Helping people with computers... one answer at a time.
Spam prevention methods can often lead to legitimate mail being blocked by mistake. We'll look at some of the ways to avoid it.
Every e-mail that I have sent today to friends with a Hotmail account has been returned saying "550 REPLY: 550 SC-004 Mail rejected by Windows Live Hotmail for policy reasons. A block has been placed against your IP address because we have received complaints concerning mail coming from that IP address. If you are not an email/network admin please contact your ..." or something similar. What do I do?
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Sadly, the error message is pretty self explanatory: Hotmail thinks you are a spammer.
We'll look at why this might be, and what steps you might take to avoid the problem.
Note that I didn't say "fix" the problem.
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Most email services, including Hotmail, are very secretive about the tools and rules that they use to determine what is and is not spam. While we might not like that secrecy, it's on purpose and very important. The reason is simple: if they went public with the rules, spammers could then use that knowledge to work around those rules.
The result? More spam.
So all we can do is make some semi-educated guesses about what's going on.
"... we have received complaints ..." tells me that people have been hitting the Junk button in response to email that originated at your IP address:
"... mail coming from that IP address ..." tells me that Windows Live Hotmail has gotten several complaints, and all of those complaints are about email that originated at your IP address. That can happen for a number of reasons:
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You actually are sending spam.
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You may not think what you are sending is spam, but the people you're sending it to do. Do you forward a lot of urban legends and other "forward to all your friends" kinds of emails? That's easily considered spam, or at least "junk" by many people.
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Your computer might be infected with a virus that's turning it into a spam-sending bot on a zombie network. It could be sending thousands of spam emails without you even knowing about it.
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Your computer gets a dynamic IP address via DHCP, and a previous owner of that IP was a spammer. By randomly getting that IP address you "inherited" that spammer's reputation.
Some of these you can control, some you cannot. Taking that same list, we can turn each into a remedy, of sorts, to avoid being flagged as a spammer:
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Don't send spam.
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Don't send email that people could reasonably flag as junk. Quit forwarding urban legends and the like.
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Take all the steps necessary to keep your computer from being infected with malware.
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Consider discussing IP assignment alternatives with your ISP.
Those are typically preventative measures, though, and not always something that will help you once your IP address has been blocked or other problems arisen.
One additional source of assistance and information is the "postmaster" domain on many popular email services. For example postmaster.hotmail.com is the "Windows Live Hotmail Postmaster Services". There you'll find topics such as "My e-mail is being blocked by Windows Live Hotmail or is being sent directly to the junk e-mail folder". While much of the information there is technical in nature, it may be of additional help.
Not all email services have "postmaster" domains set up, but if they do it can be a quick place to get additional information for mail related issues.
Article C3696 - April 9, 2009 « »
Leo A. Notenboom has been playing with computers since he
was required to take a programming class in 1976. An 18 year career as a programmer at Microsoft soon followed.
After "retiring" in 2001, Leo started Ask Leo! in 2003 as a place for answers
to common computer and technical questions. More about Leo.
November 15, 2010 1:54 PM
I use a business email account - and hotmail SUDDENLY began rejecting my emails. I am working with programmers and multiple other doctors, etc and a lot of them have hotmail. I have had to copy the emails to my PERSONAL account and they go thru. Maybe hotmail should send something to the administrator of a providor vs just cutting them off w/no notice!
June 18, 2011 3:14 AM
when i try to send an email the top tool bar disapear an replaced with a message saying windows live hot mail was not able to complete this request
September 9, 2011 2:47 AM
how do you solve such a problem I would like to send my emails out once again should I change my email address like hotmail trouble i understand what is going on can you rectify for me
September 9, 2011 7:40 AM
@Gail
Hotmail often blocks all emails coming from a particular email company. You could try contacting Hotmail's support page, but this usually leads nowhere. One workaround, as you suggested, would be to open up a new account (I recommend GMail) to be able to email people with Hotmail accounts. Hotmail doesn't indiscriminately reject GMail Perhaps not a clean solution, but it should work.
January 23, 2012 9:47 AM
when is send email through my hotmail id,it is rejected . message displayed is " Hotmail was not able to complete this request. Microsoft may contact you about any issues you report."