Possible email address blacklisted?

Sully

Hey all,

Iv a friend who a while back left a job for personal reasons. Recently all her emails to her friends at that company never go through (her friends having there own personal account on the company's mailserver) for some reason.

Its only in the last few weeks this has happened. When it first happened she got an email response from Hotmail (where she sent the email from) saying that the company's support has been contacted and they responded saying her email address has been blocked (something along those lines, she cant remember what exactly). Any email she trys to send now from her Hotmail account never gets to the recipient. Also, no email is sent back to her to explain why it never arrives at the inbox, not even the mail daemon saying "Message Delivery Failed".

Iv tested to see if its just hotmail.com that's blocked, so I created an account on Hotmail and sent of an email to her friends - they got them fine. So it seems her specific hotmail account has been "blackmailed" as they say!

Iv tested her account at gmail, as its the same username, to see if that goes through to her friends and am awaiting results. Just to see perhaps is her username banned or is it her full hotmail email address.

So here is what I know so far: Hotmail.com isn't blocked, as my test account worked fine. Either her email address at hotmail (which is her main one) is blocked, or the mailserver did a complete ban on her username.

I want to find out what mailserver the system is running, to see if I can find out what types of bans the mailserver supports, or can it ban email address at all? Iv sent an email to a fake mailbox and after a half an hour or so I got a reply saying "Delivery to the following recipients failed". Can I check that email to see what the server is?

Once I get all those details put together, ill call support myself and ask them why she's blocked. One of the recipients already called and asked why she didn't get it and they said they would call her back and never did.

And, do the company have a right to block this one email address? The company has no policy saying there not allowed receive personal email address, and besides, all others are able to contact others fine with personal content!

All help appreciated on this one. Thanks

RicardoSmith

1) a company can do any thing they want with their own network.

2) she can use a different email adress.

Sully

RicardoSmith wrote:

1) a company can do any thing they want with their own network.

2) she can use a different email adress.

Thats REALLY helpfull. Thanks, worked wonders :rolleyes:

RicardoSmith

Sully04 wrote:

....All help appreciated on this one. Thanks

:rolleyes:

Don't shoot the messenger. Theres only one way to find out what you want. Its to ask IT nice and politely. Obviously thats beyond you.

Sully

So your saying I cant find out what mailserver its running without asking? I doubt it.

If you check, I already asked and they said they would contact us back and they never did. No matter how nice you ask, or how horrible you are, you will be given the same thing.

Obviously giving constructive assistance is beyond your capabilities.

Blackjack

Fight! Fight! Fight! Fight!






no seriously though, usually, companies reserve the rights as to what people do with their email addresses. If they found that your friend was sending a lot of emails to the employees, they could have simply blocked it.
Depending on how well you know the people at the company, they may trust you enough to give you the details.
If they don't know you from adam, why would they tell you?. For all they know you may be trying to hack their email by exploiting a weakness.

deckie27

If you look at the header of the mail it normally tells you what kind of server it came from.

But they probally use something at there gateway like mailsweeper which will block /restrict mails

Corporate mail is for official use only they can stop what ever they want

Dec

Sully

Im only trying to find out the mailserver, BEFORE I call, to see if they can actually ban a user.

If they can, ill call again and demand to know why a past-employee was banned from sending emails to her friends at the company which allow personal emails passing through. Theres a lot more to the problem of why she letf etc. then you think, but I cant discuss it. Ill also pass the info on to a special person regarding the issue..

If they cant, then I dunno what ill do. :P

deckie27

Sully04 wrote:

banned from sending emails to her friends at the company which allow personal emails passing through.

or lets mail through

Dec

Sully

Would; Microsoft SMTPSVC be the mailserver?

deckie27

I would guess thats and exchange server

Sully

To clarify: The company does not mind if emails are sent personal or business related. Although they censor out some sware words and refuse inbound emails with sware words

Sully

And eh, thats both a mailserver and exchange server your telling me? Or just a exchange server?

Is there any point in finding out this when the question is: Can all mailservers/exchanges block email addresses from going to other users without telling the person who sent the mail more then once?

deckie27

post or PM me the header if u wish.
Take out ip or company name

unkel

Sully04 wrote:

Theres a lot more to the problem of why she letf etc. then you think, but I cant discuss it

Maybe the company doesn't like it to be discussed either on its own network?

Sully04 wrote:

ill call again and demand to know why

Your demand will not be entertained

RicardoSmith wrote:

1) a company can do any thing they want with their own network.

2) she can use a different email adress.

Very to-the-point. Constructive also in offering your friend an alternative solution allowing her to communicate with her former colleagues

Sully04 wrote:

Thats REALLY helpfull. Thanks, worked wonders :rolleyes:

So much for appreciating someone trying to help you / your friend out :rolleyes:

KdjaCL

Why does it matter what emails erver they using?

To find out use outlook to send an email to whooptydoo@company.com the error report will tell what you need to know.


kdjac

ZENER

Hotmail accounts are renowned for being hijacked to send spam - maybe hers has too ?? Perhaps she is being a little paranoid ?!

ZEN

Sully

Guys if you knew the FULL story it would be different. I just cant talk about it here

The only reason why I wanted to know the mailsever was to find out if they can actually ban emails (I thought maybe some did and some didnt).

I just want to find out why she is banned, thats all. I think the network should say why.

Perhpas its a cock-up but we shall see anyway!

Thanks all for your help, iv found out what I needed to via PM.

Thanks again ^_^

Keyzer

Sully04 wrote:

Guys if you knew the FULL story it would be different. I just cant talk about it here

The only reason why I wanted to know the mailsever was to find out if they can actually ban emails (I thought maybe some did and some didnt).

I just want to find out why she is banned, thats all. I think the network should say why.

Perhpas its a cock-up but we shall see anyway!

Thanks all for your help, iv found out what I needed to via PM.

Thanks again ^_^

Off topic, your website sucks....

Kali

Sully04 wrote:

So your saying I cant find out what mailserver its running without asking? I doubt it.

If you check, I already asked and they said they would contact us back and they never did. No matter how nice you ask, or how horrible you are, you will be given the same thing.

Obviously giving constructive assistance is beyond your capabilities.

Relax... the following should supply the mail-server version:

telnet mailserver.whatever 25

Khannie

The company is perfectly entitled to refuse email from anyone that they want. They can have a personal email allowed policy and still decide that your friend shouldn't be sending emails to employees within the company (they have no obligation to even divulge whether or not they are stopping your friends address). They probably have blacklisted your friends email address and they're well within their rights to. You may not have liked RicardoSmith's answer, but actually it's a succinct way of pointing out the truth:

1) The company can and probably has banned your friends email
2) They are well within their rights to
3) To get around it, your friend should send from a different mail account / IP address.

To check the mailserver, do the bounce thing. It will have all the info you want. Alternatively, use a telnet / ssh client and check out how to use the smtp / imap protocols.

Sully

RicardoSmith's answer I found unhelpfull. Everybody else he may have agreed also tried to offer other bit of assistance.

Anyway I found out what I needed to, thanks all for your assistance

RicardoSmith

Doesn't really matter what the mailserver is. The filter could be outsourced, it could be some other hardware or software in front of the mailserver. They could be filtering it, or it could be a simply error somewhere. Or it could be filter made to look like an error. Either way getting "proof" would be nigh on impossible unless you have a friend inside IT, or someone who can get you a paper/electronic trail of such an instruction, or who can troubleshoot the problem.

However it seems pretty pointless as you can contact people via other methods, including those that leave a electronic paper trail anyway. Theres only a few reasons why you'd want a particular email to go through and know why if not. 1) for convenience because is a pain to switch accounts 2) to build evidence of actively blocking, in the case of an dispute (v.likely) 3) to get around anti spam and filtering, either to spam or to exploit a weakness.

If its 2) to build evidence of actively blocking, it can easily be fobbed off, saying it was conincidental error, they thought it was spam or an attack, or they simply didn't know about it and the support call ticket was lost.

And really if you are trying to build a case of unfair dismissal blocking the email of a ex employee is a different and unrelated issue. In the US it comes under freedom of speech and such. Intel has been in the news about it quite a bit.

If it is a case of unfair dismissal, you have to apply as early as possible as theres a time limit, AFAIK.

Capt'n Midnight

Sully04 wrote:

Iv a friend who a while back left a job for personal reasons. Recently all her emails to her friends at that company never go through (her friends having there own personal account on the company's mailserver) for some reason.
....
Once I get all those details put together, ill call support myself and ask them why she's blocked. One of the recipients already called and asked why she didn't get it and they said they would call her back and never did.

Can she send email from her hotmail account to anywhere else - if so then her hotmail account is not blocked - it's just their server rejecting it.

Even in Exchange 5.5 it's dead easy to block a single address or a domain by adding it to the list, you can specify whether blocked addresses should get a reply or dropped into a black hole etc. It's their server they can do whatever they want with it.

to see what type of server it is look at the email header or use
NSLOOKUP
set type=mx
mail.company.com

This will list their server and the ISP one that they fallback to

you can then
telnet 127.23.123.1 25
quit
to see the server type

Academic really because the bottom line is that anyone can use the internet for free in their local library , no phone line or computer needed. Or she could phone up her old workmates or post letters to them or <shock> <horror> she could contact them outside working hours. Or she could get a new address or etc. etc.

BTW there is no such thing as a personal email account on a company email system, for legal reasons most large companies already store every email and anyone could use the data protection to have them searched for info about them (depending on the storage format & other legal stuff).

Sully

Thanks RicardoSmith for the helpful post (seriously! )

I wasnt aware they may have external scanners, but im aware they can do now. I know there could never be "proof" as such but we could easily make the point to the appropriate authorities that her emails were blocked/delayed and support were not helpfull etc. Saying it as a point really.

The problem with the company is nothing connected with unfair dismisal. Its a different matter altogether, far more serious.

No 2 is the reason yes.

Anyway, no responce from support but for some strange reason some of the emails arrived shortly after the call to support. Odd eh? She is still convinced she got an email saying she was denied to send mail etc. and the email took ages to deliver and only did deliver since reported.

Anyway, thanks again!

irlrobins

Sully04 wrote:

Anyway, no responce from support but for some strange reason some of the emails arrived shortly after the call to support. Odd eh?

No not really. I've noticed before that at peak times the time for hotmail emails to arrive at their destination increases considerably....

RicardoSmith

Not all emails even ones sent by the same server get routed the same way. Which is why sometime you get emails in different order than they were sent. The last first, and the first last. etc.

Sully

Iv never came across such a thing without getting a report back saying its delayed..

But we learn something every day eh.

Thanks.