Vocal Voices

I have a longstanding BT email account (amongst others!). It's mainly used for social chitchat.
It's developed a problem starting today - it can receive emails, but it can't send.
When sending emails, I get:

Sorry your email could not be delivered due to content policy reasons. Please check your message content for URLs, content and subject matter that could be construed as Malware, Spam or Phishing before retrying. (6-1-3-1) ID (62E573CC01AB6225) [Err code: 553]

I've tried sending simple one word messages but nothing is being sent.

I gather that other BT users have had this problem and it seems that it may be being caused by having a dynamic IP address that changes when the broadband is disconnected and reconnected. Normally, the Hub is left on, but occasionally, usually late at night, the connection drops out for a length of time and then reconnects which is probably down to BT carrying out maintenance at the exchange or something. When it comes up again, I assume it's with a new (different) IP address.

Now BT have some sort of anti-phishing blacklist for IP addresses, and it seems that my allocated IP address may be inadvertently on it, because all these IP addresses are recycled. So I get the Error 553 message. It's a bit like a roulette wheel, if you spin it and the ball lands on black, you can't send an email. If it's red, you can.

Now I have checked my IP addy, and put that into a IP detector website, and it says it is on the blacklist. I disconnected my broadband for 20 minutes and when I reconnected, it had a different IP{ addy. And that was also on the blacklist! So I'm currently stumped!

Does the above make sense to you?

I have web chatted with a nice BT man called Ranik who suggested disabling the VPN in Settings and see if that worked; well it didn't. Red herring as I don't think I am on a VPN network. So the problem has been escalated to a formal complaint with BT and I am awaiting a call (48 hours).

BT Community Forum shows others have this problem but there doesn't appear to be a clear-cut solution posted.

Do you think this is a BT-induced "problem" that will come right - as often happens?
In the meantime, I think I'm going to migrate as much of my email traffic as possible to my Outlook and Live accounts ......

Hi Ossie,

What client are you using? Or are you using the web interface? If you send a mail from the web interface (log in on their website), does the mail get sent?

If you have a VPN, that would allow you to determine if it is a blacklisted IP address. However you would think that BT had whitelisted their own IP addresses with their own Spam detectors????

Using a VPN changes your IP address, so long as you use a non blacklisted one it should work. As some VPN's are abused, their IP addresses can also be blacklisted.

Tip for moving away from an email account. Using Outlook, or other mail clients, you can set one of your other accounts as default. When you reply to a mail from the BT account, just make sure your client is sending that mail from one of the other accounts (Outlook.com from instance). The people you are talking to will reply to that address and it will wind up in their cache. Only rarely will they pull the old BT account.

This is one of the reasons why I stopped using ISP mail accounts. Not the largest but one. Mail is a give-away for them. Whereas for my yahoo small business account, mail IS their business and they make money out of it. The difference is quite dramatic.

Hi Suff

Using webmail to access the account.
According to Settings, I don't have a VPN connection set up.

The IP address does seem to change if I disconnect and reconnect the Hub (done this 3 times now). And yes, the ones I have checked seem to be blacklisted (Spamhaus website).

I've logged a complaint with BT, chivvied them this morning, and they have escalated it to Tier 2, which I think means the Helpdesk have asked for a more technical look at it, and response promised in 5 working days.
Still can't send emails on that account, but I can receive them thankfully.
Where's Mick when you need him?

It's just a royal pain, but it's making me think I'll be looking to move "household" stuff over to my Outlook account. Trouble is, the errant BT account has been my main account for years, so a lot of migrating work will need to be done ....

Ossie, if you are creating the mail on their server on webmail then it is their own system which has a problem. It's nothing to do with your IP or what you put in the mail. Their own anti spam is refusing to send mails created by their own system. Which is just incompetent.

Anti Spam and anti malware systems use a numbering system to reject mails. They give each infringement a value and then add them up. If it breaches a threshold then it gets rejected.

What this failure is telling you is that the BT webmail software is putting so much invisible crap into the mail that the threat monitoring system is rejecting it as malware/spam. Keep beating them, it is their problem and they need to fix it. Nothing you can do.

I know the pain you will feel with the old account. It is why I went with a paid option in the long run.

Thanks, Suff, you've only voiced what I was beginning to suspect .....

So, my head is done in. I have read reams of similar reports on the internet and there does not appear to be any real fix. The worst place is the BT Community where the BT bods do not either recognise what is being said or fly of in totally meaningless directions.

Then I found the solution here: https://community.bt.com/t5/Email/Error ... 857#M99923

Sounds bollocks, but that's just me. Most of us turn our computers off.

This might help, it's a bit like what Suff is saying.

I have four email addresses and use an email client on my laptop: EssentialPIM. Each account has its own settings for incoming and outgoing emails - POP3 and SMTP. The server settings are on each site: gmx, zoho; live (Outlook) and gmail. If I wanted to I could send emails from each account separately, but it is a bit of a faff. What I have done is set one SMTP server as the default outgoing server for all accounts. On the rare times there have been problems I just change the default SMTP.

You appear to have multiple addresses with different companies so it might be worth a go.

EPIM is free https://www.essentialpim.com/features/o ... ro-vs-free It might be worth a shot.

Cheers, WM, all taken on board.

Sounds bollocks, but that's just me. Most of us turn our computers off.

Err, yes .....

TheOstrich wrote:Cheers, WM, all taken on board.

Sounds bollocks, but that's just me. Most of us turn our computers off.

Err, yes .....

Erm NO! Only with one hand forced up my back and with a gun to my head.

Actually that sounds like a caching error. Clearing cookies and temp files might do the same. But, again, this is bad design on their part. It is their servers which are borked.

Just a postscript to say that, having raised a Complaint, I chased it up, got it escalated to "Tier 2", who then referred it to a specialist team, who now seem to have fixed the problem. Leastways, I can now send test emails to one of my other accounts ......
I was told it was most likely something to do with their servers / platforms as we suspected.

It wasn't "most likely" it for damned sure was. When you use webmail you are on their servers using their software. Whilst different browsers may cause different issues, rejecting a mail successfully deposited into the outbox because of "spam like issues", when it only contains a few lines of text, is absolutely the fault of their servers and their software.

I used to be an eMail architect once upon a time...