Why Does GMail Hate My Jokes?

June 24, 2007 8:12 AM

How can I stop Google Gmail from blocking my OUTGOING emails to my distribution list?

I'm a recent convert to Gmail. I access my Gmail through MicroSoft Outlook at home.

I have a list of between 50 - 100 folks that I send stuff to at least every other day. (Jokes, humorous stories, news recaps, my own essays, etc. ) Twice now, Gmail has blocked me from sending to the entire list, and all emails were marked as undeliverable.

I tried separating the list into thirds, thinking Gmail might be confusing my list with spam. That worked - once. The problem seemed to go away for a while. Yesterday, all of my emails to the list were stopped before they got out. I split the list, but even that didn't work.

I've tried to find an answer at Google. No dice.

Error message:

Technical details of permanent failure:
PERM_FAILURE: Message rejected for Sector 5 policy reasons

I can't find anything about Sector 5. I can't find any way to contact Google, and the help groups don't address this issue.

posted by Corky to Computers & Internet (9 answers total)

Did you follow steps 7 through 10? It sounds like you're connecting to the SMTP server unauthenticated, and GMail is refusing to relay to non-GMail users.
posted by sbutler at 8:20 AM on June 24, 2007

According to a quick Google search on the term Gmail Sector 5 policy, it looks like a violation of TOS. Specifically addressed here.

And you didn't ask for my opinion about this, but you might want to consider curbing this behavior or setting up a Google Group to continue with this. Your friends might be thrilled to get them, or they may not. With setting up a Google Group they'll all have the option whether or not to get these sorts of things.

Sorry for adding my two cents. I'm firmly in the "Please don't send me this kind of stuff camp" and have to specifically ask people not to do this. It's uncomfortable to do so.
posted by FlamingBore at 8:55 AM on June 24, 2007

And yes, it's the number of recipients. Splitting it up into thirds doesn't work because Google anticipated that technique to get around their policy.

This is exactly what Google Groups is for.
posted by mendel at 9:16 AM on June 24, 2007

Response by poster: Thanks... trust me, my list is vetted frequently for validation of those that want to opt in or out. The folks that are on the current list have specifically requested to be on it.

I will check into Google Groups. And, a blog.
posted by Corky at 9:53 AM on June 24, 2007

I have a Gmail account that I use for a community newsletter I edit and I ran into the same problem. The way I got around it was to just use Gmail's web interface whenever it's time to send out the newsletter to the list, for which I set up a contact "group" within Gmail.

There are more than 200 names on the list right now and I don't have any problem sending it as long as I use the web application rather than my desktop mail client to do it. I still send/receive all the other mail for the account via Thunderbird.

My only real complaint with this method is list management is a bit of a pain, since my other contacts/lists are maintained through Thunderbird.
posted by camcgee at 11:08 AM on June 24, 2007

I second camcgee. I have sent emails to 375 people at once by using the interface. It failed using Thunderbird. I do not do it on a regular basis so doing it every few days or so may cause a problem.
posted by JohnnyGunn at 11:26 AM on June 24, 2007

I use Google Groups to send messages to over a hundred folks in our songwriting group at church. It works well-at first because I had so many folks in the group I had to answer Google's query about who and what I was but if your friends join your group instead of you just adding them directly that might solve that problem.
posted by konolia at 1:36 PM on June 24, 2007

i'd vote for the blog. your email fans can subscribe to it if you use feedburner, or if they convert the rss to email. also, we'd all get to see how funny the jokes really are, and maybe you can make a few bucks with adsense. just remember that if you use names, they'll be google-able for ever and ever.
posted by prophetsearcher at 7:10 PM on June 24, 2007

9cays looks like it was built precisely for this kind of thing. Works well with Gmail, too; all the 9cays mails in a given thread end up in a single Gmail conversation.
posted by flabdablet at 1:47 AM on June 25, 2007