You hit send, and they never get it. Ugh.
Even after all these years, email spam remains a serious problem. With some people (like me) getting literally hundreds of unwanted messages per day, most internet service providers (as well as some individuals) take drastic steps to reduce the amount of junk mail arriving in their inboxes.
A problem with any anti-spam measure is that it blocks some amount of legitimate email as well.
If email sent to one person is not getting through but email sent to other people is generally working, it could be that your email is being blocked by an anti-spam tool.
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Why your email might not be getting through
- It’s easy for email to accidentally “look like” spam.
- What recipients think is spam is not in your control.
- Reputation of the sender and any services used matter more than ever.
- Spam generally doesn’t cause bounces, but is discarded or placed in a spam folder instead.
Blocking legitimate mail
Legitimate email can get blocked in error for a couple of reasons:
- The receiving system thinks your email looks too much like spam.
- The receiving system thinks you have a reputation for sending spam.
Note that I said thinks. It’s the mistakes associated with that thinking that cause legitimate email to be mistaken for spam.
Looking like spam
Spam filters look at your email and assign points for various behaviors associated with email that “looks like” spam. As soon as you collect too many points (where “too many” is arbitrary and up to the receiving system or the individual recipient to define), your email is flagged as spam. Some things to watch for in your email include:
- Sexually explicit terms or phrases.
- Certain drugs (typically linked to sexual performance or characteristics).
- SHOUTING. Spam filters often consider shouting (typing in all caps) as sales copy.
- Fake, inconsistent, or illegal return addresses or a “reply-to” address that does not match the “from” address. (If you don’t know how to even make that happen, don’t worry about it.)
- HTML email. It’s not a huge mark against you, but some spam filters still consider HTML or “rich text” email as having a higher likelihood of being spam when compared to plain text email.
- Marketing terms. Because so much spam is an attempt to get you to buy something, many filters look for various words and phrases associated with sales and marketing efforts.1
No one is saying that any of those things in your email are bad, or that any one of those things will cause your email to be blocked.
The unfortunate reality of the situation is that the more your email looks like spam, however innocuous, the more likely it is to be treated as spam.
The eye of the beholder
Despite this list of factors that might contribute to your email being considered spam, things aren’t nearly so cut and dried.
When someone hits the “This is SPAM” button in an online email interface (like Gmail, Outlook.com, and others), that system assumes “Email that looks like this is spam to me.” If enough people mark similar email as spam, any email considered similar to that email stands a much higher chance of being automatically filtered as spam, regardless of what it contains.
For example, if a million people on an email service get an email that says “The sky is blue” and half of them mark it as spam,2 that email service may consider “The sky is blue” as an indicator of possible spam. Future emails that contain that phrase may be more likely to be filtered out as spam and not arrive at their destined inboxes.
What that means is that depending on what everyone considers spam to be at any point in time, anything can be labeled as spam.
There’s almost nothing you can do about this.
Email reputation
Another factor in determining the authenticity of an email is the reputation of the email’s source.
In the past, email was blocked if it came from an IP address identified as related to spammers. Because spammers now use botnets to make it look like spam comes from millions and millions of different IP addresses, this technique is less effective than it used to be. Unfortunately, it’s still in use.
Certain email providers have poor reputations. Hotmail used to be a hot source of spam, so sending from a Hotmail email address was considered a strike against you. While Hotmail (now Outlook.com) has improved, some ISPs and services simply have better reputations — and better deliverability — than others.
This is true of mailing list providers; some have better reputations than others and thus deliver email more reliably. This is one reason I continue to use Aweber as the email service provider for my Confident Computing Newsletter.
The only “cure” for a provider with a poor reputation is to switch to one with a good one.
Spam rarely bounces
Because bouncing email flagged as spam would give the real spammers too much information about how to bypass the spam filters, it’s not done. Email flagged as spam is not delivered or is delivered to the recipient’s spam folder, where they may or may not find it.
A quick test to make sure any email can get through is to use another provider — for example, a friend’s email account on a different service or a free account on another service.
Do this
Do the best you can, of course, not to write email that could be considered spam. Unfortunately, since that’s a moving and ill-defined target, remember that spam filters can get it wrong. Use the information above to see if you can determine if your message might be getting flagged as spam, and perhaps send it a different way if it is. If you have one particular recipient that’s finding your messages in their spam folder, make sure they’re marking it as “not spam” as well.
Here’s something that’s not spam: Subscribe to Confident Computing! Less frustration and more confidence, solutions, answers, and tips in your inbox every week.
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How will I know if I am on someone’s block sender list?
That’s what can be so very frustrating. Most of the time you can’t.
Dear Sirs.:Please be advised that when corresponding with my sister, who has Earthlink as a service provider, she can retrieve my E-Mail messages, but is unable to send them to me, as they are returned, despite the fact that I have not blocked them off my address book as “spam”.I do not know what is the best alternative, for all mail has been “unblocked”,yet she cannot get through. Her E-Mail is: hsteyer@iopener.net Thanks for your assistance in this matter, and hope to get a favorable response.Tommy Steyer.
When the messages are returned to her there should be some kind of diagnistic information included. If you can get that it would help diagnose the problem.
Why is it that I can receive email but when I try to email anyone they don’t get my email. I got a message that I was being blocked. Now they say my password is in correct if I try to go in get info to see how to get unblocked.
Please help. I have Verizon do I go to them to help me.
If you have a Verizon email address, you should be able to phone them for support on this problem.
I believe you do. That message you were blocked might also have had additional information that would be valuable to whomever you ask for help.
When I log into my yahoo account, and i go into my mail it says “welcome Joshus” and it says i have 1 or how ever many e mail that i havent read, but as soon as i go into mail the whole site goes into a search site. See i cant get into my mail because of this im in serious need of help. How come I cant access my mail and why does the site go to the search site?
Sounds like your browser has been hijacked. I’d get and run an anti-spyware program. Recommendations here: http://ask-leo.com/d-recommend
I don’t seem to be receiving any emails and not able to send can you PLEASE help me
why cant i access my mail
help please. i have been chatting with this lad we had both been sending each other im messages . then i sent my pic. and every time i send him an im it says hes off line. but i no he is on most vdays. im thinking he might have blocked me or changed his screen name could this be so?
I write to someone who has been a friend and he has to use a different name to get a message to me because he can’t send it from his other name. He says he’s blocked from my mail and I would like to know how to change that and get him unblocked. Thank You
everytime i try and send my friends an email with an attachment it say sorry try your news configuration ,i can recieve them
my x is stalking me via email and im – i block her but she just makes a new screen name ..AOL9 ..aol say they cant do anything other than me block all unknown senders which is not an option as my business mail comes to that account ?? Please help .
If the screen name keeps changing I’m not aware of any technical solutions, other than what AOL has suggested.
MY SISTER CHANGED HER ADDRESS FROM AOL TO RR.COM AND SINCE THAN HAS NOT BEEN ABLE TO E-MAIL ME. WHY NOT???????
You are not alone. I cannot getthru to my own husband due to his rr account! We tried all we know.
What happens when she tries?
when i try to go to my own e-mail it says that it wasn’t found. what’s that all about?
When I try to go to my own email address it says that it wasn’t found. What’s that all about?
When I try to go to my own email address it says that it wasn’t found. What’s that all about?
how to unblock blocked mail and instant messaging
Hello Leo,
Why do my emails with a ‘Hotmail’address always get returned?
My emails are returned stating….. the following address had ‘transient delivery errors’.
If my friend blocked me, how can I unblock it?
You cannot.
I HAVE BEEN TRYING TO EMAIL SOME JOKES TO MY FRIEND (HIS EMAIL IS Vnb8@aol.com) BUT THEY KEEP COMING BACK AS UNKNOWN PLEASE HELP ME TO FIND OUT WHAT IS GOING ON LIKE HOW DO I GET UNBLOCKED IF THAT IS THE CASE
Can i find a friends new email address by using her old address? How can I get this persons email address?
Nope. It’s very difficult to find someone’s email address. Typically they must tell you.
Hi could you please help me i have tried to respond to a very important e-mail how can i get my resoponce to the person.
This is what i got 196.25.211.150 but sender was rejected. Remote host said: 553 sorry, your mail from a host [206.190.38.35]
How do I fix this thanks for your help
You haven’t provided the entire error message, so it’s hard to say.
Hi Leo,
My emails with a ‘aol’ address always get returned?
‘county999@aol.com’ is one of them…
We had recently been black listed due to spam being sent from our domain without our knowledge, this has since been rectified and we have been removed from these black list, I wonder if we are on aol’s black list, how do we get off the list?
Many Thanks
Chris Laming
IT DIRECTOR
A few years ago Kim Komando said that her emails to AOL addresses were not getting through because people were clicking SPAM instead of unsubscribe. She had to contact AOL numerous times not to have her newsletter unblocked.
I *wish* I had an answer for you. I also help moderate a mailing list that has been having massive delivery problems to AOL addresses. It’s unclear what we’re supposed to do to get our mail delivered.
AOL has information here http://postmaster.aol.com/trouble/index.html but it hasn’t helped us much. We started recommending that our subscribers having problems get alternate email addresses. See also http://ask-leo.com/should_i_leave_aol.html
When I reply to my mother’s email, she doesn’t receive my message. We both have Verizon accounts. My father receives his and they’re in the same house, just different email addresses. Any idea what’s happening?
Thanks!
Is there any way to verify if a hotmail e-mail is getting through or being blocked on another hotmail account?
Thank you.
if there is so much spam trouble, why dont isp’s start sending authentication ie your email program must log on the send an email.
i am having the same problem, and looking for help
i can recieve mail from russia but not send. all other mail is getting through. please help me i am in love with a russian model!!!!
Some ISPs doing a lookup on the IP address of the SMTP server sending the mail, are not just checking for blacklisted addresses, but looking at the resolved DNS name. If it looks like something that might by dynamically assigned (e.g. user-0cet4xp.cable.mindspring.com)it will reject it as a potential bot.
This causes small businesses with a DSL or cable IP connection that have their own SMTP server headaches. They either have to get their ISP to change how the IP address is resolved (for static addresses only) or relay mail through the ISP’s SMTP relay.
I have been having trouble recieving email from my sister-in-law in New Mexico. She has an MSN email address, I am recieving email from Florida and Missouri. Should I contact my server or what?
I have contacted Microsoft about the problem, since they are the providers. It is getting very frustrating. I am hoping you can help me. She thinks I have blocked her from my computer, and she mentioned something about a filter in the letter she sent me about this problem. Please can you help me?
—–BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE—–
Hash: SHA1
As outlined in the article, 9 times out of 10 it’s over-agressive spam
filtering.
I had this happen myself when someone sent me an email – their email
service (MSN Hotmail) puts an ad at the bottom of every email, and the
spam filter triggered on some of the words in that email.
Yet another reason not to use a free email account that adds advertising
to your emails.
See if you can whitelist her somehow by adding to your address book or
however else your ISP supports configuring your spam filters.
Good luck!
Leo
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Version: GnuPG v1.4.6 (MingW32)
iD8DBQFF6bnJCMEe9B/8oqERAnf1AJ9cdpWu36p7aYPEu3K8ZDOuufb22ACbBGhH
vD0qvHvQ0IFxmyDzT4RfNfQ=
=OvRv
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I am having trouble with email. I cant figure out why. my fiance send me several emails from russia at my Aim email. I received nothing…
Please help me with this.
thank you!
I have an email I rec’d from brother and wish to send to friends–internet explorer email refuses to send content of message, including to myself. people complain where is the message? how do I remedy this.
I am unable to receive e-mails from [email address removed] or [email address removed]. They din’t bounce or show up as junk mail. Both accounts are usually used on the same computer. Any suggestions?
Thanks
I have been emailing my husband’s work email and numerous colleugues at his work and all of a sudden – my emails are being returned undelivered saying Barracuda spam firewall has refused?? can you clarify.
17-Oct-2008
My e-mails that I send are saying that they are sent, but they never get received.
I have yahoo and I get the message that I have mail but nothing appears. This morning It said I have 11 emails but only got 4. I know my friend is trying to send me mail and I don’t get it. Thanks
I am trying for days now to send an email or reply to any of my friends I have received the emails from. There is no chance for my emails to get through! Once I click send, this is the notification that popps up in my screen: “Are you sure you want to nevigate away from this page? You haven’t sent this message. Are you sure you want to discard it? Press OK to continue or Cancel to stay on the current page.” Regardless of what I press (either Ok or Cancel) it will take me to the HTTP 403 (The webside declined to show this webpage) and my message never gets through!
I began hearing from people that they had not heard from me for a long time. I had been sending out jokes with up to 200 names in BCC. I remembered AOL kickbacks mentioning the reason being headers with more than 32kb in size. My 200 names were in groups of various size. I measured a test email with 85 names in my largest group and found [in properties, and before I put any text in] that the 85 names were 25.5 kb in size. I did my emails in three bunches with the 85 by itself, and the rest in two other emails. They all go trough now with out a probllem. Size was my problem.
I’d been sending mails via my phone for months before I discovered that there were not really through and those ones sent to me by friends via phone I couldn’t get either and I’m still facing the problem now! You people should do something fast about it.
My friend recently switched to hotmail and now
she never receives my emails.
I see a few comments about Hotmail rejecting their emails. I went through that a couple of times. Hotmail has overly aggressive spam filters and sometimes blacklists entire email companies if one their clients sends spam to Hotmail clients. My suggestion switch from Hotmail to GMail, which incidentally had quite good spam filtering.
hte person has a yahoo.com account,my emails still don’t get through to her, really getting to be apain
I keep getting a daemon message that they could
not deliver my message because they had tried
past their time limit. I am on Yahoo.com and I
am emailing {email removed}. She does
work for a doctor and sometime works at home.
Sometimes I get thru. Is their server down or what is going on?
@Elsey,
Holy Cow! Don’t post people’s emails online. That opens them up for all sorts of trouble. More here:
Why shouldn’t I post my email address in a public forum?
Comcast (one example) will block email as spam based on the criteria Leo laid out. However, they don’t send anything back to the sender so the sender has no way of knowing whether the email is delivered. Email volume seems to be one of their triggers. Very frustrating when you are working on a project with someone.
lately all forwarded main to hot mail & aol people comes back saying it cannot be delivered but i receive e mail from them. i have to fax them
I have an account with yahoo since 2006 I cant understand why my E-mail don’t go through please help me
Hi Adrienne,
The place to ask Leo a question is at this link: http://askleo.com/ask-leo/
To get an answer you will need to be a lot more specific. Include things like what kind of a computer you are using, what browser. Do the emails get to some people and not others? How do you know they are not getting through, and what error messages you get.
Another criteria which I use (and this may be considered rude or drastic to some others) is that if the email contains no description in the “Subject” line, AND I don’t recognize the sender, it goes in the trash. I have rarely lost anything important by doing this.
I have been sending emails to {removed}@comcast.net can you tell me if he is receiving these e mails and if not why is he not getting them
That’s not possible.
https://askleo.com/can_i_tell_if_email_i_sent_has_been_read_by_the_recipient/
just this morning I worked with someone who wasn’t getting email from a friend. It turned out that the friend’s email address had been put in the outlook blocked sender’s list. There were other email addresses in his list that he was surprised at, so we cleaned it up. This didn’t fix the problem of how they got in the list, but at least he gets email from my friend now.
Leo, Thanks for this article. My email was not getting through to one person. I ran a test deleting the hyperlinks in the signature and it got through.
I recently have not been getting emails from one customer I do business with. It will go to ac recipient that is copied on the email, but I won’t receive it. Could this customer if mine done anything to change their emails (spam) or anything else? What do I need to do so I can receive their emails in the future? Thank you in advance for your time and looking forward to your answer.
It’s almost impossible to say. You might try setting up an email account with a different provider and seeing if they can email you there.
Leo, very often I try to email a company using their “contact us” information link and the email doesn’t go through. I click the send button and nothing happens. It’s kind of frustrating. Is there a way around this issue?
That would be a problem with that particular company’s website. It could be that their form simply is coded wrong and does not work. Very often they are using an old technology that does not work well with online email clients such as Yahoo. If you see a blue link for an email address then they are probably using that old technology which expects to open a default email client on your computer (such as old Outlook Express). If you are using an online service then there is nothing to open and the link fails.
The solution is to simply copy the email address provided on the page, go to your Yahoo mail (or Gmail, or Outlook.com, etc.) and start an email. Paste in their address in the “to” field and you are ready to go.
There is another, more complicated, method explained in this article: https://askleo.com/how_do_i_change_the_mailto_or_default_mail_program/
There’s no way to know. There are as many different technologies involved as there are companies and contact forms. It would depend on the specific contact form that’s not working for you. One thing I can say, though, is that most rely on JavaScript, so make sure that’s enabled, and that pop-up blockers are disabled.
I send emails to {email address removed} and they are never delivered I am regularly told they think it is spam by Mailer-Daemon@ yahoo.com this is very inconvenient as I am disabled and the only way I can get my groceries is by emailing the store. I normally email the store about 3 tines a week thank you
A workaround would be to open a new email address to send email to this company.
Can’t receive any e- mails on my yahoo.com account , wondering if I have something turned off on my IPad in the settings that should be on??? I was receiving up till Oct. 10th now no emails………I am waiting on some to come in and it is aggravating. Some are receipts for a condo…..
Maybe you changed your password in your Yahoo account. Try checking your account from your computer and see if you can get in.
I am unable to send emails to my friends using my Google account.
Not nearly enough information to go on. What happens when you try?
Amazing that this 15 year old blog still holds true today!
My emails started not getting through this past summer; the problem was intermittent; I never knew when it would not go through and it was frustrating! I changed email service providers and the problem still continues. The only one that sends me a delivery failure is Google, saying “Our system has detected an unusual rate of 421-4.7.0 unsolicited mail originating from your IP address. To protect our 421-4.7.0 users from spam, mail sent from your IP address has been temporarily 421-4.7.0 rate limited.” Others where I don’t get the mail delivery failure notice just don’t get delivered. I’ve been using alternate email addresses or the telephone to get my correspondence completed.
I was told the problem is that some other user on the email hosting site is using their server to send huge amounts of spam. Google sees the spam coming from that server address and is blocking all email from that server even though my email is not spam. The only way around this would be to get an email provider that does not allow that kind of activity from their other users.
I’ve also been told by the email host that the issue is with using proxy servers (which most hosting companies do) which switches the IP address every 10 minutes so if one of those servers gets blacklisted, every time you send an email through that server, Google will bounce it back, until the proxy server gets cleaned up. That’s why the problem has been intermittent.
So G Suite and Office 365 were mentioned as alternatives for my small business. Is there any other solution to get email through than those two that would be cost effective for a very small professional office of three people?
AT&T emails with sbcglobal.net addresses were not working for about 3 days, but they have started sending and receiving again today, with one exception.
Neither SBCglobal.net nor outlook addresses will send to each other.
Dear Leo,
I’m facing a strange issue, where an email from one particular email id is not getting triggered but using the other id it’s getting triggered. In case , its marked as Spam, is there a way to remove it from the spam category. Regards, Jayant.
I sent a Thank you notice to a Minister & his wife, & told them some information, in a short not
e , why would a computer see that as spam, I don”t get it !
There’s no point in asking why. Spam algorithms are always changing based on what people click as “this is spam”. Not your Minister, but others. The systems start to learn that “mail like this, right now, looks like spam to a lot of people”. And yes, sometimes they get it wrong. And to top it off, it could all change next week.
Dear Leo:
I have been emailing an attorney for over a year, and the last snail I sent she didn’t reply for some time. She “claims” my email went to her “junk” folder. I don’t believe her. Why after a year would my emails stop reaching her inbox? Just sent another one a month ago. No reply.
I think she’s ignoring my emails.
What can you tell me?
I would think as an attorney they’d have a way to mark all of their clients as “contacts” so that their emails are always recognized. I mean…. I’m sure her top priority clients emails aren’t ending up in her junk mail!
I can’t tell you much. Spam algorithms are always in flux so it’s very possible that your email COULD start landing in a spam folder. It’s also possible that they’re ignoring you. No way to know.
It may also be your File > Mail > Compose Messages settings. If you have it on Rich Text that can prevent some users from receiving your attachments. Instead of an attachment they will get an icon that does not do anything. Change “Compose messages in this format” to HTML or Plain text.
Google asked me to change my password, I did.
Now when I try to send an email it asks for my password and will not accept either the new or old password.
Now I cannot send an email.
No matter what i have done, I still have no email.
the Best.
Paul Echlin
I have been emailing my sister at a couple different addresses for years. During the last six months or so she has been unable to receive mail from me whether I respond of of her sent email or I create and send new. I am able to send and respond to other people. Does this seem to mean that she has blocked my emails with a spam filter. Could there be any other reason?
Thank you, Barbara Dickinson
It’s possible that her ISP considers your email spam, I suppose. Try using a different email address / service to send from.
Big frustration here. Most of my family members have gmail addresses (I don’t, mine is a tiny rural co-op ISP). Recently, I’ve been getting “undeliverable” messages from gmail that look like this: The attached message could not be delivered to the recipients listed below. The original message was rejected at Wed, 06 Feb 2019 19:28:24 +0000
Delivery attempt from MAG: smtp687.redcondor.net to receiving MTA failed.
—– The following addresses had permanent fatal errors —–
550-5.7.1 [208.80.206.87 12] Our system has detected that this message is
550-5.7.1 likely unsolicited mail. To reduce the amount of spam sent to Gmail,
550-5.7.1 this message has been blocked. Please visit
550-5.7.1 https://support.google.com/mail/?p=UnsolicitedMessageError
550 5.7.1 for more information. m5si4771761pfm.149 – gsmtp
My Mom was BCC’d on a personal message, a reply to a friend about legislation in my Mom’s home state. I did not want to expose her address on my friend’s machine. A few days ago, my personal email to family members about an online meeting was similarly blocked to all gmail addresses. My research indicates that gmail will not help me unless I have a gmail address myself, and I don’t want to give Google my PII. My newsletter mass mailing for business clients is scheduled soon and I fear the worst. (I recently coped with the SPF_FAIL problem via a DNS configuration change.) I would appreciate suggestions for coping with this new gmail-specific problem.
One approach would be to forward the sent mail, rather than BCC’ing her. One sign of spam is when the recipient is BCC’ed.
Hi Leo and Team Leo,
I’ve been receiving some emails from my company’s payroll company (ADP) to my personal email (AOL). I’ve been forwarding some of these emails back to my work email address (emails are setup thru company website and we use Mozilla Thunderbird to read and send email at the office). For some reason the emails from my personal inbox are not arriving in my work inbox. They are not in a spam folder either. In case you’re wondering, I do get emails directly from ADP to my work email at times with no issue and I’ve also sent emails back and forth between my personal and work email accounts before without any issue. For some reason, these particular ones from my AOL account are a problem. What’s odd to me is AOL says, your message was sent- there have not been any bounce back messages or error codes. These emails are just floating out there in cyberspace. As a test, I forwarded one of the missing ADP emails from my personal account to my co-worker (has the same work email set up as I do) and she received it no problem. Then she forwarded it to my work email and I received it. I thought that was strange, but even stranger yet, a minute later, I received this same missing email from my personal AOL account at my work inbox! So, my questions are, 1. Do you have any suggestions for me as to what I could do to fix this or why it’s happening? I’m not sure why Thunderbird would think this is spam.. there’s nothing confidential and no one was BCC’d on anything. 2. Is it possible that when it accepted this same email that was forwarded from my co-worker that the Spam Assassin or Spam Pal in Thunderbird learned that it was ok to accept email from ADP? Or do you think it learns per individual email- not necessarily all emails that will come from ADP? Thanks so much for listening.. looking forward to your reply.
This sounds more like your work email system is interfering. I’d contact whoever manages your work email to see if they can figure out what’s going on.
I am getting emails from my co-worker, but if he sends an attachment, I don’t receive his email at all. He says when he sends his attachments to others, they receive it. And I receive attachments from other people also, just not him. We both have AOL accounts. Not getting the attachments is making work very difficult.
All I can suggest is what’s discussed in the article. If he’s not getting a bounce message then you should check your spam folders. Barring that you might consider using a tool like DropBox to transfer files instead. Either share a folder, or have him email you a link to the file in dropbox rather than attaching the file itself.
——– Original Message ———-
From: Mail Delivery System
To: My email address
Date: September 27, 2019 at 11:03 AM
Subject: Mail Delivery Failure
This message was created automatically by the mail system (ecelerity).
A message that you sent could not be delivered to one or more of its
recipients. This is a permanent error. The following address(es) failed:
Senders e mail address (while not connected): 554 5.4.7 [internal] exceeded max time without delivery
Been sending e-mails back and forth for years, now can’t. Is this the senders fault or mine. He does not recieve mine or from my wifes e-mail. I have no problems with any one else
The fact that He doesn’t receive email from you or your wife and you have no problems with anyone else seems to show that the problem is on his end. Ask him if he’s having trouble getting emails from anyone else.
Everything points to it being a problem with the recipient’s service.
He is not having trouble getting email from anyone else. We are not having any problems receiving email from anyone else. We can receive his emails but he cannot receive ours . What do you suggest?
All I can suggest is working with his email provider to see if they can pin down a cause.
A lot of the time the e-mails I send on gmail do not get through to people because of Google’s automatic system which was the same with YouTube messages for a while, and many comments do not go through on YouTube when I ask somebody personal information, or I ask them if they could subscribe to me.
On gmail I ask people personal information a lot depending on who I am talking to, and it is very frustrating that almost none of them go through to people except for the ones I send to myself.
I actually have well over 50 gmail e-mail addresses, but since almost nothing gets through to people I send e-mails with yahoo instead which mainly everything I send goes through.
I actually also have over 600 YouTube accounts as well.
I did not create any of them to spam, but I created them because I am very obsessive compulsive about creating accounts on the internet such as getting account names that everybody would want for certain interests, and I have a form of Autism called Asperger Syndrome.
Those emails might not be getting through because the recipient’s email program or email website is blocking it as spam. Asking people to subscribe is a common feature of some spam. Gmail will also block some emails which have the characteristics of spam, for example, they limit the number of emails which can be sent at one time. Are you sending a bulk mailing? If so switch to a bulk mail service such as MailChimp or AWeber.
To add to the comment I put above because of having a form of Autism called Asperger Syndrome maybe the gmail e-mails do not get through to people a lot too might be because of the ways I word everything, and I mainly always word everything the same way.
Even e-mails where I was trying to buy original artwork from people where I had to tell them my whole name, and my address do not go through either even if I am giving them personal information about me, but I am not asking them personal information.
Also I am not asking for a reply with these comments.
I am just trying to let people know this.
I did not really get that you were answering people before I put the first 2 comments that I ended up putting.
All of a sudden people with a gmail email address are not getting my emails from my work email (through Outlook). So when people are emailing me a question when I go to respond they are not getting my responses. VERY frustrating!!
My husband and I have been emailing each other from opposite ends of the house fine for 6 months here- now all of a sudden I get his but he does not get mine. I checked and I am not on his blocked list.
Here is my situation:
I can receive messages from Sympatico.ca accounts but when I reply via Outlook 365 on my computer, my emails aren’t received.
When I send the same message using my provider’s webmail portal, the message goes though.
Your thoughts?
Make sure your outlook is configured to send through the same service and account. Assuming that’s correct, there are/can be different headers in the email sent that way, and perhaps that tips the balance into the spam territory. When you say they’re not delivered — at all? Or do they show up in the recipient’s spam folder?
The emails arrive and then instantly disappear. They don’t bounce back nor are they put into the recipient’s junk folder. We discovered that while we can’t whitelist my emails (doesn’t have any effect), we can set an email rule to move the incoming email to his inbox. This means that the emails are getting to his service but then being summarily rejected.
I guess I’m confused … so does the rule solve the problem?
Is the recipient using webmail or a mail program, if so which one? Do they have other rules in place that might be kicking your messages out? Is this one sympatico.ca account, or several, and do they all behave the same?
My own tale of E-Mail woe is simply this: I can send an E-Mail to one of my brothers, and he receives it just fine — but if he replies (or sends an original message) to ME, I never receive it. No Spam folder placement, NOTHING. It just vanishes into the ether (which the The Michelson–Morley experiment proved doesn’t even exist!).
If I want a reply to a E-Mail I send to this brother, I’ve taken to sending my message from an alternate E-Mail account (set up to automatically forward received E-Mail to my regular address). It’s a nuisance, but it does successfully evade whatever E-Mail-swallowing gremlin in blocking his replies.
I’ve noticed a funny thing about Gmail. I only get email labeled as spam from addresses from which I’ve marked their email as spam. I’ve found a lot of “spam”, including false positives in other folders such as the “Promotions” folder under trash under the “More” category. It’s strange that Google would be so abstruse. While researching your question, I found over a hundred “Best of Ask Leo!” emails and a few others I wanted to keep. None of them was an actual personal email but it’s possible something like that happened to your brother’s emails.
Stop using Gmail “categories”. Seriously. While Gmail’s great at flagging spam, they really, REALLY, miss the mark categorizing things into things like “Promotions”, “Social”, and what not. I talked about this in last Saturday’s live event, and also in How Do I Get Rid of Gmail Tabs?
I disabled categories years ago. Somehow, they must have come back. Time, again, to kill ’em. I remember you wrote that article about it before.
I sent an email to my friend, then my mom said the email never got my email
There are many reasons this can happen. Be sure to actually read the article you just commented on for what those are, and what to try to do about it.
I have a paid subscription to American Greetings ecards. I send up to 150 individual ecards every Holiday. One friend has always gotten them until lately. I text to let her know to check her email. She told me not there, not in junk or spam either? She gets my personal email just fine but not American greetings?
It’s possible he ISP is blocking e-Cards without informing you. Many e-cards mails are blocked because they are notorious for selling email addresses to spammers. Microsoft is notorious for that. I’ve had my emails sent to Microsoft accounts bounce because Microsoft blocked the entire sending domain.
Why Are Electronic Greeting Cards a Bad Idea?
American Greeting Cards is a reputable company, but many others are not so some might block all of them. When I send e-cards, I make them myself. I write a text and include an appropriate picture. It’s more personal.
My problem is exactly the other way around.
I have no problem sending E-Mail to others… but my brother finds it impossible to send an E-Mail to me!