Forum Discussion

jcurtis's avatar
jcurtis
On our wavelength
3 days ago

Cannot send to ntlworld addresses from Apple mail domains

This has been going on for a few weeks. I know several people who have the same issue.

When I send a mail from my Apple mail account, which is any mail address with icloud.com or me.com to an NTL mail address, I always get the following bounce back. 

host mxin10.virginmedia.com[84.116.6.18] refused
   to talk to me: 421 EHLO MXIN201 Your HELO/EHLO outbound.qs.icloud.com is
   not matching your DNS configuration
   p-east3-cluster7-host12-snip4-10.eps.apple.com
   ;id=AbHquzV01O9B8;sid=AbHquzV01O9B8;mta=mx4-prd-nl1-vmo;d=20250501;t=231742[CET];ipsrc=57.103.84.251;
Reporting-MTA: dns; outbound.qs.icloud.com
X-Postfix-Queue-ID: D9BB4180053F

The error basically means the virgin mail servers are refusing the connection from the apple mail servers.

Fail
mail
ntlword

5 Replies

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  • coenoby's avatar
    coenoby
    Very Insightful Person
    3 days ago

    jcurtis​ 

    "The error basically means the virgin mail servers are refusing the connection from the apple mail servers."

    That error is saying that the HELO/EHLO hostname used by Apple’s outbound mail server (in this case "outbound.qs.icloud.com") does not match the reverse DNS of the sending IP address,  (in this case "p-east3-cluster7-host12-snip4-10.eps.apple.com").

    Rightly or wrongly VM do make that check on the reverse DNS  to identify potential scam or spoofed emails that are not actually coming from the sender given in the email's "From" field.

    Out of interest, did that error definitely arise from an email account with the icloud.com / me.com  domains or are you using icloud mail to send emails from your private domain?

    I'm not defending VM but they would probably say that  it's down to Apple to configure their DNS correctly rather than for VM to relax their security on incoming emails and potentially put their (VM's) customers at risk. 

    The middle ground might be for VM not to reject icloud emails but to flag them as spam.

    A member of the Forum Team (VM employees who support this forum) will contact you hopefully tomorrow.

    Forum Team please note that @ jcurtis is having problems SENDING TO VM email accounts not FROM A VM email account.

    Coenoby

     

    • ravenstar68's avatar
      ravenstar68
      Very Insightful Person
      2 days ago

      Good email practice is to ensure that the ehlo for a given mail server points to a FQDN for that server.

      The forward lookup for the FQDN should point to the IP address of the server, and a reverse DNS lookup of the IP address should point back to that servers IP address.

      Apple seem to have stopped doing this.  They need to fix their MTA system.

  • jcurtis's avatar
    jcurtis
    On our wavelength
    3 days ago

    I'm sending from a native Apple mail account. My e-mail is a @me.com.  It started the same time as the thread below was created.

    https://community.virginmedia.com/discussions/email/sending-to-my-ntlworld-email-bounces-with-recipients-domain-does-not-exist---log/5632932?after=MjUuM3wyLjF8aXwxMHwzOToxfGludCw1NjMyOTM3LDU2MzI5ODA


    • coenoby's avatar
      coenoby
      Very Insightful Person
      2 days ago

      jcurtis​ 

      Yes, but thee is a key difference. The problem in early April that you have linked  to was very specific. It only affected the ntlworld.com domain and was caused by an error in the settings associated with that specific domain. That problem has been sorted.

      The problem you are currently seeing seems to be  reported for all the VM email domains. See this thread on an Apple forum: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/256042116?sortBy=rank&page=2

      As an example, scroll down that Apple forum thread to the post by "neilessex", who like many others is reporting the same issue with sending emails from icloud accounts to  blueyonder.co.uk addresses

      This current issue (it seems to me) is down to:

      • VM's strict checking that VM apply to all incoming emails to all their domains.
      • However it may have only just started being a problem if Apple have recently made ta change to their DNS setting.

       

      Coenoby

       

  • jawilliamson's avatar
    jawilliamson
    Dialled in
    2 days ago

    This issue is pain in the backside.  I'm a VM customer for internet but due to the amount of spam I migrated to using my iCloud e mail.  For the last couple of weeks e mails from my iCloud address and its aliases (not custom domains) sent to ntlworld and virginmedia addresses are bounced with this error.  It's a problem as I'm self employed and my business e mail is an iCloud.com address.  I've no issue sending to other domains, just ntlworld and virginmedia.  All workarounds are temporary (changing DNS, disabling private relay etc) and the problem returns after a day or so.  What makes it worse is that the message from the receiving server to say that the send failed is coming through after many hours rather than immediately and with no detail of the original e mail content (just the recipient), so it's difficult to keep track of what's been received and what needs resending.  My only working solution currently is to log into iCloud.com in a browser and send all mail from there.

    There are numerous users reporting this issue in the following thread on the apple forums:

    https://discussions.apple.com/thread/256042116?sortBy=rank