BT are Censoring my email and refunsing to send them because it contains a link to a you tube video

[Stu18]

I have never had this before, but i was trying to send a friend a link to a you tube video on my own channel and this message pops up... this is very annoying i dont like being censored  by BT email server

does anyone have any idea how i can get around this and apart from that what business is it of BT to be censoring what i send in private emails to my friends and the annoying thing is im actually the copyright holder of the video links im sending

[gg30340 · Accepted solution]

BT have every right to stop what is suspected as spam from being sent on the BT email system. 

They and all the other email suppliers do exactly the same. If they did not the worlds email systems, which has about 3 Billion spam email sent daily would grind to a halt.

An error 553 means the email has been rejected by BT spam filtering system due to content or policy issues, this is done to stop BT's email system from being abused by spammers and scammers. Unfortunately, it can sometimes make mistakes.

Are you using a VPN on your broadband as that sometimes triggers this error? If you do, can you try disabling it to see if that helps?

[Stu18]

Thank you i was using a VPN provided by McAfee i disabled it and the email sent..i had no Idea the VPN would cause that problem

[gg30340]

The VPN hides your true IP address and encrypts the contents of the message and allocates you an IP address of its choosing. This can frequently be an IP address outside the UK or one that has been previously used by spammers. 

If the IP address has been previously used by spammers the email spam filters block emails that have originated from those IP addresses.

Unfortunately this is what may have happened to your email.

It may be the case that the next time you use your VPN it is allocated a different IP address and your email will work as expected. 

[Stu18]

TBH i dont have any reason to use a VPN it came free with McAfee internet security and they advised me to activate it but if it is going to cause me more problems than it is solving then i will just disable it
thanks for advice as i didnt really know how it works and i understand now why Why BT though that I was a potential spammer

[Stephen5000]

I sometimes get this error message too., I do not use a VPN. I the emails do not not have a 'hyperlink' to anything, just standard text. I get round it in a couple of ways. Changing the wording in the title sometimes helps. If its a response message in a chain, starting off a brand new email sometimes helps.

However, if BT would adjust the 'refusal' algorithm to take into account that the sender has a constant verifiable IP address, and is in frequent communication with the intended single recipient of the email they should really just allow common sense to prevail and just send the darn thing...