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Emails that I send are being blocked

HI there,

I just started having an issue when I send emails... I receive a 'System Adminstrator' message which tells me that they are regarded as SPAM!

This has happened with the last three emails that I have sent. Each one was directed to three of my friends. REading the Verizon 'Help' section it advised forwarding the messages to 'spamdetector.update@verizon.net' and then the 'third party organisation' would determine if the emssage was SPAM or not.. and if not wouldallow it to be transmitted. However tere was a note that the sender would not be notified.

Has anyone ele had this? How do I know whether the messages have beens sent / received or not?

All of my messages were ordinary emails each sent to one address.... so how would they have (wrongly) determined that they were spam?

This is very frustrating!

Allan

Comments

mattheww50

The problem is probably NOT on the Verizon end. Generally spam is bounced by the receiving network's administrator. Often it is done on the basis of ISP that sent it, in this case probably verizon. At some point in the past the administrator of the network you are sending too has decided that Verizon.net email is SPAM. Talking to verizon, or doing anything on the verizon end is likely to be pointless.

You need to contact the administrator at the receiving end and get them to remove the block on verizon.net email addresses.

prisaz

@thompa wrote:
HI there,
I just started having an issue when I send emails... I receive a 'System Adminstrator' message which tells me that they are regarded as SPAM!
This has happened with the last three emails that I have sent. Each one was directed to three of my friends. REading the Verizon 'Help' section it advised forwarding the messages to 'spamdetector.update@verizon.net' and then the 'third party organisation' would determine if the emssage was SPAM or not.. and if not wouldallow it to be transmitted. However tere was a note that the sender would not be notified.
Has anyone ele had this? How do I know whether the messages have beens sent / received or not?
All of my messages were ordinary emails each sent to one address.... so how would they have (wrongly) determined that they were spam?
This is very frustrating!
Allan

Contact your friends and have them contact their ISP. I have has Comcast blacklist Verizon or verizon IP addresses on more then one occasion. Go figure.

I even think Verizon has blacklisted Comcast on one or more occasions. Blacklisting wars? How childish.

Message Edited by prisaz on 02-15-2009 05:12 PM

thompa

Hi,

Thanks for replying - but...

Nothing to do with who the emails are being sent to... tehy are not getting out of Verizon.

one of the emails was to a hotmail account... another to my Google account and the third was to J Walter Thompson in London (@jwt.com

Allan

Shirley4

You probably got a message such as:

An unknown error has occurred. Subject 't', Account: 'Verizon MyAccount, Server: 'outgoing.verizon.net', Protocol: SMTP, Server Response: '550 5.7.1 The message you attempted to send was determined to be spam. Please visit http://www.verizon.net/spamfaq for more information.', Port: 25, Secure(SSL): No, Server Error: 550, Error Number: 0x800CCC69

You are probably totally accurate when you say "they have (wrongly) determined that they were spam".

I am a new customer. I created a new subaccount and I got the above message when I tried to send a test message to myself (a different account). There was nothing in the body of the message and just "t" for the subject. I know there was no reason to consider the message to be spam. I also checked another message that I had succeeded in sending using a different account (I think it was sent to the Verizon account istead of from it) and it had nothing hidden in the message it was not supposed to, so I was confident that the message I was sending was not compromised. I use plain-text format by default, which makes it essentially impossible for messages to be sent infected. Even if it were infected, that would not be the same thing as spam.

I also sent a message using the online email system, since it was a new account.

This was Thursday (the 12th) night. I called customer support and they insisted it could not possibly be a problem with Verizon. They asked me if I was able to send a message using the online system and I said I was able to. They said that the online system uses the same software as is used when I send email using my email program (I am trying to avoid beint technical). They insisted it cannot possibly be a Verizon problem. I said I will probably wait until the next day and they just had to insist that the problem will still exist. I said I might be wrong but if they are wrong will they admit and they just insisted I was wrong. I told them that the online system uses the HTTP protocol and my email program (Windows Mail aka Outlook Express) uses SMTP, so the software is not entirely the same, but they insisted that they were correct. They insisted Ihad to do something such as contact my Antivirus software vendor or something such as that.

Within two hours, I was able to send and receive email and I did nothing to fix it. I can't be sure (I am willing to admit if I am wrong) but it seems essentially certain that it was a temporary problem with Verizon.

I hope there is a way for Verizon to determine that it wa their problem and tell the customer support agent that they were wrong. I talked with a supervisor person that said everythning I sad above that he said.

Shirley4

To mattheww50: The problem probably was on the Verizon end. The error message I got reffered to a Verizon web page; the message defiitely did not get bounced by "the receiving network's administrator". There was totally no reason for the message I sent to be considered spam. In other words, there was nothing spammy about my message; definitely and absoulutely nothing.

If I am wrong, I will admit it. Is there a way to determine the truth? Those Verizon agents are .... well they should not behave the way they did.

The verizon system is having many problems. I hope they will admit that. I think the support people need to be told that the system might have problems. The support person could have simply said that there might be a problem with the system and then ask me to wait. I voluntarily suggested waiting and they insisted that that won't make a difference. A good support person would make an effort to ensure that what I was doing was correct and then conclude that the cause is unknown, instead of insisting that it cannot possibly be a Verizon problem.

All the other support people I have spoken with were nice and did help or at least tried to help. A couple did not know enough to help, but they tried.

You however are probably making an invalid assumption that it probably is not a Verizon problem.

JSayer

Had the same problem beginning last thursday 2/12. Same response from Verizon - can't be their problem since webmail works. When I tried to explain to the useless tech support person that I was sending mail using SMTP I was informed that he knew how mail worked and that he could only provide assistance for the webmail product and that if I was using MS Outlook that Verizon was not obligated to help troubleshoot MS Outlook problems. When I tried to explain to them that I was receiving a message directly from Verizon indicating that they were blocking my mail becaue they thought it was spam, i was again told that if it didn't happen when using the webmail product, it wasn't a Verizon problem. this went on and on with the tech support person refusing to listen to my explanation of the problem.

I asked to speak with a Supervisor and was told NO! This is not customer support. As far as I am concerned they should remove every commercial from TV indicating that they are an improvement over comcast. Their tech support is the worst of any vendor that I have dealt with, including Comcast. At least they will allow you to speak with other tech support or a supervisor when requested. Neither support organization helps their customers. They only read from their script like robots.

I'm thoroughy disgusted with Verizon's tech support team. they know that everyone else is just as bad so they don't have to provide good service. sure would be nice if someone at one of these ISP's was as interested in keeping customers as they are at signing up as many as they can as quickly as they can.

John

Shirley4

That is interesting, John. I hope the Verizon people see this.

In my case, I asked to talk with a supervisor very quickly and he said everything I said he said in my message.

I did have a good experience yesterday with a support person and a couple of days before that. I spoke with a nice woman on the weekend that told me there are separate numbers we can call to report problems such as this. I have not done that yet but I intend to. In case it helps, see Verizon FiosFAQ - Where is Fios tv's corporate headquarters and what is the phone number?

fiosuserpa

I'm also having this same issue and well Tech has not been very helpful as I do not think they are all that well trained for a situation like this. It appears as Verizon has started to block outgoing email on any account that is not their own account.

I'm am being told even by DNS Tech that this has always been the case, but in my case this is not true for over a year now. So in other words you can not use port 25, 26, 80, or 8025 without having a static IP address which means more money to them as you must sign up for a business account..

Is this even legal with no notice and to strong arm us into upgrading with not a single notice, well lets just say this will not end here. The issue is clear, if you look at the Samhaus.org site and type in your own ip, you will see they have it blocked for any outgoing emails no using their own server.

I guess I will simplify just find some other provider since they have no clue what I'm talking about after three hours of tech conversation.

mattheww50

I think you will find that most ISP now block access to port 25 off their own network unless you have a business type account. That was my experience with Qwest and Cox Cable anyway. So before your change ISP's, you will need to verify that they permit off network port 25 access with whatever type of account you are planning on having.

I remember when Cox did it, they weren't exactly upfront about the fact that they had done it, so even though it is a common practice, not all providers admit to the practice.

Some providers even route all port 25 requests to their own SMTP server, regardless of what you have configured in your email client.

fiosuserpa

It is very underhanded and maybe illegal business practices on how they are doing things and I will not stand for it, they will simply lose my multi-thousand dollar a year account. I will find someone else who will gladly provide me with the services I need, I'm so livid over this, they cost me money now not just time.

Shirley4

I am not the person that asked the original question but as best as I understand the original question, the email was being sent using a Verizon account. If so then problems sending email using other domains would get better attention if they were in a thread (discussion) with a relevant subject.

For me, the message I tried to send was being sent using a Verizon account.

cjacobs001

temporary issue

Vz is largest US source of spam

Switching outgoing server to port 587

voices.washingtonpost.com/securityfix/2009/02/verizon_to_implement_spam_bloc.html

Techman28

ok I'm going to see what's going on here.

is the error 550 that you are getting?

Message Edited by Techman28 on 02-18-2009 04:01 PM

fiosuserpa

I finally found my issue, it would seem Verizon has blocked all outgoing emails not using their own email servers.

Check you own local ip and you can see it is listed to not allow outgoing email on non Verizon servers.

Check here: http://www.whatismyip.com

Then compare that IP on the list for PBL Spamhaus, if you find it in the lookup table read the message: http://www.spamhaus.org/sbl/index.lasso

About The PBL

The Spamhaus Policy Block List ("PBL") is an international anti-spam system maintained by The Spamhaus Project in conjunction with Internet Service Providers and is used by Internet networks to enforce inbound email policies. The PBL database lists end-user IP address ranges which should not be delivering unauthenticated email to any mail server except those provided for specifically for that customer's use. The PBL lists only IP addresses (not domains or email addresses).

_______________________________________________

Ref: PBLXXXXXX

XX.XXX.XXX.0/21 is listed on the Policy Block List (PBL)

Outbound Email Policy of Verizon Online for this IP range:

It is the policy of Verizon Online that unauthenticated email sent from this IP address should be sent out only via the designated outbound mail server allocated to Verizon Online customers. To find the hostname of the correct mail server to use, customers should consult the original signup documentation or contact Verizon Online Technical Support.

Now this took me 16 calls and over 4 1/2 hours of tech conversations to even explain the issue they had caused me, this was not an issue for years and all of a sudden this issue showed up. The main reason it took me so long for them to fix this issue, was they never setup a Verizon email accountt and thus had no way to now allow me to send out email.

Would you believe once I got a well educated and trained USA tech. "She" solved my issue in 15 mintues. That is very sad to say the least, they really need to not allow customers to go through h e l l to fix an issue that they didn't even cause.

Best regards to all that have had this issue and hopefully my information will help lead others to a soultion to ther respective issues on outbound email issues on Verizon.

Techman28

Fiosuserpa,
I am glad that was the problem and after I checked your IP logged here at that site and got what you got for information there was some info left out regarding the static IP's only if your using a mail server.

Message Edited by Techman28 on 02-18-2009 04:28 PM

Justin46

@fiosuserpa wrote:
I finally found my issue, it would seem Verizon has blocked all outgoing emails not using their own email servers.

You may very well be right, at least in your area, but I have an email account through AT&T (sbcglobal) and I just sent an email from my sbcglobal account using my Verizon FiOS connection, and the email went through to my Verizon email account just fine.

When I first got the sbcblobal account at our lake house I tried to send email from there using my Verizon email account, and it wouldn't go through. But a quick call to AT&T support got that restriction removed. That was 1 1/2 years ago, still works just fine.

I guess all of this just shows that the spammers are screwing things up for all of us.

__________________________________
Justin
Verizon FiOS TV, Internet, and phone
IMG 1.6.0, Build 06.89
Keller, TX 76248

fiosuserpa

Hello Techman28,,

Ahh another Employee that knows what they are doing, could their be more. lol I guess this was always an issue and apparently until now I never had an issue with this as they had all ports open on my IP. They must have changed firewall policies at some point locally and now blocked my ability's to use my own owned email servers that have been fairly problem free for many years.

The average user would probably just give up, I do not know the meaning of that word. Thank you for responding on this forum, this is probably the best way go next time I have an issue. Make it public so others can learn as well. Plus this will allow Verizon to improve their support services with better education.

One note to be learned here, fire you outsourcing company they are clueless and caused most of my frustrations in the first place. They even tried to send me to paid support once, then back to DNS support and one support rep said my own domain name was black listed on their server, so they added an allow IP to their firewall. Well that was a useless task as the domain in question was clearly not black listed, I checkout all public records. Someone had no idea what they were doing it that call either. Thanks again.

Shirley4

Techman28, I hope you understand that this thread has been hijacked by people with a different problem. If I am wrong then I apologize but I think the original question is asking about email being sent using a Verizon email account and a Verizon server. For the problem of sending email for a different domain, the problem should be a new thread. Those people should be told to create a new thread instead of "hijacking" someone else's. For those unfamiliar with use of the term hijack in this context, it is commonly used in this manner in forums and newsgroups.

Justin46

Shirley,

Have you tried what I suggested, changing the port to 587? I was addressing your specific problem, at least I was trying to. If you haven't tried it, I suggest you do so, it might just work for you.

________________________________
Justin
Verizon FiOS TV, Internet, and phone
IMG 1.6.0, Build 06.89
Keller, TX 76248

JSayer

So here's what I've been able to figure out or guest on this. Maybe someone can confirm if this is accurate and when/if things will change again.

The entire /24 network that Verizon is using to hand out IP addresses to customers in parts of PA (98.114.133.0/24) has been listed on the Policy Block List. Verizon, as of last Thursday, is only permitting outbound mail via their server outgoing.verizon.net if it is sent from a Verizon account with a verizon.net domain name in the email header. Since I was using outgoing.verizon.net as my outbound mail server for all of my email accounts, all mail sourced from any mail account other than my verizon account hit the policy block. This would be all of my email since I don't use the verizon account. However, Verizon is not blocking tcp port 25 (smtp) passing through their network to other mail servers. Other providers, Comcast notably, have taken this step and I'd like to know if Verizon is planning to block all traffic on port 25 in the planned future. Anyway, I was able to reconfigure the email accounts in MS Outlook to use the mail provider's server and all seems to be working ok.

Doesn't Work - Mail with other provider's domain name in mail header sent through outgoing.verizon.net on either port 25 or 587.

Does Work - Mail with other provider's domain name in mail header sent through other provider's outgoing mail server.

What doesn't make sense to me is the statement in the PBL about "unauthenticated email". Since I was configured to authenticate for outgoing mail prior to sending the mail, and a sniffer trace shows that the authentication was successful, I don't understand why the emails were automatically rejected even though they were sourced from a different domain.

Hope this helps,

John

DISAPPOINTEDfio

I think it is complete crud that Verizon has entire IP blocks blocked by, I have never been listed in a block list until i subscribed to Verizon fios

Find your IP www.ipchicken.com

http://www.dnsbl.info/dnsbl-database-check.php

i guess if it continues ill cancel and go back to my old provider.

badmessanger

SMTP authentication is nothing new on a verizon connection

here is a link from 2001 that talks about it being implemented

Verizon SMTP Authentication

Then and now, does not mean you cant send from third party email addresses when on a verizon connection usin port 25, it simply means that you have to AUTHENTICATE with Verizon's server, using a valid username and password

Example:

i have Fios and I want to send email in outlook from joebob@joebob.com.... I have to use port 25, and use outgoing.verizon.net and enable authentication and type in my verizon username and password.

Also here is a link to Verizon's Spam and Email Policies

Verizon Spam Policy: https://www.verizon.net/central/vzc.portal?_nfpb=true&_pageLabel=vzc_help_policies&id=AntiSpamPolicy

There of course is also the old

You may not include more than 100 recipients in a single email. Messages will not be sent to any recipients in excess of 100.
You may not exceed 500 recipients in 1 hour. Exceeding 500 recipients in 1 hour will result in the suspension of your ability to send email for 24 hours. This does not affect your ability to receive email.

And as far as IP's being blocked.... ISP's such as Verizon, do not just mke up more IP addresses to give to more customers... They have to buy them... Like anything else in the world that is used, when you buy it you also buy it's past.

If that IP was owned by a japanese spammer previously.... and now you have that IP... you may have to suffer the consequences of someone elses actions, until all of the databses in the interwebs are updated to reflect the current and legitimate owner.

If it was owned by a Canadian ISP, you may have to look at www.google.ca for a while.

Now I am not saying Verizon has not changed soemthing and failed to inform people, including their own techs.... but everything I am reading here points to known issue or things outside of Verizon's control.

Hope this helps some people.

Shirley4

You say: "Like anything else in the world that is used, when you buy it you also buy it's past.".

That is true somewhat at least. If we get a phone number that is new to us then we will likely get calls from people calling the previous owner. If the calls are excessive though then most people would not want the number and phone companies should not reuse that number until it is reasonabley "clean". If we rent an apartment or house then we don't expect it to be like new but we do expect it to be clean; in fact, that is the law, correct? If we purchase a home or a business then we also get it's past, but we also have the right to be informed and/or investigate the past.

I think we are talking about email addresses, not IP addresses. If an email address can't be used then it is not our responsibility to deal with it. If an ISP knows that an address has history that makes it difficult or impossible to use then they should not allow it to be used. If an email address can't be used to send email then it cannot be used and I think it is the ISP's responsibility to either clean it up or not make it available.

Shirley4

And another important point is that if an email address has history that makes it useless then the ISP owns (is responsible for fixing) the problems, not the person they have made it available to.

thompa

HI,

That is quite interesting as I had intended to change from my verizon email address to the one thta I normally use... but when the emails were blocked, I was using my Verizon email address and log in password.

Today I have sent emails through Verizon and all seems well - so the blocking seems to have relented....?

Fingers crossed - thanks to everyone for helping...

regards

Allan

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