Outlook 2002 - My email blocked as spam

[TPertzoff]

I had a temporary problem with all my email being rejected by my outgoing
server (Verizon). This was to different recipients at different domains. The
messges never left my outbox.

The Outlook Send/Receive error I received was SMTP 550 5.7.1 The message you
attempted to send was determined to be spam...

I had been sending email with no problem prior to getting this error. Once
it started, I was unable to send anything (I could still receive.) I then
tried logging onto verizon's web mail and was able to send messages with no
problem, so the problem was something between Verizon and Outlook. I talked
to Verizon tech support and he had never encountered the error. I tried
restarting Outlook which did nothing. I tried restarting the computer, which
did nothing. I finally tried replying to a message rather than sending a new
message - this worked and leared the problem. I can no longer reproduce it.
This is good, but I am wondering if anyone has any ideas in case the problem
occurs again. I see a very similar issue but it seems as though the mail
server was determined to be at fault. I would accept that except that in my
case I was able to send messages directly from the server's web mail, just
not via Outlook.

 

[VanguardLH]

I had a temporary problem with all my email being rejected by my outgoing
server (Verizon). This was to different recipients at different domains. The
messges never left my outbox.

The Outlook Send/Receive error I received was SMTP 550 5.7.1 The message you
attempted to send was determined to be spam...

I had been sending email with no problem prior to getting this error. Once
it started, I was unable to send anything (I could still receive.) I then
tried logging onto verizon's web mail and was able to send messages with no
problem, so the problem was something between Verizon and Outlook. I talked
to Verizon tech support and he had never encountered the error. I tried
restarting Outlook which did nothing. I tried restarting the computer, which
did nothing. I finally tried replying to a message rather than sending a new
message - this worked and leared the problem. I can no longer reproduce it.
This is good, but I am wondering if anyone has any ideas in case the problem
occurs again. I see a very similar issue but it seems as though the mail
server was determined to be at fault. I would accept that except that in my
case I was able to send messages directly from the server's web mail, just
not via Outlook.

Maybe Verizon switched from port 25 to 587 for SMTP mail host connects.

Maybe you are using a template in all your e-mails (which outstrips the
volume of the content so the template is most of the body of your
e-mail). That means any domain seeing a spew of the same e-mail
(because the body is mostly identical) but addressed to multiple
recipients at that domain gets detected as spam. Don't use templates.
Although unlikely, if you send extremely short messages, it is possible
the tagline added by your antivirus program to announce your outbound
e-mails are clean by stating some stupid phrase like "<antivirus> has
inspected this e-mail and determined that it contains no viruses" could
outstrip your actual message so it appears you are sending multiple
copies of the same e-mail to multiple recipients. I say "stupid" for
the antivirus tagline because only a boob is going to believe some text
added to an e-mail that claims it is clean. Don't have your antivirus
program adding taglines to incoming or outgoing e-mails. Another
problem is that if you ever encrypt your e-mail that this promotional
tagline to advertise your particular choice for an antivirus program
will corrupt the e-mail. Recipients will get notification that the
encrypted e-mail has been tampered and may not trust its contents.

Could be your recipients reported your bulk mailings as spam so you go
on their blacklist.

Could be you were on a blacklist but that entry got removed because you
stopped spamming long enough to expire their record of you as a spam
source. Only Verizon knows if they use a blacklist and if it is a
public one or one that they build themself. Once you start spamming
again, you'll get added to a blacklist again. You can enter your IP
address (the WAN-side address seen by your ISP and by any site to which
you connect) in one of the following multiple blacklist checkers to see
if you are currently listed:

http://www.mxtoolbox.com/blacklists.aspx
http://www.blacklistalert.org/
http://www.robtex.com/

However, some "blacklists" include checking on the IP address to see if
it is a dynamic IP address. Normally a mail host has a static IP
address but trojan mailers on infected host will be spewing from a host
that got a dynamically assigned IP address. However, some e-mail
providers screw up for internally routed e-mails (where the sender and
recipient are within the same domain or e-mail organization) and don't
stick in an intervening mail host in a Received header between the
sender and recipient. That means the sender's dynamic IP address is
shown and will then look like they are one of these blacklists that
include dynamic IP addresses, like Spamhaus' zen blacklist (which
includes the PBL blacklist which is a list of dynamic IP addresses).

That a 1st-level tech rep isn't familiar with an error code issued by
THEIR mail host means you immediately need to demand having your call
transferred to a higher-up rep, one that can actually look up the
trigger conditions that cause their mail host to issue that particular
error code. You won't get anywhere with a 1st-level rep that announces
they don't know anything about an error code that THEIR mail server
issues when you try to use it to send your outbound e-mails.

 

[TPertzoff]

Thanks for the great information. However, I don't use templates and I don't
send bulk mailings. The problem occurred on emails sent to single recipients.
Also, the problem appeared after I had successfully sent out several emails -
same Outlook session. It then disappeared after I did what I described. I
haven't changed anything else. Perhaps Verizon did change something briefly
that caused the problem.

I appreciate the information you included about blacklists!

 

[Brian Tillman [MVP - Outlook]]

I talked to Verizon tech support and he had never encountered the error.

All this means is that you had a particularly clueless tech. Escalate to a
superviser.