February 6, 2024 – 12:45pm – We’re seeing email from the @internetpro.net domain being blocked as spam by Google’s servers (gmail.com and others hosted with Google). The message says something as follows:
—BEGIN
74.125.138.26 failed after I sent the message. Remote host said: 550-5.7.1 [74.252.14.252 7] Gmail has detected that this message is likely 550-5.7.1 unsolicited mail. To reduce the amount of spam sent to Gmail, this 550-5.7.1 message has been blocked. For more information, go to 550 5.7.1 https://support.google.com/mail/?p=UnsolicitedMessageError o20-20020a81de54000000b006041f08d2dfsi1515206ywl.160 - gsmtp
—END
We have done some testing and found that not all domains we are sending are being blocked. Some are going to the Spam folder instead of being blocked outright and some emails are getting through. This seems to be happening because of some new policies being enforced by Google. There are some articles online such as this one. However, we have been authenticating our emails as Google is requiring for a very long time, so we don’t know why our domains would be affected. Here is a report of our SPF record that Google is now requiring.
If you are seeing errors on your domain and it is not @internetpro.net, please reach out to us by chat, call, or email at support@internetpro.net. We are working to resolve the issue as soon as possible.
Update 4:25pm – This issue is ongoing where @internetpro.net emails are being “hard bounced” to the sender. Other accounts on our servers are being delivered but are winding up in the recipient’s “spam” folder more times than not. We are going to institute a new policy against remote forwards and will be making a new post about that. We will do our best to reach all customers who are utilizing these types of forwards.
March 11, 2024 – We seemed to finally fully emerge from Google’s penalty box over the weekend and continue to see normal deliveries today. We are truly sorry for the issues and the fact that we can no longer forward email to Gmail accounts for customer convenience. This is a direct result of spammers and the efforts email providers are making to make delivering spam harder. Unfortunately, it also takes away some of the conveniences and workflows that legitimate people have grown accustomed to using. Some of the things we are doing going forward:
- We are making every effort to fix websites and other services whose email deliveries have been affected.
- Deploying DKIM and DMARC for domains which we host. We are doing this in an order based on the volume of email being produced, but are also responding to direct inquiries.
- We are adjusting our normal SPF record policies fro Hard Fail to Soft Fail in an effort to help delivery. Of course, we will deploy any policy requested by the customer on this.
- We are now scanning OUTGOING email for spam content. If it looks like spam to our filters, it will most likely look like spam to the receiving email provider. We don’t want them thinking we are sending spam, so this is an effort to prevent that.
- We have changed our policies on how websites authenticate web forms and are developing updated documentation to aid web developers in their deployment. However, going forward our default recommendation for this is “don’t do web forms”.
- We have updated our policies on the forwarding of emails and now do not allow “remote” forwards – those that forward email to an address outside of our systems.
- We have updated our policies on authentication and now the email must be sent FROM the same email account which authenticates it.
We believe these updated policies will keep us safe from being blocked in the future and realize that they impact many users. That is why we are here to help get any issues which customers find regarding these changes corrected. If you have any ongoing problems with email, please contact us by phone at 256-547-6817 or email support@internetpro.net. Forwarding bounce messages as an attachment is always preferred. Screenshots from mobile devices are rarely helpful in tech support situations.