"Your server IP address is in the SpamCop database, bye"

April 8, 2014 6:12 AM

Email filter: I've had trouble for the last couple days with bouncing emails. It's just been to a couple email addresses (that I really need to send things to - NOT SPAM) and I don't understand why. I've googled, seems like sometimes IP addresses just end up on blocklists, however - I use gmail, so what gives? What? Why? How do I fix it? How long will it last?

Extra info:

- I tried sending the email from another account (albeit, still a gmail one) and it bounced back too.
- things sent to every email but these two addresses have worked fine. So far.
- I ended up having to get someone to send the mail for me, it seems to have worked.
- Thing of note: when I sent him the email text (just text with a couple links in it, no attachments), he got a warning saying that the email contents contained text often used to phish for info. When he cc'd me on the email he sent on my behalf, I got the same warning. We're both on Gmail.

Help? I promise I'm not a spammer.

posted by mooza to Computers & Internet (4 answers total)

Gmail is unlikely to be in a blacklist, what is more likely is that those two recipients have a misconfigured email server that scans the content of emails. If plain text emails get through then something about the attachments is causing problems. My guess is that their email system has a rule saying "If an email gets blocked, place the sender on the list of suspected bad address and treat any further messages from them as hostile"

You need to talk to whoever runs the email system of your recipients (or get them to do it).
posted by AndrewStephens at 6:22 AM on April 8, 2014

Some of the gmail servers are blacklisted. They have been since yesterday, have a look on twitter. Should be fixed today.

In the error e-mails you are getting, check how long the retry is. If the retry is less than whenever it is fixed, you don't need to resend. If you *do* need to resend, you will get another e-mail telling you this. Don't ignore these e-mails.
posted by devnull at 6:24 AM on April 8, 2014 [1 favorite]

Oops, my bad. I just assumed SpamCop wouldn't be silly enough to blacklist a known Google server.
posted by AndrewStephens at 7:53 AM on April 8, 2014

I'm seeing my e-mails getting delivered as of an hour ago. I guess the problem is fixed or is nearly fixed now.
posted by devnull at 11:23 AM on April 8, 2014