MessagingEngine.com Locked Account/Domain/IP/Email-address details

MessagingEngine.com has a number of different locks to avoid abuse of our systems. These include:

• Locking of user accounts
• Blocking of email from particular external email addresses
• Blocking of email from particular IP addresses (known open relays, virus compromised spam sending machines, etc)
• Blocking of email with known virus phrases/characteristics
• Other blocks to stop abuse problems we detect

If you send a message to someone who has had their account locked, or from an external address, IP or other blocking characteristic, you will receive a delivery notification error like this:

I'm sorry to have to inform you that the message returned
below could not be delivered to one or more destinations.

For further assistance, please send mail to postmaster@messagingengine.com

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

The Postfix program

user@messagingengine.com: host messagingengine.com said: 554 user@messagingengine.com;
  Recipient address rejected: Account locked for abuse or overuse; see
  http://mail.messagingengine.com/docs/locked.html

You can work out what caused the block by looking at the response message

• user@messagingengine.com; Recipient address rejected

This means that this account has been locked. There are two reasons why an account is locked: either the user breached their Terms of Service (such as by spamming), or they have gone over their bandwidth quota. If you received an unsolicited commercial email ('spam') which contained a reference to a messagingengine.com address, that address would have been terminated because the messagingengine.com Terms of Service do not permit this type of use. If you want more details of why this email was rejected, please contact the Postmaster.

• someaddr@somedomain.com: Sender address rejected

The sending address someaddr@somedomain.com has blocked due to excessive use, abuse or some other reason. If you want more details of why this email was rejected, please contact the Postmaster.

• Client host [a.b.c.d] blocked using rbl.xyz.org; http://rbl.xyz.org/listing?ip=a.b.c.d;

The sending host was listed in a database of known open relays, compromised hosts, or spam sending hosts (RBL). MessagingEngine.com only uses a smaller number of known high quality RBLs to block hosts. Please see the accompanying link to see why your sending server was listed. If you want more details of why this email was rejected, please contact the Postmaster.

• Helo command rejected: Address locked or deactivated;

A number of spamming systems use a common signature in the 'HELO' greeting command used when sending emails. We block hosts trying to send email with these greetings. Unfortunately a small number of home email clients also use these greeting signatures.

A work around for this is to change your client to send email via port 26, instead of the normal port 25. In Outlook Express, you can do this by going to Tools -> Accounts -> (select account) -> Properties -> Advanced tab. Then change your Outgoing port (SMTP) from 25 to 26.

Most email clients make it relatively easy to change the SMTP port and you should consult your email clients documentation. For Eudora, it's a little tricky. See this link for more information.