Email Blocking… Mystery Solved
Hey, did you suddenly have your email seize up and stop sending for you recently? I did, over a week ago, and it was a true conundrum. I was frantic! I mean, not being able to end email is pretty nasty, right?
The first thing I did was go to my hosting company and see what was happening there. All my accounts looked normal, so I thought it was Outlook. I have a really bad habit of not deleting important emails and trust me, I get hundreds of those every week. So, there are like 20K+ emails in my Inbox on any given day.
Periodically, Outlook crashes and I have to start over. Really bad system, I know, but well… I have no time to sift through all the mail I get and decide what I really need and what I might need. So, I just keep it all.
OK, so I repaired Outlook. Did no good. So, I went back to HostGator, where I learned that the default port (25) is often blocked to keep spam down. So, they suggested another outbound port, and voila! All my HostGator accounts started working again.
Not so with Overcome Everything mail. I had no idea why that was messed up. Nobody had changed anything and everyone else was getting their mail OK. So, today, we had one of our resident tech geniuses–Victor Grosser– look into it. He called our hosting company and was told that Verizon just shut down a bunch of ports. I had to change to another and BINGO! All my mail is working again. I swear, if Vic had been nearby, I’d have hugged him.
Anyway, just want to get this message out there. Verizon is big on spam trapping, and apparently, they do this sort of thing often. Yet, other ISPs are spam detectives, too, and may do the same to you. If all of a sudden your email just stops sending… call your ISP. They’re probably at the bottom of the mystery.
