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i have read a lot about the problems of delivering mail to yahoo.com, i have contact the tech support but the result it's always the same: from my server all mails to yahoo./aol. are deffered and when (very rare) they are not deferred they are moved into spam folder!

My ip (149.202.68.157) is clean, my email reputation is good (https://www.talosintelligence.com/reputation_center/lookup?search=149.202.68.157), and i'm not in blacklist. I have spf, dkim, dmarc and all type of auth fully functional!

Also i have followed this tutorial to make a specific scenario for yahoo as described here:https://www.stevejenkins.com/blog/2012/08/how-to-postfix-configuration-to-reduce-yahoo-deferrals-using-transport-maps/ but no luck. On my server i have few domains and they send some newsletter. In total subscribers of all newsletter of all dominas are between 10.000 and 15.000.

I have bought other IP but...the situation is the same!!! Mail sent to yahoo are deferred or in spam.

Here the errors in mailog

Jul 30 18:40:09 server postfix-yahoo/smtp[3583]: D44C537C067A: to=<moniapetta@yahoo.it>, relay=mx-eu.mail.am0.yahoodns.net[188.125.72.73]:25, delay=0.75, delays=0.4/0.02/0.31/0.02, dsn=4.7.0, status=deferred (host mx-eu.mail.am0.yahoodns.net[188.125.72.73] said: 421 4.7.0 [TSS04] Messages from 149.202.68.157 temporarily deferred due to user complaints - 4.16.55.1; see https://help.yahoo.com/kb/postmaster/SLN3434.html (in reply to MAIL FROM command))

I have a lot of entries like this. All mails to yahoo have this error. As told before i have get in touch with yahoo postmaster support but they gave me some link

  1. Follow industry best practices - https://help.yahoo.com/kb/index?page=content&id=SLN3435
  2. Establish proper SMTP connections - https://help.yahoo.com/kb/index?page=content&id=SLN3435
  3. Sign up for our Complaint Feedback Loop program - https://help.yahoo.com/kb/index?page=content&id=SLN26007

But no luck. I don't know what can i do to fix these delivery problem. I'm on postfix, plesk onyx and centos 7.8.

Please help.

Thanks

Mattia Di Giuseppe
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2 Answers2

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You can't do much as you got trapped inside the anti-spam of yahoo, the fact that it's yahoo users that flagged your email as spam is a red flag to me. It's not a spamassasin rule(s) that got you, but manual submission to the junk folder.

You should monitor what kind of newletter you send, or why it got flagged as spam. Even if you change your IP, domain name, etc.., if the reason you got human flagged is still there, the delay will follow you.

That message kinda said it;

temporarily deferred due to user complaints - 4.16.55.1

yagmoth555
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    Yeah, all bets are off if recipients themselves are reporting spam. OP should check things like send frequency (if you're sending 3x daily, folks get annoyed), that their unsubscribe links work (I'll mark as spam if they don't, or if they're too complex), etc. – ceejayoz Jul 30 '20 at 17:39
  • Of course there is always a unscribe link at the bottom of newsletter but why if i change ip and i send a simple mail with only "hello" in the body and "test" in object (or somenthing similar!) my mail is defferred???? I think there is something beyond the IP question. You talk about manual setting of spam but.....if i change IP with a new one....when someone pinned this new IP as spam?? – Mattia Di Giuseppe Jul 30 '20 at 17:44
  • @MattiaDiGiuseppe The IP, you are right, but the from: for your domain, yes, it dont change, and all the unsubscribe link dont change too, so the content is the same. – yagmoth555 Jul 30 '20 at 18:18
  • @yagmoth555 so if i change the domains with the same ip or with new ip (the domains wich send the mail) i'll fix the problem? in my newsletter app i can change the smtp auth and i can use a new virgin domain. But i have to use new IP, right? Edit: i have tried sending an email from a virgin domain but....as always "Messages from 149.202.68.157 temporarily deferred due to user complaints - 4.16.55.1;" The problem seems to be the IP in this message Ps: this virgin domain is on my server – Mattia Di Giuseppe Jul 30 '20 at 18:23
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    @MattiaDiGiuseppe As I said in my answer, you got manually flagged, you can try to evade that, but as long you send the same newsletter you will return to the punition box like in hockey. Even yahoo state it, it's temporary if you fix what you send, you will get out of the punition box. – yagmoth555 Jul 30 '20 at 18:31
  • The problem is: how can I try to evade that? I have changed ip, domains..... It's always the same. The only thing in common is the server. I'm doing wrong something? – Mattia Di Giuseppe Jul 30 '20 at 18:39
  • @yagmoth555 any advice? Thanks – Mattia Di Giuseppe Jul 30 '20 at 23:21
  • @MattiaDiGiuseppe How are you getting these new IPs? From your hosting provider? – ceejayoz Aug 03 '20 at 15:34
  • @ceejayoz yes from ovh. I have my dedicated server on ovh. – Mattia Di Giuseppe Aug 03 '20 at 19:02
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    @MattiaDiGiuseppe It's entirely possible you're getting reused IPs, or that OVH's entire IP range has a poor reputation with Yahoo due to repeated issues. – ceejayoz Aug 04 '20 at 19:11
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We had this. I say we, I work for a hosting provider that runs cPanel shared hosting. Many, many, mailboxes.

Our environment is different to yours but the nightmare was the same.

This sums up the issue we had nicely, and also provides a fix (yay!): https://www.rackaid.com/blog/yahoo-defers-cpanel-mail/

But then we had to make it persist after updates (not so yay): https://forums.cpanel.net/threads/yahoo-defers-mail-from-cpanel.675909/

We also enforced DKIM and SPF globally.

After deploying the above, it still took some time for the number of deferals to drop off. Eventually (weeks) after the above was carried out, which was pleasant. I guess the delay is due to some sort of repuational time based logic at yahoo's end of things.

This might sound promising so far, but...

There were about 10-15% of servers which had a reduced deferral count but we'd still see somewhere between 500 and 5000 deferal events in the mail server logs per week. So we had to investigate this on a case by case basis.

The common theme was user defined config or activity, which was laborious to address.

So here's a list of things that we saw causing the ongoing deferals:

  • Wildcard email forwarders
  • Auto replies
  • Unprotected (captcha) contact forms (sometimes without SMTP authentication) generating and sending emails to Yahoo, AOL, Sky, Btinternet, Ymail and BTconnect mailboxes
  • Site generated notifications (security plugins for example) mass mailing notifications to Yahoo, AOL, Sky, Btinternet, Ymail and BTconnect mailboxes
  • Poorly curated mailing lists
  • Sending email from one mailbox (with SMTP authentication) and manually specifying the from address as a completely different email address
  • PHP scripts generating emails setting the from to words, not an email address

You may well be reading the above an thinking something like "Yeah, yahoo will defer that!", but here's the problem:

If the above triggers yahoo's anti spam logic, mails additional to what I've outlined above that are being directed to yahoo mailboxes then start to defer as well.

Let's say there's a porly curated mailing list. It sends to about 30 yahoo based addresses, 2 of which don't actually exist. This alone roughly equates to:

  • 60 deferal events from yahoo specific to the mail shot
  • 120 deferal events from yahoo not specific to the mail shot in the time period when the mailshot was run and the subsequent half hour and possibly longer.

So whilst you can in the majority address this issue by reconfiguring your server, you can't always tell what users are going to do that might trigger deferal events.

You can't also tell how yahoo's logic operates for sure, but it appears to be server specific and operating in a domain specific manner instead would stop one user from trasing things for other users.

ralphseviltwin
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