Understanding Email Errors and Error Messages http://www.penpublishing.com/support/emailerrors/understandingemailer...

Breadcrumbs: Welcome > Support > Email Errors > Understanding Email Errors

Welcome Services Support Legal FAQ Blog Events About Pen Site Map Go Green Contact Us
Submit A Support Request Contact Accounting Contact Sales Online Bill Pay Map

Understanding Email Errors and Error Messages

Understanding Email
Error Messages
Email error messages can be broken down into three groups. Look for the error message that most
closely matches the one you received. Sophos latest virus alerts
Troj/Mdrop-DKE
User Error Messages 16 April 2011 22:50:24 Z

Mailbox is full Troj/Sasfis-O

Message exceeds size limit 16 April 2011 22:45:59 Z
Improper forwarding causing mail loop Troj/Keygen-FU
User unknown/Mailbox unavailable/Invalid recipient/etc. 16 April 2011 22:04:37 Z

Domain Error Messages Troj/Zbot-AOY

16 April 2011 20:35:14 Z
Connection timed out / Connection Refused
Domain not found Blog
Anti-Spam Error Messages Wichita Crime Stoppers Launches New
Flipper CMS Site
Stop Spamming/We Hate Spammers! Pen Publishing Interactive has announced
Sender Address Rejected: Domain Not Found the launch of the new Wichita/Sedgwick
Sender Address Rejected: Relay Access Denied County Crime Stoppers website,
www.wsccs.com. Pen Publishing Interactive
provided the functionality and design u

User Error Messages Is your password strong enough?

Mail Server Updates Over The Next Two

Temporary Problems are likely to be fixed soon Weeks

Mailbox is full Congratulations to Karla. She was

selected for the 40 under 40.
The most common user problem is a full mailbox. Most systems have a limit on how much email is
Flipper Updates for 1st Quarter 2011
allow to reside on the server for each user, and once that limit is reached, there is no room to accept
new incoming mail. The following are all examples of email error messages caused by a full mailbox:

<user@yahoo.com>: User is over the quota. You can try again later. Save Our Planet
Sign Up For
<user@ibm.net>: host in7.ibm.net said:
552 <user@ibm.net>... Mailbox is full
PAPERLESS
procmail: Mailbox limit exceeded while appending message
550 <user@codetel.net.do>... Can't create output BILLING
<user@hotmail.com>: host mail9.hotmail.com said: Simple, Fast,
Make a
552 Requested mail action aborted: exceeded storage allocation
Difference

Sign up for
This error will stop as soon as the recipient makes additional room in their mailbox (usually by our paperless
removing old messages from the server), so you should probably resend your message a little later. billing
However, especially with free accounts, this message could actually mean the user no longer checks program
the account; a good rule of thumb is if you continue to receive this error for more than two weeks, it today and
is likely that the account is no longer in use. receive all of your statements and
invoices though your email.
Return to top
Save a stamp. Save paper. Save

1 of 4 11/25/2011 11:34 AM
Understanding Email Errors and Error Messages http://www.penpublishing.com/support/emailerrors/understandingemailer...

Message exceeds size limit Time.

<user1@home.com>: host mx-rr.home.com said: Click here

552 Message size exceeds fixed maximum message size (5000000) or call (316) 651-0551 to start
paperless billing today.
<user@yahoo.com>: host mx2.mail.yahoo.com said:
552 message size exceeds maximum message size

<user@bellsouth.net>: host mx01.mail.bellsouth.net said:

552 Message size exceeds fixed maximum message size: 5242880 bytes

These errors mean that the size of the message, including all headers, text and attachments,
exceeds the domain's maximum per-message size limit - essentially, that your email is too big to be
accepted. You should try to reduce the size of the message, or try to split the email into smaller parts
and resend it.

Return to top

Other types of errors that should be quickly fixed can be caused by users misconfiguring their own
email accounts. For instance:

Improper forwarding causing mail loop

554 Too many hops 27 (25 max): from <user@firstdomain.com>

via mail.firstdomain.com, to <sameuser@seconddomain.com>

In general, a "too many hops" error indicates a mail loop: the user has two accounts, forwarding to
each other, which creates an endless loop. A message sent a Pen Publishing account is forwarded
to another mailbox; if that account is set to forward to Pen Publishing, then a mail loop is created:
mail goes from Pen Publishing to the mailbox back to Pen Publishing back to the mailbox, et cetra,
until the loop is ascertained and the message returned to its sender.

Return to top

Permanent Problems

The most common permanent user problem is, of course, User Unknown. The account you are
trying to mail no longer exists - it may have been shut down, or you may have misspelled the
username or domain (make sure you check email error messages carefully). The following are all
examples of User Unknown messages:

<user@earthlink.net>: host condor.prod.itd.earthlink.net said:

550 <user@earthlink.net>... User unknown

<user@hotmail.com>: host mail7.hotmail.com said:

550 Requested action not taken: mailbox unavailable

<user@apc.net>: host mail.apc.net said:

550 5.1.1 <user@apc.net> is not a valid mailbox

<user@riviera.org.uk>: Sorry, no mailbox here by that name. (#5.1.1)

<user@saccny.org>: host hhh.net said:

550 Invalid recipient <user@saccny.org>

The message that you sent was undeliverable to the following:

user@ashrosary.org (user not found)

If you receive a user unknown bounce, and you have checked to make sure the address is correct,
the next thing you should do is try to contact the person you were trying to email by other means.
Frequently, people are not aware that they are bouncing email until someone else tells them. Also, do
not delete the bounce message. It can help the user and their ISP resolve why they are bouncing
mail more quickly.

If you do not have other means to contact the person who is bouncing mail, you probably have a
dead email address. Try mailing them one more time (preferably at least a day later) in case it was a
technical problem, but after that, stop using that email address. If you run a mailing list, and one of
your subscribers starts bouncing mail with this error, remove them from the list.

2 of 4 11/25/2011 11:34 AM
Understanding Email Errors and Error Messages http://www.penpublishing.com/support/emailerrors/understandingemailer...

Return to top

Domain Error Messages

Most of the time, when a domain has an email problem, they learn about it very quickly from their
users, and in addition, it is relatively rare for an entire domain to simply disappear, so most domain
errors should be considered temporary, and will likely be remedied soon -- resending mail a little later
is usually your best option.

Connection Timed Out / Connection Refused

<user@166.131.9.213>: connect to 166.131.9.213: Connection timed out

A "connection refused," or "connection timed out" message usually results from high volumes of mail
being processed at the time your message was received. This could be due to the server receiving
more mail then it is used to, a external attack on a domain (such as a mailbomb) or an internal setup
problem, causing the domain's mail servers to refuse connections or cut connections before a
message is fully sent. Mail exchangers are set up to only accept as much mail as they can handle, so
when problem is resolved, you will be able to send your mail without problem.

Return to top

Domain Not Found

<sheabu@domain.com>: Name service error for domain domain.com:

Host not found, try again

A "domain not found" error means that the domain name to which you sent the message does not
exist. Usually, this means you misspelled the domain name, but it may indicate a problem with the
domain's record that prevents the domain from being found. There is another Domain Not Found
error: "Sender Address Rejected: Domain Not Found"; for more information, please see Domain Not
Found: Anti-Spam error below.

Relay Access Denied

Another domain error that can be due to either the sender's or recipient's domain is a relay access
denied error:

<receipient@yahoo.com> host wormwood.Pen Publishing.com said:

554 <receipient@yahoo.com>: Recipient Address rejected:
Relay access denied

This error indicates that, somehow, a message intended for a Yahoo.com address found its way to
our penpublishing.com mail server, and since our server doesn't accept mail for yahoo.com, the
message was rejected. It is quite rare, actually, to reach a completely incorrect mail server when
sending email to a domain, so if you receive this message, the problem is usually a misconfiguration
error with the receiving domain (for example, if you receive notice that mail sent to a Pen Publishing
user was rejected by a Pen Publishing mail server with this "Recipient Address rejected," error, this
could indicate a problem with our mail servers, since Pen Publishing's mail servers obviously should
accept email for Pen Publishing users. Or, it could indicate a problem where the sender's system isn't
looking the mail server up correctly).

Another reason for receiving this error is the possibility that a domain has recently changed hosts,
and while the change has taken place, the new domain record has not yet propagated fully, and your
message reached the old hosting company which no longer accepts mail for the leaving domain. If
you receive this error, try resending your message twenty-four hours later.

Another Relay Access Denied error exists: "Sender Address rejected: Relay Access Denied"; this is
actually an anti-spam bounce, so please see Relay Access Denied: Anti-Spam bounce below.

Return to top

Anti-Spam Error Messages

System administrators frequently set up their systems to refuse mail from spammers, but since no
spam filtering system is perfect, your message may have been caught in the spam block. Some of
the most common:

3 of 4 11/25/2011 11:34 AM
Understanding Email Errors and Error Messages http://www.penpublishing.com/support/emailerrors/understandingemailer...

Spam blocks

<user@sitcom.co.il>: host ntserver.sitcom.co.il refused to talk to me:

550 Permission denied

or contains a creative note, such as:

<user@domain.net>:
connect to domain.net: 550 Connection refused - we hate spammers!

These errors mean that your provider's domain name (or specifically, your email address) is explicitly
listed as a known spammer on a blacklist. This may be based on an external service that provides
blacklists of known spammers to ISPs, or the administrator may have placed a block based on a
large volume of mail coming from your domain. Most of the time, your email provider will need to
contact the system administrator to have the block removed, so you should contact your provider
immediately. Assuming that your provider is, in fact, not a spamming service, they will want to act
quickly to get themselves removed from these blacklists.

There are two other anti-spam error messages that are very, very similar to some of the domain
errors shown above. The first is a Domain Not Found error, where the sender's domain could not be
found:

<recipient@ppi.net>:host img10.ppi.net said: 554

<user@fake_domain.com>: Sender Address Rejected: domain not found

Unlike the Domain Not Found error shown above as a domain error, this is an anti-spam bounce.
Notice the "Sender Address Rejected"; this means that the problem is actually with the Sender's
email address - specifically, that the domain used in the sender's email address was not a valid
domain. When a mail server receives an email for one of its users, the server checks to ensure that
the sender's domain is a real domain - if the domain name does not resolve, the message is rejected
with the "Sender Address Rejected" error. This is an anti-spam error in that it prevents mail servers
from accepting spam where the domain is completely fake, meaning the message could not really
have originated there.

Return to top

The other type of "554 Relay Access Denied" error is a problem with the sender using the wrong
mail server to send their message:

<sender@ppi.net> host smtp-gw-4.msn.com said:

554 <sender@ppi.net>: Sender Address rejected:
Relay access denied

Essentially, this error message is similar to a Recipient Address rejected, in that the server reporting
the error does not like the domain name; however, in this case, the problem is that the outgoing
email server did not like the domain of the sender's email address (as opposed to the above
Recipient errors, where the incoming mail server does not like the recipients domain).

What this error generally indicates is that the outgoing server you're using (usually the one assigned
to you by your ISP) will not accept email with the From: address you've used on the email. For
example, domains such as BellAtlantic.com, GTE.net, and Verizon.com do not allow users to send
email their outgoing mail server if the "From" email address used on the message is not the one
assigned by them (e.g. you can't send out mail that uses your Pen Publishing address as the From:
header via their mail servers).

Many ISPs have begun to enforce these restrictions to prevent spammers from using the ISP's
access and SMTP server to send spam. To remedy this error, you will need to use the email address
assigned to you by the provider as the From: address on outgoing

Continue: Simple rules for dealing with email errors.

Return to top

All content © Pen Publishing Interactive, Inc. Phone: 316-651-0551 Fax: 316-651-5868
Powered By FlipperSiteDeveloper®

4 of 4 11/25/2011 11:34 AM