
554 5.7.1 Delivery not authorized
Question
I tried to send MIT email and got the following error, what does it mean?
554 5.7.1 Delivery not authorized
Answer
Our Spam filter (Symantec Brightmail) can block various messages for various reasons.
One likely reason for this message can be if the site sending email to MIT is using IP addresses that do not reverse-resolve. In other words, the server contacting MIT does not have its own hostname.
Diagnosing this can be difficult, because mail errors do not always give a good report of IP addresses. For best diagnosis, forward the error bounce as an attachment, do not merely forward its text.
If DNS reverse-resolving is the issue, the sender or the sender's mail administrators would need to add a hostname to the server that is trying to contact MIT.
Example of error message
Here is an example of this kind of mail error
----- The following addresses had permanent fatal errors
-----<username@mit.edu> <username@mit.edu>
(reason: 554 5.7.1 Delivery not authorized)
----- Transcript of session follows -----
... while talking to dmz-mailsec-scanner-3.mit.edu.:
<<< 554 5.7.1 Delivery not authorized
... while talking to dmz-mailsec-scanner-7.mit.edu.:
<<< 554 5.7.1 Delivery not authorized
... while talking to dmz-mailsec-scanner-4.mit.edu.:
<<< 554 5.7.1 Delivery not authorized
... while talking to dmz-mailsec-scanner-5.mit.edu.:
<<< 554 5.7.1 Delivery not authorized
... while talking to dmz-mailsec-scanner-2.mit.edu.:
<<< 554 5.7.1 Delivery not authorized
... while talking to dmz-mailsec-scanner-8.mit.edu.:
<<< 554 5.7.1 Delivery not authorized
... while talking to dmz-mailsec-scanner-1.mit.edu.:
<<< 554 5.7.1 Delivery not authorized
... while talking to dmz-mailsec-scanner-6.mit.edu.:
<<< 554 5.7.1 Delivery not authorized
554 5.0.0 Service unavailable
Reporting-MTA: dns; xxxxx.yyyyy.zzz
Received-From-MTA: DNS; www.xxxxx.yyyyy.zzz
Arrival-Date: Thu, 2 Feb 2012 14:01:15 -0500 (EST)
Final-Recipient: RFC822; username@mit.edu
Action: failed
Status: 5.5.0
Diagnostic-Code: SMTP; 554 5.7.1 Delivery not authorized
Last-Attempt-Date: Thu, 2 Feb 2012 14:01:16 -0500 (EST)