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outbound message rejected due to spam or virus

FIXED
Spiffle
Dabbler
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Registered: ‎23-01-2017

outbound message rejected due to spam or virus

I have a problem responding to e-mails sent from my landlord, a well-known organisation based here in south Wales -- I'll refer to them here as Taffy.  My replies to their e-mails return (instantly!) the following response:

>>> Your message did not reach some or all of the intended recipients.

>>>  Subject:    (whatever)

>>>  Sent: 22/08/2017 11:58

>>> 

>>> The following recipient(s) cannot be reached:

>>> 

>>>  '<recipient e-mail address>' on 22/08/2017 11:58

>>>     552 <message code> message rejected due to spam or virus.

>>>  If you believe this is in error please login to your portal or contact your ISP support team.

 

(My e-mail software is Outlook 2013 on a Windows 7 laptop but I think it's PlusNet's outbound mail processing which is raising this problem, not Outlook.)

After some investigation it seems to be triggered by a couple of images embedded in Taffy's original message -- they are part of a standard 'signature' appended to all their messages by their e-mail software.  If I delete either one of these images from my replies I still get this error response, but if I delete both the message gets sent.  I've mentioned the problem to my contacts at Taffy but they maintain that other folk don't have this problem so the problem must lie with me alone!  I would like PlusNet a) to confirm that it's their outbound mail processing which is detecting a spam/virus issue with both of these images and b) to give me some evidence that I can pass on to Taffy so that they can clean up these images.

Is there some way to contact PlusNet support by e-mail?  Their usual online chat is available at the moment and I would prefer to e-mail them anyway.

18 REPLIES 18
Spiffle
Dabbler
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Registered: ‎23-01-2017

Re: outbound message rejected due to spam or virus

Replying to my own message:  the bottom bit was supposed to read that online chat is UNavailable at present!

bobpullen
Community Gaffer
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Re: outbound message rejected due to spam or virus

The offending image is likely a remotely embedded URL/web address.
If you're able to direct message me the source of each of these images then I'll look into it for you.
It will be our outbound spam filtering that's causing the issue, however the situation will have arisen for good reason.

Bob Pullen
Plusnet Product Team
If I've been helpful then please give thanks ⤵

Spiffle
Dabbler
Posts: 15
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Registered: ‎23-01-2017

Re: outbound message rejected due to spam or virus

Thank Bob.  I've gone back to the latest of their incoming messages and will attempt to paste the entire 'signature' here.  The images show as rectangles.  I hope you will be able to interpret them satisfactorily...

John

<Start of pasted signature...

 




 

Caroline Morgan
Communities Manager

Melin Homes

01495 745910

Visit us at melinhomes.co.uk
twitter.com/MelinHomes
facebook.com/MelinHomes

 


Melin Homes Ltd is a charitable registered social landlord and is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority.
Registered office Ty'r Efail, Lower Mill Field, Pontypool, Torfaen NP4 0XJ
-------------------------------------------
The information in this email is confidential and is intended solely for the addressee. Access by anyone else is unauthorised. If you are not the intended recipient, any disclosure, copying, distribution, or any action taken in reliance on it, is prohibited and unlawful. Opinions, conclusions and other information in this message that do not relate to our business shall be understood as neither given nor endorsed by it. We may for operational or business reasons monitor replies to this email.
-------------------------------------------
Save resources: think before you print.

.... end of pasted signature>

bobpullen
Community Gaffer
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Re: outbound message rejected due to spam or virus


@Spiffle wrote:

I hope you will be able to interpret them satisfactorily...


Unfortunately not, the image containers look empty to me.

In Outlook, open the message in a new window, view the source of the email (see below), and then send me the contents of the window that pops up using the link here. That should give me enough to work with:

outlook-view-source.jpg

 

 

Bob Pullen
Plusnet Product Team
If I've been helpful then please give thanks ⤵

bobpullen
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Re: outbound message rejected due to spam or virus

Fix

@Spiffle, just dropped you a PM - should be sorted now.

One of the images was matching a spam fingerprint due to it being present in messages that others reported as spam. It was also in emails delivered to honeypot addresses/spam traps.

I've had the reputation reset so things should go through now. It would be worth the sender sanity checking their mailing lists though, to avoid the possibility of it happening again.

Sorry it took so long.

Bob Pullen
Plusnet Product Team
If I've been helpful then please give thanks ⤵

Spiffle
Dabbler
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Registered: ‎23-01-2017

Re: outbound message rejected due to spam or virus

What a star, Bob!  Cheesy  Many thanks for pursuing this so assiduously and successfully.  It was doing my head in at times, as I couldn't seem to find any ways to get the necessary messages out to you because of the problem itself, so it all got a bit incestuous.  Anyway it all works now (for the moment, and subject to the 'reputation' of those images remaining good as you indicated) and I've explained the situation to my communicants at Taffy now.  All the best, .....Spiffle

glynz2
Hooked
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Registered: ‎17-09-2015

Re: outbound message rejected due to spam or virus

I am having this problem too!

Spiffle
Dabbler
Posts: 15
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Registered: ‎23-01-2017

Re: outbound message rejected due to spam or virus

Hmm -- suggest you raise a ticket and suggest Bob has a look at the problem;  he did some magic behind the scenes which fixed it for me so hopefully he can sort you out quickly.

GraemeRoss
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Registered: ‎31-07-2017

Re: outbound message rejected due to spam or virus

Hi, I am also having problems with one of my friends emails being marked as spam by relay.plus.net

I run a small mailserver on my network to accept emails for the family which then forwards them thru relay.plus.net to our main accounts on gmail etc

This has been working well for some time.

However recently some emails from a friend are being bounced at the relay -  with the relay claiming it contains a virus or is spam.

I suspect that this is a false positive

below is a transcript of the bounce message
##########################################################
This is the mail system at host XXXXXXXXXX.co.uk.

I'm sorry to have to inform you that your message could not
be delivered to one or more recipients. It's attached below.

For further assistance, please send mail to postmaster.

If you do so, please include this problem report. You can
delete your own text from the attached returned message.
             
                   The mail system

<xxxxxxxxxxxxxx@gmail.com> (expanded from <xxxxxxx@XXXXXXXXXX.co.uk>): host
    relay.plus.net[212.159.9.107] said: 552 Huo71w0023q0lTk01uo8Yo message
    rejected due to spam or virus. If you believe this is in error please login
    to your portal or contact your ISP support team. (in reply to end of DATA
    command)

Final-Recipient: rfc822; xxxxxxxxxxxxxx@gmail.com
Original-Recipient: rfc822;xxxxxx@XXXXXXXXXX.co.uk
Action: failed
Status: 5.0.0
Remote-MTA: dns; relay.plus.net
Diagnostic-Code: smtp; 552 Huo71w0023q0lTk01uo8Yo message rejected due to
spam  or virus. If you believe this is in error please login to your portal or
    contact your ISP support team.
########################################################################

I tried reporting this on the support chat line, however because this has nothing to do with

the webmail client they couldn't help me.

 

spraxyt
Resting Legend
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Registered: ‎06-04-2007

Re: outbound message rejected due to spam or virus

Are you able to capture the complete message (with headers) that relay.plus.net rejects? I suspect that will be needed to diagnose what is triggering rejection.

David
GraemeRoss
Dabbler
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Registered: ‎31-07-2017

Re: outbound message rejected due to spam or virus

I have attached a copy of the original email

bobpullen
Community Gaffer
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Re: outbound message rejected due to spam or virus

There's nothing in that original email that's triggering our spam filters, which suggests it's either the forwarding destination address, or something your mail server is appending to the message that our relay server doesn't like.

Edit: Either that, or the message is no longer being seen as spam by the relays.

Bob Pullen
Plusnet Product Team
If I've been helpful then please give thanks ⤵

GraemeRoss
Dabbler
Posts: 16
Thanks: 2
Registered: ‎31-07-2017

Re: outbound message rejected due to spam or virus

Interesting.

I don't think I am appending anything (or prepending anything)

Most other emails are getting through (valid spams are definitely being stopped which is good)

I'll keep an eye on it for next weeks mailshot and see if the same thing happens.

 

Thanks for looking at it for me

GraemeRoss
Dabbler
Posts: 16
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Registered: ‎31-07-2017

Re: outbound message rejected due to spam or virus

Bob,

Whilst I was checking the logs I noticed a lot of messages in my logs saying

452 ... temporary failure (in reply to MAIL FROM command))

When I checked there was a suggestion that a 452 code is the receiving mail server (relay.plus.net) being short of resources

https://support.prolateral.com/index.php?/Knowledgebase/Article/View/188/1/what-is-smtp-and-understa...

452 - The command has been aborted because the server has insufficient system storage.

Not sure if this is a problem, because my understanding is that the message will be attempted later.

However it may be you need to give relay a little more resource to cope with the traffic it is getting