sent mail bounces

[harryw]

I recently completed the switch to BlueHost. My web site is up and running and I configured Outlook to use the BlueHost mail servers. All works fine except sent mail is bounced by for instance hotmail, the problem seems to be that the IP address the message is sent from is suspicious. This not only happens with mail sent using Outlook but also webmail (Horde).

Anybody else has problems with sending mail?

[Early Out]

Yeah, this happens periodically, with various ISPs and mail hosts. What happens is that some BH users have all their BH email forwarded to another account, like a hotmail account. So, all the spam gets forwarded as well, and the hotmail mail server sees a mountain of spam coming from the BH mail server. BH gets blacklisted.

Hotmail (and they're not the only ones who do this - Comcast does, too) doesn't look to the original source of the spam. As a practical matter, it's not worth bothering, since the headers on spam are often forged, anyway. All they know is that the mail server at IP address x.x.x.x (a BH mail server), is a spam source.

That's why I plead with anyone who will listen - don't have your BH email forwarded to another account. Just use an email client program to fetch it directly from BH.

In the meantime, there's not much you can do about hotmail blocking your email. Try sending it again - if it goes out through a different BH mail server (they apparently do some load-balancing across a number of different boxes), it might not get blocked. I don't think hotmail has any way of requesting that the block be removed (Comcast does, and it works, even if you're not a Comcast customer). You might want to submit a ticket about it - someone at BH might be able to do something about it.

If the problem persists, you should be able to continue to use your BH email account, but route your outgoing mail through your own ISP's SMTP server.

[harryw]

Thanks, this makes sense. It also happened with mail sent to a friend who is on Road Runner (cfl.rr.com), the email I got back contained a link that showed this:

Road Runner Internal IP Address-Based Block : Mail Refused - 66.147.249.3 - See http://security.rr.com/mail_blocks.htm#highspam - 20081231

Prior Block History for 66.147.249.3:

66.147.249.3 blocked on 20081213; removed on 20081217

The block was apparently again applied on December 31.

I did as you suggested, I am now using my ISP`s SMTP server for outgoing mail, that works fine.

My previous web host did not even support outgoing mail so I am back in the same situation, with a difference. Whenever I am not at home I was using webmail (Horde) and could send emails, but with BH`s Horde I cannot do that, emails are still bounced. This is pretty important to me as me and my wife are traveling a lot, sometimes using other people`s computers. How can I get around that?

By the way, I opened a ticket for the original problem.

[Early Out]

When it comes to using webmail (Horde, Squirrel, Roundcube), you're pretty much out of luck. All you can do is try it, cross your fingers, and hope for the best.

Ironically, the solution would be to have your BH email forwarded to a non-BH account, like your ISP account, and then access that account on the web. Of course, this is precisely the situation that causes the problem in the first place.

If I were in BH's position, I think I would just decree that mail forwarding be allowed only to other BH POP accounts, and finally put a stop to this mess. With the limits on outgoing messages (default 50/hour), BH's mail servers would never get blacklisted, and we could all send out our mail without repeated hassles.

[wilsonmh]

I recently completed the switch to BlueHost. My web site is up and running and I configured Outlook to use the BlueHost mail servers. All works fine except sent mail is bounced by for instance hotmail, the problem seems to be that the IP address the message is sent from is suspicious. This not only happens with mail sent using Outlook but also webmail (Horde).

Anybody else has problems with sending mail?

Hotmail and gmail are both providers who haven't been very cooperative with us in solving this problem. Because of our total mail volume even the strictest of filtering techniques still get us blocked with them periodically. They aren't listening to us about this. But they will listen to you, if you get blocked complain to their customer service. If they get enough complaints we will be hearing a more conciliatory attitude from them.

[edsetsco]

I have used a Blackberry with no problems to get my BH mail for years, and also to get mail from a Road Runner account.

Now that I have a Palm Pre, it seems that I can no longer send mail from the Road Runner account unless I'm using my home Wi-Fi with the phone so that the source looks like it is in the Road Runner domain.

So, the relevant part...is there any reason I should not be able to use my BH mail server (mail.xyz.com) where xyz is my BH hosted domain as the outgoing mail server?

I suppose the question is whether Bluehost servers are going to see a mail coming from the Sprint network as spam and block it?

If so, then in this country, you can buy a phone that uses email which is not able to send email in any circumstance, which sort of shoots an arrow in the forehead of the industry if you ask me!

[felgall]

I suppose the question is whether Bluehost servers are going to see a mail coming from the Sprint network as spam and block it?

The problem isn't BlueHost blocking emails from Sprint. The problem is the email recipient's service blocking emails from BlueHost. Even though BlueHost has a zero spam tollerance there is enough spam around that looks like it comes from BlueHost for other places to blacklist all of the hundreds of millions of emails from BlueHost due to their receiving a few thousand spam emails that passed through BlueHost.

[techgy]

.....That's why I plead with anyone who will listen - don't have your BH email forwarded to another account. Just use an email client program to fetch it directly from BH.........

If the problem persists, you should be able to continue to use your BH email account, but route your outgoing mail through your own ISP's SMTP server.

Thanks for the tip. This happened to me a day or two ago. I've been using an sbcglobal.net Email account and from the message I received back AT&T is now blocking forwarded Email from BlueHost. Messages that are not forwarded come right through. I proved this yesterday by contacting BH support. The fellow I spoke to sent a test message directly to my sbc account and it came through. So forwarding's the issue.

I now have an Email set up through the cPanel and I use Outlook Express to pull the mail from the BH POP3 account. It's working perfectly. I still use the sbc for outgoing mail.

I also use Choicemail (digiportal.com) as a spam blocker. Fantastic program. Junk mail hasn't got a chance.

[granburytrader]

I don't forward my email. I use my domain name email directly from bh. This past couple of weeks I started noticing people I have always been able to email now don't receive my emails. It is getting worse & seriously impacting my business. I have no other way to send outgoing (as far as I know). I don't know what to do. Any ideas?

[felgall]

I don't forward my email. I use my domain name email directly from bh. This past couple of weeks I started noticing people I have always been able to email now don't receive my emails. It is getting worse & seriously impacting my business. I have no other way to send outgoing (as far as I know). I don't know what to do. Any ideas?

With over one and a half million accounts it doesn't take many forwarding emails for the recipient networks to block the origin mailservers as spammers. It even 0.01% of accounts used mail forwarders then that's still 150 accounts sending spam which could be enough to get flagged with some recipient mail servers who don't realise how big BlueHost is.