TT501 Block on my email account

[Kilonova]

My email account seems to have become blocked today, and I need to understand what is causing this, as it a great inconvenience.

I have sent 2 emails today.  The first seems to have gone through, but the second one returned a TT501 error message stating "too many recipients", and now I cannot send any emails from my account.

Email 1. 

This was addressed to 2 recipients, and cc'd to 3 further recipients, making 5 in total.  The email message also had 9 JPEG attachments totalling to 4Mb.  I assume this message got through, as there was no error message.  But I will check, as I'm worried that Lineone has become unstable.

Email 2.

This was address to 1 recipient, and cc'd to 2 further recipients, making 3 in total.  The email messge also had 2 JPEG attachments totalling 2Mb.  I received a "Undeliverable" error message from "System Administrator", and in the body of the email it stated all recipients had failed to deliver because "Server error: '453 4.1.1 bi5or52XTPjGQ Too Many Recipients (TT501)'".

I have tried sending simpke test emails since, and thy return the same TT501 error message, so I assume I am unable to use my Lineone email account currently.

Please can you help me understand what is causing this.

many thanks

[Gondola]

TalkTalk doesn't monitor who communicates what to who and so long as usage is reasonable and lawful neither of you should have concerns. The spam protection 'fingerprinting' does its best to identify unwanted mail and to keep us all safe. Temporary stops to mail sending are not based on recipients just on recipient numbers. The recipient number threshold might get set lower if the content has 'spam keywords'.

Good to know you're both back in action.

[Kilonova]

Hi Gondola

Thanks for your email, and apologies for not responding before now (its been a busy Monday!).

My Lineone email account appears to be working normally again. 

Long may this continue, and I hope I won't see another TT50x error message.  But we shall see!   Thank you for your help on this.

FYI, My wife also has a Lineone email account (we set ours both up at the same time 25 years ago).  She also received a TT501 error message yesterday.  She had sent an email to a small group of local environmental volunteers (about a dozen), and that must have triggered the block on her account.  Her email account is also working again now.  What these events tell us is that account blocks will occur if we try to participate in any voluntary work that involves communicating with other group members.  Although this is non-business use, and is for the benefit of the community, I assume TalkTalk sees it differently.  I will be interested in any comments you may have on this, as I always value your thoughts.

[Gondola]

How is your mail service performing now?

Asking because I'm now aware that there was an unspecified and unannounced change made to the mail servers that didn't get propagated to all banks of servers.

[Kilonova]

Hi Gondola

Thanks for your latest.  I have followed your advice, and signed out of all devices, even though none were shown apart from my current Chrome browser session.  I don't use VPN at home (I've checked my internet security, and there is no VPN setting), and I'm retired so there is no work VPN option.  I am loathe to change my password again, which I did already recently based on your previous advice.  But I'll do it again, even though I assume this is default advice for an unexplained account problem.  I'll let you know how it goes.

Thanks again.

[Gondola]

I cannot recall if we've covered this before but just use TalkTalk Mail webmail for now to troubleshoot this issue. Sign out all other devices connecting to your mailbox and ensure that you are not using a VPN,

Select here:  Sign in to TalkTalk Mail

Enter your full TalkTalk Mail email address, select Continue and enter the password, select Sign in.

On a desktop browser, select the Cog icon and then the All settings menu item.

Select Security in the left panel and In Your devices sign out all devices.

If you wait an hour before attempting to send mail again and by ensuring no VPN is active either as standalone software, work from home connection software or as part of an Internet security package then you should have the full sending allowance restored.

If you find that your mail sending is still limited to a few emails then we need to look at why. Even if you saw no unexpected devices connected to your mailbox I would still upgrade the password.

[Kilonova]

Hi Gondola

Thank you for your quick reply.  

I can find no evidence that anyone else has access to my email account, so I don't think anyone has been using it to send emails that trigger the TT501/502 blocks.  

My sending 2 emails in quick succession, the first to 5 people and the second to 3 people, does not seem to be an abuse of any reasonable home use limit.  Are you able to say what limits are being applied which leads to these intermittent blocks on my account?  I find this inconvenient, and I now have to resort to using alternative email addresses (non TalkTalk) whenever this happens.  I don't always raise a support case when it happens, as I don't always have the spare time to do it.  So it happens more frequently than may be apparent from my postings to this community group.

I do need to establish whether, after using Lineone for 25 years, whether it still meets my needs for a reliable and stable email provider.

I do appreciate the support you provide, and this is in no way a criticsm of your great help.

[Gondola]

We were here before with the TT502 error message...  Clearly either your mailbox sending has a lower than expected limit set by spam protection or there's excessive mail sending by someone other than you.

The latest error code is TT501. This indicates that the mail sending from your mailbox has triggered an hourly limit, set by the anti-spam protection, and therefore there's a temporary stop on sending that will be relaxed in 60 minutes. TalkTalk Mail is a mail service for home use and does have (as do many other residential email services) a limit on the number of recipients that can be sent to per hour and per day.

Just hold off sending for an hour or so and your normal mail sending allowance will be restored.