email delivery report says “smtp;550 5.6.0. Sorry, looks like SPAM to me”

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Dimitri001

New Member
Oct 11, 2019
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I'm not sure whether this is the right forum for this.

I'm applying for a tech support job and I got a test that I have a week to complete, so I assume they expect me to do some research for it, so I was wondering if anyone here might be willing to lend a hand.

I'm supposed to give my response to a support ticket. The scenario is that a client is not receiving email alerts we send out and the mail delivery report says "smpt;550 5.6.0. Sorry, looks like SPAM to me"

Now, I've done a bit of googling and asking around, but my understanding of all this is still very shaky.

My response to this would be that we should tell the client to tell their IT dept to whitelist our domain or our IP, because it appears their mail server has blacklisted us.

Now, my questions are:

1) Does that sound right to you? Is that what should be done here?

2) From what I gather, there are other possible concerns here:

a) blacklisting on a broader level

Maybe our domain or our IP has been added to some blacklist and now mail servers across the internet will be rejecting our email.

b) SPF issues

Elsewhere, I've been advised that this may be due to SPF issues. I barely understand what SPF is, but with some googling, I've gotten a vague image.

Are those two legitimate concerns in the sense that besides telling the client to whitelist us we would need to look into whether there's a problem with either of these two because others may be not getting our mail.

Is there anything else besides these two possibilities I should check?
 

Evan

Well-Known Member
Jan 6, 2016
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While that may be the fix and a solution for the ticket towards the customer I bet the are expecting you to open your own problem ticket internally to check your config is also all correct and that all your entries are correct for sending domain and make sure it’s not your organization that has the issue. Meaning to check your reputation/sending score, check your own bounce rates etc. shows your thinking beyond just solve the issue and investigate a little is the problem really with the receive or sender.
 
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Dimitri001

New Member
Oct 11, 2019
2
0
1
While that may be the fix and a solution for the ticket towards the customer I bet the are expecting you to open your own problem ticket internally to check your config is also all correct and that all your entries are correct for sending domain and make sure it’s not your organization that has the issue. Meaning to check your reputation/sending score, check your own bounce rates etc. shows your thinking beyond just solve the issue and investigate a little is the problem really with the receive or sender.
Thanks!

Could you help me out with regards to the things that we would need to do internally. (my knowledge of this stuff is VERY limited)

I was gonna say, in my response to the test question, let's see if any other clients are complaining that they aren't receiving our alerts, but you say "check your own bounce rates", so there's a way to check through our mail server how many of our emails are being rejected.

So if we check the bounce rates and they're not out of the norm, then we can assume everything was fine and the problem was on the client's end, right?

Now, suppose the bounce rates DO show a problem, what are all the things I'd need to check, besides the things I mentioned (broad blacklisting, the sending server not being in the SPF)?
 

Evan

Well-Known Member
Jan 6, 2016
3,346
598
113
Sorry I am more an infrastructure guy, outsource my own email for exactly this reason, maybe somebody knows email well can help out.
Of course I know there is spam lists, black lists, reputation services etc but not in detail.
 
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