[Discuss] Verizon blacklisted me

[Daniel Barrett]

Status report.... Back in August, I reported that Verizon's SMTP
server (smtp.verizon.net:465) had suddenly started rejecting all of my
outgoing home email with:

  500 5.7.0 Unknown AUTH error -1 (Internal authentication error)

My mail configuration hadn't changed. The error seemed to indicate I
was being blacklisted, but Verizon insisted that wasn't the case.
Then Verizon claimed that I had my password wrong (I didn't). I
changed my Verizon password and the problem remained. For some unknown
reasons, their SMTP server was rejecting my password as unknown, even
though the same password was accepted by Verizon's other
servers. Eventually, I said screw it and forwarded my email through a
different (non-Verizon) SMTP server.

Every so often, over the past few months at random, I've tried using
Verizon's SMTP server again just to see if anything would change.
Today, it finally did.  Magically, it accepts my email without a
complaint, even though I didn't change anything about my Verizon
configuration. Weird. Maybe some kindly sysadmin finally synched up
the password database on smtp.verizon.net with the rest of their
systems....

Thanks to everyone on this list who sent me helpful suggestions.

--
Dan Barrett
dbarrett at blazemonger.com