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mta poor reputation.


hmhazim

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need help fr you guys. got this error msg this morning after sending a mail.

554 Your access to this mail system has been rejected due to the sending MTA's poor reputation. If you believe that this failure is in error, please contact the intended recipient via alternate means.

checked my companies ip and its email reputation is neutral(senderbase, senderscore) and also unverified(secure computing). this error only occurs when i send mail to a specific company, others are fine. my questions are:

1) what caused this problem to happen?

2) how do i rectifiy it, how do i make my email reputation better

3) do i need to subscribe to email rep monitors such as fr habeas or any other providers.

thanks, appreciate it.

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Since I am not a server admin, I don't what exactly would cause a poor reputation.

Being on various anti-spam blocklists, of course, gives a bad reputation. You mentioned senderbase, but not whether you checked blocklists.

Also, the use of autoresponders (which will get you on spamcop blocklist) might.

Also there is something about MX records that a lot of people don't seem to have configured properly.

There is something called SPF (or SFP or S??) that a lot of people think will help the spam problem if enough people used it. Otherwise, IMHO, unless you can afford it, other methods are not particularly necessary if you don't send unsolicited email and are careful about infected computers. (I am assuming that your company operates its own mail server).

There are a lot of private blocklists out there and the only way to find out why you might be on their blocklist is to ask them. Server admins can add any IP address to their blocklist - my server, my rules - for any reason even frivilous ones (they don't like your product). They may not have asked for information from you which is unsolicited email. Since you are not sending bulk email, you are not on spam lists, but they don't want your emails.

So, I think that I would do what the error message says and contact them. 'via alternate means' could be a phone call or opening a hotmail account to send your inquiry. Be sure you include the entire error message and if you know how to do it, the headers of the email that was rejected.

Miss Betsy

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Can only go along with Miss Betsy on that one - not enough information concerning the magical tool that has you "outed", no detail of the IP address or domain involved, her final paragraph says it succinctly (how to preoceed). Maybe you could check your score on TrustedSourceTM which is a big one in the e-mail authentication stakes*. SpamCop uses reputation as part of its listing criteria but blocklists are really a different approach. And your rejection notice makes it clear it is not purely a blocklist matter.

[added * ah, but that's just Secure Computing's TrustedSource global threat correlation engine which you've already checked - and presumably the links to "Real-Time Blacklists" there as well]

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1) what caused this problem to happen?

2) how do i rectifiy it, how do i make my email reputation better

3) do i need to subscribe to email rep monitors such as fr habeas or any other providers.

1) It sounds to me this is just a generic response the admin has programmed into his rejection, rather than giving you the specific reason for the block. This makes it much harder to remedy.

2) First you need to determine from tha mail admin that blocked the message why it was blocked. It "could" be that it is an internally maintained list or one of the many external lists. As Miss Betsy stated, you did not mention checking against any blocklists.

3) THat would be your decision, but it is not usually necessary.

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checked with block lists and my companies ip is not in any of them. ill try checking with the receiver, whether they have our ip blocked. ill ask for the reason then ill get back to you guys, thanks for the replies. appreciate it.

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run an ACERBLCHECK to check for ip blocking my ip was listed in a few of them.

64.86.14.2 is listed at bl.redhatgate.com (69.41.181.22)

64.86.14.2 is listed at bl.spam-trap.net (216.40.33.252)

64.86.14.2 is listed at vote.drbl.sampo.ru (217.77.53.237)

64.86.14.2 is listed at work.drbl.sampo.ru (217.77.53.237)

64.86.14.2 is listed at vote.drbl.bmik.ru (212.227.34.11)

64.86.14.2 is listed at rol.drbl.bmik.ru (212.227.34.11)

64.86.14.2 is listed at work.drbl.bmik.ru (212.227.34.11)

64.86.14.2 is listed at country-rirdata.dnsiplists.completewhois.com (127.0.67.65): CA - Canada

64.86.14.2 is listed at ca.rbl.cluecentral.net (127.0.0.1)

64.86.14.2 is listed at ca.countries.nerd.dk (127.0.0.2)

64.86.14.2 is listed at zz.countries.nerd.dk (127.0.0.124)

so what can i do to prevent from being listed and what to do to get of their lists now.

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run an ACERBLCHECK to check for ip blocking my ip was listed in a few of them.

64.86.14.2 is listed at bl.redhatgate.com (69.41.181.22)

64.86.14.2 is listed at bl.spam-trap.net (216.40.33.252)

64.86.14.2 is listed at vote.drbl.sampo.ru (217.77.53.237)

64.86.14.2 is listed at work.drbl.sampo.ru (217.77.53.237)

64.86.14.2 is listed at vote.drbl.bmik.ru (212.227.34.11)

64.86.14.2 is listed at rol.drbl.bmik.ru (212.227.34.11)

64.86.14.2 is listed at work.drbl.bmik.ru (212.227.34.11)

64.86.14.2 is listed at country-rirdata.dnsiplists.completewhois.com (127.0.67.65): CA - Canada

64.86.14.2 is listed at ca.rbl.cluecentral.net (127.0.0.1)

64.86.14.2 is listed at ca.countries.nerd.dk (127.0.0.2)

64.86.14.2 is listed at zz.countries.nerd.dk (127.0.0.124)

so what can i do to prevent from being listed and what to do to get of their lists now.

You will need to check with each of the lists, but many of the ones you have listed seem to be country based ones which you likely should be on. Rarely are they used for blocking unless someone has no business with the country you are coming from and specifically does not want any email from your country. These are usually directed at the high spam countries outside of your own (for me .br, .cn, .hk, etc.)

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so what can i do to prevent from being listed and what to do to get of their lists now.
Since none of them is SpamCop, just general advice is all we can give I think (unless some other member has specific knowledge of some of those BLs). And none of them necessarily affect why you were blocked. You have to contact the location that blocked you to find out why, anything else could result in a wild goose chase.

To illustrate, several of those BLs seem to think you're from Canada and appear to be saying that is "due cause" to be on a block list for those that might want to block all of Canada. Not that many would.

But one there looks like hits on a spam trap are the cause for listing you there. SO - you need to look at the host sites for those BLs and get some background as to what they do and how to get off their lists.

BUT if a spam trap really was hit on one of them there may be a compromised machine or two somewhere sending stuff it/they shouldn't. It would depend on what you control - hardware, software, everything, as to exactly what steps you can take to fix that. There are suggestions for quite a few situations elsewhere in these (searchable) pages but if you need to ask specifics, there will be people who might be able to help.

You really need a clear answer on why you got that non-delivery notification, the reason for their belief your mta has a poor reputation. Listing on the BLs you have found doesn't really explain that:

  • they may not mean much, as in the case of the country blocks
  • except if there really was a spam trap hit, that might be the cause
  • certainly spam sending would reveal a problem that begs to be fixed.

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At this stage, there are just too many possibilities. One of which is that the rejecting site has a stupid rule, which they need to be told about if that is the case (stupid would be like requiring a positive reputation score, which is needlessly rigorous, many/most IP addresses/address blocks aren't scored). You need to "drill down" to get to some causes. Finding BLs listing you (if that is the same IP address that was rejected - we don't even know that) is a line of inquiry. But relating that information to the reason for blocking is another matter.

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  • 2 weeks later...

this question is not related to this problem, how to stop outgoing emails from my company from being blocked by the recepient. bcos it seems like a lot of emails dont reach the receiver. cost is not an issue bcos important emails need to reach the receiver. thanks.

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The only way to consistently have email from your mail server reach the intended recipient is to have a competent, honest server admin in charge of your mail server. Even then, there may be difficulties, but a competent server admin should be able to overcome these.

If the email from your mail server (not one that is shared by other people) is always solicited email, then there should be no problem. If you are sending bulk email newsletters, then you must follow best practices - particularly confirmed subscription and checking for returned newsletters to remove them from your list. A competent server admin would be able to advise you.

An alternative way to have your email be delivered is to choose a hosting company with a good reputation. They will advise you on best practices and will take action if any spam is reported to them.

Miss Betsy

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The only way to consistently have email from your mail server reach the intended recipient is to have a competent, honest server admin in charge of your mail server. Even then, there may be difficulties, but a competent server admin should be able to overcome these.

<snip>

...Even the most competent server admin cannot overcome events such as backhoes slicing into communication lines.

...E-mail is not now, has never been, and likely will never be (at least for the foreseeable future) a guaranteed communication mechanism. If there are communications that must absolutely reach their destination, e-mail is not the appropriate vehicle.

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this question is not related to this problem,

and yet, it's the same issue ...????

how to stop outgoing emails from my company from being blocked by the recepient. bcos it seems like a lot of emails dont reach the receiver. cost is not an issue bcos important emails need to reach the receiver. thanks.

In your (linear) post #5 you said you were going to ask the receiving ISP what was goin on and post back ... I don't see the results of that dialog 'here' ... and that you're still asking, it appears that it has yet to be resolved ....

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  • 8 months later...

Hi,

I know this thread has been innactive for a while but I encountered the same error.

554 Your access to this mail system has been rejected due to the sending MTA's poor reputation. If you believe that this failure is in error, please contact the intended recipient via alternate means.

It turns out our WAN IP reverse DNS record didn't match to our mail server DNS name. (we had just moved our servers onto a new managed network) Most email would deliver fine, just a handfull would reject and a few would reject occasionally. It had me stumped for a while until I had a look at the headers of one of our emails that I sent to my home email account.

Hopefully this may aid someone having similar problems.

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Which actually highlights a very common problem in troubleshooting emails. Some MTA programs have TERRIBLE error messages that often have nothing to do with the actual problem. In this case, rejecting email for non-matching reverse DNS entries (which by the way is a violation of current SMTP RFCs) and pointing to a "poor reputation" instead of the actual problem.

I see things like this all the time when helping others troubleshoot email transfer problems. The most commong being error messages indicating a sending server is blacklisted that point to either the wrong blacklist, or don't indicate where it is blacklisted at all.

Just my rant on one of my pet peeves with certain mail server admins. You can probably safely ignore this post ;)

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