Deferrals or bounces sending email to AT&T or Yahoo email addresses

Description

Mailprotector knows that messages from Mailprotector's relay are being deferred or bounced by AT&T and Yahoo email addresses. An IP reputation issue is the cause, and the team is working diligently with both providers to remedy it. Unfortunately, Mailprotector has little control over the decisions AT&T and Yahoo make, so we must continue to follow their processes and wait for their email services to relax the reputation issue.

Why is this happening?

Mailprotector recommends relaying emails through our outbound relay to prevent malicious emails from being sent. Other benefits include the use of Bracket encryption and automatic archiving of sent emails for users who have those services enabled. Despite the protections, users can send emails that contribute to IP reputation issues without being compromised.

Some users send bulk emails with poorly managed address lists, which results in a high bounce rate among free email service providers. Or, the recipients of these bulk emails don't appreciate the behavior and mark the emails as spam. Enough of those occurrences, and the email service provider changes the reputation of the IP address(es) when sending the messages. Mailprotector does not allow bulk or transactional email relay for this reason. Please read the limitations of the outbound relay through Mailprotector for complete details.

How and when will this be fixed?

Mailprotector has to follow each email service provider's instructions for delisting or relaxing reputation issues. One of the ironies of the process is that email needs to continue to be sent to the service providers to prove a healthy email flow even when the provider defers or bounces messages.

To mitigate the number of deferrals or bounces, Mailprotector rotates IP addresses out of full production to a "trickle sending" status. This doesn't eliminate the potential for deferred or bounced emails, but it does reduce the chances. If your customer sends many emails to the affected providers—yahoo.com, sbcglobal.net, prodigy.net, att.net, bellsouth.net—then they may see the deferral and bounce notices more often.

Unfortunately, Mailprotector doesn't know when the reputation improvement will happen, and neither provider communicates that information. Our team continues to monitor logs for deferral and bounce messages and follow each provider's process. Typically, these situations take three to six weeks to resolve completely.

Workarounds

Microsoft 365 organizations

One recommendation is to exclude emails to these email service providers from routing through Mailprotector so they are delivered directly by M365, ensuring more successful mail delivery. A recording on how to accomplish this for domains on O365 can be found at the link below.

https://www.loom.com/share/156614748a804135a43af778c4503fa5

Google Workspace organizations

Similarly to M365, you can exclude relaying emails and send them directly from Google's infrastructure. A recording on accomplishing this for domains on G Workspace can be found at the link below.

https://www.loom.com/share/0323cbd97c2943f59d40dce5a7059bb7

Other email servers

Unfortunately, other email servers do not provide selective relay configurations. In these situations, you must make an informed decision with your customer whether there are enough emails sent to recipients of these email service providers to justify temporarily disabling relay through Mailprotector. If yes, you will need to consult the documentation or support for the email server you are administrating for more information.

IMPORTANT: If you are using Bracket email encryption or archiving, temporarily disabling Mailprotector's relay will prevent you from using Bracket or archiving. If you're unsure, please contact Partner Success to discuss your use case and make a more informed decision.

Updated

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