This topic

Error 554 Access Denied

xc9da21 — Tue, 08 Nov 2022 11:00:45 GMT

Since Sunday, most of my outgoing @btinternet.comemail messages are blocked by the receiving servers. My messages are returned with the statement "554 Access Denied". Is there anything that I can do to resolve the problem - or is it a bigger issue affecting other BT users?

Any advice would be appreciated.

Re: Error 554 Access Denied

gg30340 — Tue, 08 Nov 2022 11:41:01 GMT

Try turning off your BT hub for 10 minutes. This should cause it to be allocated a new IP address and hopefully a new BT mail server.

Re: Error 554 Access Denied

xc9da21 — Tue, 08 Nov 2022 12:48:33 GMT

Thank you for the suggestion. I turned off the hub but when I turned it back on and sent a test email message to a friend, the same problem occurred. An email message was sent by postmaster@btinternet.com with this info:

"Each of the following recipients was rejected by a remote mail server. The reasons given by the server are included to help you determine why each recipient was rejected.

554 Access Denied"

This was followed by the email address of the person to whom I had sent the message. It's definitely a valid email address.

Has anyone any other suggestions?

Re: Error 554 Access Denied

Les-Gibson — Tue, 08 Nov 2022 12:56:20 GMT

Try clicking this link Broadband and make a note of your "Broadband IP Address" then power your router down for around 20 minutes and check it again, hopefully your IP address will have changed and your problem will have vanished.

Re: Error 554 Access Denied

xc9da21 — Tue, 08 Nov 2022 17:08:40 GMT

Thanks, Les, for suggesting a solution. I unplugged the BT hub, left it for about an hour, and have now plugged it back in.

The Broadband IP Address seems to have been changed - but the problem persists.

Guess I'll need to contact the BT Helpline in the morning.

Re: Error 554 Access Denied

gg30340 — Tue, 08 Nov 2022 17:15:43 GMT

Are you sending your emails using webmail (using a browser) or an email client/app?

If using an email client/app can you try using webmail.

Re: Error 554 Access Denied

xc9da21 — Tue, 08 Nov 2022 17:49:27 GMT

I'm going to sound stupid at this stage as I am not totakky certain. I am pretty sure that it's via webmail as I log into BT Internet ... email.bt.com How would I spot if it's via an email client/app?

Re: Error 554 Access Denied

Les-Gibson — Tue, 08 Nov 2022 18:47:40 GMT

Error 554 means that your messages are being rejected by the receiving server, the question is why are they being rejected.

Do you have another, non-BT (e.g. gmail or hotmail address) that you could try re-sending one of the rejected messages from and what is the result if you do?

Re: Error 554 Access Denied

xc9da21 — Tue, 08 Nov 2022 21:03:45 GMT

My only email account is with BT and I'm not inclined to set up additional accounts on hotmail or gmail. Thank you for your help ... all very much appreciated .... but I think I'll contact BT in the morning and ask them to figure out the reason for my messages being rejected.

Re: Error 554 Access Denied

licquorice — Tue, 08 Nov 2022 21:21:06 GMT

Good luck with that!

Re: Error 554 Access Denied

Les-Gibson — Wed, 09 Nov 2022 05:38:38 GMT

@xc9da21wrote:
My only email account is with BT and I'm not inclined to set up additional accounts on hotmail or gmail. Thank you for your help ... all very much appreciated .... but I think I'll contact BT in the morning and ask them to figure out the reason for my messages being rejected.

Are you seriously saying that you would prefer to spend half an hour or more waiting for BT to answer the phone rather than spend 2 minutes creating a free account which you can ditch if you like after you've finished using it?

That's some logic (not)

Re: Error 554 Access Denied

xc9da21 — Wed, 09 Nov 2022 07:40:25 GMT

Hi Les ... You are , of course, right about the lack of logic. It's just that gmail registration requires a cellphone number and I so rarely use my cellphone that I'll need to go digging for the details. A case of laziness being stronger than logic.

This morning logic has triumphed and I'll let you know if messages from the new gmail account reach the recipients.

Re: Error 554 Access Denied

Les-Gibson — Wed, 09 Nov 2022 08:42:08 GMT

Fingers crossed

Re: Error 554 Access Denied

xc9da21 — Wed, 09 Nov 2022 13:36:37 GMT

Interesting results! My emails sent via the new gmail account reached their destinations with no problems. Also, earlier this morning I sent a message from my BTInternet account to a number of friends, each of whom uses a different email provider. The email reached most recipients quickly and problem-free. The exceptions were Canadian friends with Sympatico or Bell.net email addresses - essentially the same, as Bell Internet originally used sympatico.ca addresses and more recently shifted to Bell.net These consistently bounced and provided the 554 Access Denied message as an explanation. Thanks to your persistence, I'm at least able to communicate with my friends via gmail. But why does Bell Internet "hate" me?

Re: Error 554 Access Denied

gg30340 — Wed, 09 Nov 2022 13:46:32 GMT

It doesn't "hate" you. It is more than likely because the IP address that the BT server is using has previously been used for sending spam email and as such has been "blacklisted" by the Canadian email service. You should ask your recipients in Canada to mark you as a safe sender and see if that helps.

Re: Error 554 Access Denied

xc9da21 — Wed, 09 Nov 2022 13:54:20 GMT

Thanks for the explanation - and the advice. I'll do this.

Re: Error 554 Access Denied

xc9da21 — Thu, 10 Nov 2022 15:43:40 GMT

Thank you to everyone who offered advice on how to resolve this problem. Changing my IP address, using gmail as an alternative until a solution could be found and asking my contacts to whitelist me all helped to give me an understanding of what might be the cause of the problem - and of possible ways of resolving it.

Overnight the problem has gone away. My contacts say that they haven't yet found a way to whitelist my BT email addresses, so I'm not sure just why the problem has vanished - or if it's gone for good.

But fingers crossed. Main thing is that you've all given me an idea of what to do should it ever happen again!

Re: Error 554 Access Denied

gg30340 — Thu, 10 Nov 2022 15:46:43 GMT

It may be that you are now being served by a different email server.

Re: Error 554 Access Denied

xc9da21 — Fri, 11 Nov 2022 10:10:07 GMT

Thank you!