AT&T West → Pacbell.net to hotmail.com email rejected

I attempted to send an send an email to a hotmail.com address with my pacbell.net email (not web based) The message was returned with the following message:

----- The following addresses had permanent fatal errors -----

(reason: 550 SC-001 Mail rejected by Windows Live Hotmail for policy reasons. Reasons for rejection may be re...l/network admins, please visit »postmaster.live.com for email delivery information and support)

----- Transcript of session follows -----
... while talking to mx4.hotmail.com.:

>>>>>> MAIL From: SIZE=1518

550 SC-001 Mail rejected by Windows Live Hotmail for policy reasons. Reasons for rejection may be related to content with spam-like characteristics or IP/domain reputation problems. If you are not an email/network admin please contact your E-mail/Internet Service Provider for help. Email/network admins, please visit »postmaster.live.com for email delivery information and support

554 5.0.0 Service unavailable

This was a private individual message not spam.

Had anybody else had this problem? How do I get it corrected so that I can send the email? Note - I am not that computer sophisticated.

Thanks.

Yes. I believe it is because of a forward/reverse name mismatch. I've posted an update in my Direct thread, and will see what develops. I believe what is happening it that an ATTIS mail server, when talking with the Hotmail gateway mail server, offers the SMTP "EHLO" command this name: 'nlpi117.prodigy.net'. The Hotmail server logs that SMTP transaction as coming from: [207.115.36.131], then perform a reverse lookup and find this name: 'nlpi117.sbcis.sbc.com'.

But I could be wrong. May just be as simple as a few ATTIS customer accounts being compromised by responding to the "Hi, this is AT&T Customer Care. If you don't give us your username and password, we will have to close your email account" phish. So some customers do that, and then the spammers get hold of the login details necessary to spam Hotmail users through the ATTIS SMTP servers. Either way, it is something ATTIS needs to address. And, short of the Direct forum, I don't know how to get it to their attention.

Norman, thanks for trying to get this resolved. Do you know if the problem is new or ongoing? Hopefully it can be resolved. Thanks again.

It is probably going to be recurring. And Hotmail users are starting to see similar (where their email is blocked).

The problem is that, as more ISPs block outbound port 25, that cuts off direct access to domain gateway (MX) SMTP servers, making it difficult to spam from compromised residential hosts. More email service providers (ISPs, Hotmail, AOL Mail, Gmail) will require their users to authenticate, using a username+password combination. So spammers are using social engineering to steal those username+password combinations, and then use them to spam through the legitimate provider servers, which gets those servers blocked.

It is going to be a recurring problem until we find a way to block spammer access to the Internet (which isn't going to happen). We will just have to learn to live with it. Free email will be unreliable because of this. Paid accounts may be more reliable, if the ESP will quickly respond to abuse complaints, and cut off the customer account which is the source of abuse.

Thanks Norm for your feedback. From your answer, it sounds like this can occur with other email services, not just pacbell.net

By the way, I tried again and my email went through the other day. Today it won't again.