e-mail from your mailbox with
the error message then it was a problem between your sending mail server
and the receiving mail server for the recipient of your e-mail. Hard to
know because you never gave a good description of WHEN and WHERE you see
the 554 error.
 
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