Why are my messages blocked by "blacklist.sequoia"??

That's AT&T's private blacklist, so I assume you are trying to send the message to friend's that have AT&T as their ISP.

I suggest you get one of them to contact AT&T to find out what's wrong.

 

Here;s what's happening;

1. The messages you send FROM xyz @ iowatelecom.net (your address) are being flagged as spam by ATT anti-spam service. (blacklist.sequioia)

2. The anti-spam service is there to protect ATT customers from recieving spam AND other isps as well. (other isps can use this same blacklist)

3. your email address or your entire domain (iowatelecom.net) or the email SUBJECT or certain words in the email BODY or certain attachments triggered the ATT anti-spam at some point in the past. (mchsi.com is using the ATT blacklist)

4. As a result, either your address or the entire domain is now on the ATT blacklist.

The quantity of messages sent at one time has nothing to do with it. If you send the same message to 50 people at one time, then 50 messages go to 50 (or less) DIFFERENT mailboxes at different locations (isps). The ONLY one monitoring the quantity of messages you send at one time is YOUR isp, who may or may not have limitations in place. (you can possibly be flagged by mchsi.com anti-spam if send large quantity of messages to mchsi.com addresses at one time, but is not likely because this number is usually set pretty high in anti-spam rulesets, something like 100 or 500)

The most likely cause of the issue is that at some point in the past, your email address ended up on some spammer's list and the spammer used your address as the FROM field, or at some point someone who has your address in their own address book was infected with a mass email worm and the worm sent out infected mesages and put your address as the FROM field. Messages traversing the ATT network (and most all other isp networks today) get monitored for spam and viruses and then your address was ERRONIOUSLY put on the ATT blacklist.

Another way to erroneously be placed on a blacklist is if someone else at ANY domain receives spam and your address is in the FROM field and this person does not realize you did not send the spam, and then this person (or persons) reports you to their isp as a spammer. many isps and web services use the same blacklist.sequioia.

Blacklists are the poorest method of anti-spam. There's no "intelligence" involved, it's simply a "yes or no" logic.

To fix this problem you must contact mchsi.com and attempt to have your name removed from their copy of the blacklist.sequioia, but this could prove frustrating and hopeless as once a name is on that blacklist it can be difficult to get system admins to remove it. The key to success will be how well you communicate the issue to the CORRECT person at mchsi.com. (locating the corrrect person is the most difficult thing to do because he or she is working behind the scenes and is usually not readily available to receive phone or email messages fro general public)

 

Not true. Email is handled by 2 servers, the smtp server of the sender's isp (or the sender's email service provider such as web based email like yahoo or gmail) and is then received by the recipients email server.

The message itself is passed through all of the gateways & routers that all WWW packets pass through from origin to destination., but filtering of email messages only occurs at the smtp server or the destination server.

It's possible that the sender's isp has a separate computer whose job is to filter messages prior to passing them on to the smtp server computer, but very unlikely. (added unnecessary expense, maintenence & potential for foul ups) A large isp may have a "cluster" of computers that act as one server that handles incoming & outgoing email messages & a separate comp in that cluster that does the message filtering, but understand that this cluster is still only just "one server ". (else an isp would have to provide customers a multitude of server addresses to be used in configuring email clients)

For example, to set up email for COX, one uses smtp.east.cox.net and pop.east.cox.net if customer lives in certain geographical zone. The smtp & pop servers are at one location (a cox server farm). They may have 10 computers for smtp and 10 computers storing the received messages. The customer only needs the 2 server address above because the cluster of cox computers has but 2 individual addresses, smtp.east and pop.east.

 

Jim, when I said "not true ", I was not implying that "you are wrong ", I was implying that it's simply incorrect. I should have worded my respnse in a more friendly manner. Apologies if my comment invalidated you, that is not my intention.

see Zander's post below. (what you see in the headers is the sender ip address, sender's smtp server, routers, recipient's isp routers, recipient's mail server) see this:
http://email.about.com/cs/spamgeneral/a/spam_headers.htm

also, the main reason detecting and handling spam based on the email headers alone is so difficult is because spammers spoof (illegally use false ip addresses) the sender address and use smtp servers located in parts of the world where policing their activities is either impossible, not done at all, ignored or condoned by law enforcement so as to earn kickbacks/extortion money.

Email headers are but a fraction of anti-spam technology.

Finding and blocking spammers actually is easy, but accurate filtering is difficult, in that if 95% of spam is handled accurately then that 5% could include actual valid important messages that could make or break a business activity.

There are several types of filtering (counts) with anti-spam. There are positives (spam), negatives (not spam), false positives (messsage declared as spam but is not spam) and false negatives (message declared as not spam but is spam). The false positives and false negatives are the difficult zone to handle accurately.

The current solution to false declares in most anti-spam technologies is to use a "bulk mail" or "filtered" mail folder that the end user must then wade through and determine for himself what messages are junk & what is wanted. This consumes time and energy (dollars) in the business world and time & effort for the home user.

 

1. Try contacting to have your address removed from your recipient's blacklists. (keep in mind that it could very well be the recipient at fault if they use a software anti-spam which in turn utilizes a blacklist). So first contact your recipients to verify their clients and security software are setup properly.

2. contact at isp level to get erroneous blacklist corrected.

3. use a free online email account for your bulk mail needs. (simplest, easiest, fastest solution to implement but is a pita having to switch between Outlook and then a web mail page)

 

Thread hijacking! LOL.
It's great when the "thread driver" gets things resolved and esp great when the hijackers get things resolved and escape the thread police!

 

I've seen you MVP pic Newt, I don't think I could stretch my arms around you, unless of course we were on a boat & I had to quickly grab my fishing rod.

(I thoght of several ways to word the above but they seemed a bit too risky for this board, so had to inject the word "fishing ".)