What to do if your email address is blocked for spam

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Unblock an email address blocked for spam: identify the cause of the suspicious activity, fix it and contact OVHcloud support.

Objective

When your email address is blocked for spam, this means that suspicious activity has been detected when sending emails from that address. In this situation, you can no longer send emails from this email address. You then need to understand why suspicious activity was detected and take action to prevent this situation from recurring.

Find out how to respond when your address is blocked for spam.

Requirements

Access to the OVHcloud Control Panel

MX Plan:

  • Direct link:
  • To access your services: Web Cloud > MX Plan > Select your MX Plan service

Zimbra (Starter / Pro):

  • Direct link:
  • To access your services: Web Cloud > Zimbra Mail > Select your Zimbra service

Email Pro:

  • Direct link:
  • To access your services: Web Cloud > Email Pro > Select your platform

Exchange:

  • Direct link:
  • To access your services: Web Cloud > Exchange > Select your platform

Instructions

Before continuing, if the block concerns an MX Plan email address, identify the email technology used by your solution in order to follow the correct unblocking process. For Zimbra Starter and Zimbra Pro solutions, go directly to the Zimbra tab in step 2, without skipping the checks in step 1.

Info

Identify the email technology of your MX Plan solution.

Depending on the activation date of your MX Plan solution or following a recent migration, the associated email technology may differ. This version is characterised by its webmail interface. To identify it:

  • From the General information tab, check the technology used under the Webmail label in the Subscription section.
Identifying the email technology in the MX Plan Control Panel
  • If the technology displayed is Roundcube, follow the instructions in the MX Plan - Roundcube tab.
  • If the technology displayed is OWA (Outlook Web App), follow the instructions in the MX Plan - OWA tab.
  • If the technology displayed is Zimbra, follow the instructions in the Zimbra tab (the procedure is common to MX Plan - Zimbra, Zimbra Starter and Zimbra Pro).

Step 1: Understand and address the cause of the block

When suspicious activity is detected on outgoing emails, the address concerned is automatically blocked. In this situation, you can no longer send emails from this email address.

Warning

"Suspicious activity" means that:

  • The anti-spam server, which scans emails as they are sent, has found that one or more elements of the email are considered suspicious and may constitute spam.
  • The sending frequency and the number of recipients are too high and contribute to the activity being considered as spamming. To carry out mass mailings, you need to use a mailing list service rather than a standard email address.

The precise reasons for a block cannot be disclosed, in order to prevent any attempt to bypass the spam detection system. To test the content of an email, you can use a tool external to OVHcloud such as Mailtester.

First of all, check with the user(s) of the blocked email address that they are not directly responsible for the block, following an unusual use of the email address (for example, mass email sending). If this is the case, you must rectify the situation before unblocking the address.

If the suspicious activity detected by the anti-spam system was not initiated by the legitimate user(s) of the email address, take the following measures:

  • Run an antivirus scan on each device that uses the email address blocked for spam, and apply a fix if any are infected.

  • Check all software using the credentials of the email address blocked for spam (for example: fax machine, business software, email client).

  • Check the redirections applied to the email address blocked for spam.

  • Check the filters applied to the email address blocked for spam, via an email client or webmail.

  • Check the auto-replies configured on the email address blocked for spam, via an email client or webmail.

Info

Filters, redirections and auto-replies configured directly on the webmail (Zimbra, OWA) or in your email client are not accessible to OVHcloud support: support cannot check them on your behalf. These checks must be carried out by you, from the webmail or from a device already configured with the address.

Warning

If the block concerns an address using the Zimbra technology (MX Plan - Zimbra, Zimbra Starter or Zimbra Pro), the address is no longer accessible: the Zimbra webmail login is suspended in addition to email sending. Filters, redirections and auto-replies can therefore no longer be consulted from the webmail.

Set up a filter to isolate SPAM / DCE messages

To reduce the risk of recurrence after unblocking, we recommend adding a filter on the email address:

  • The filter must isolate emails whose subject contains the labels "SPAM" or "DCE" (Dirty Commercial Email), for example by moving them to a dedicated folder. Do not delete them automatically: deletion would cause any false positives (legitimate messages wrongly flagged) to be lost.
  • Keep any existing redirection rules in place: do not delete them when adding the filter.

This filter is configured from the webmail or an email client.

Step 2: Check the status and access the support ticket

Select the email solution concerned in the following tabs:

Exchange
Email Pro
MX Plan - OWA
Zimbra
MX Plan - Roundcube

Go to the Email accounts tab of your platform. If the "Status" column for the email address concerned shows "Blocked", click ... to the right of the account, then Unblock. The email address is not unblocked automatically. Contact the support team via the support ticket by answering the 3 questions asked.

Proceed to step 3 of the guide.

Status column Blocked in the Email accounts tab for Exchange

Step 3: Access the support ticket

Following step 2, you will be redirected to the "My support requests" window. Click the ... button to the right of the ticket with the subject "Account locked for spam.", then click See more information.

My support requests window with the spam block ticket

Here you will find the email that was sent to you, which generates a support ticket.

The support ticket reads as follows:

Dear Customer,

Our system has detected that the address youraddress@example.com, hosted on our systems under the servicename service, is a source of spam. The sending of emails has therefore been temporarily disabled.

We have currently detected X suspicious message(s).

To help us re-enable sending for the address: address@example.com, please reply to this email by answering the following questions:

  • Are you the sender of the email in question (see the header below)?

  • Do you have a redirection rule to another email address?

  • Have you responded to a Spam?

These answers will help us re-enable your account quickly.

Following this message, a sample of headers from the sent emails has been provided to you.

These headers help determine the routing and origin of the sent emails.

Info

Once your ticket has been processed by customer support and your email address has been unblocked, only change the password if a compromise is suspected based on the checks carried out in step 1 (infected device, shared or leaked credentials, unauthorised access). Changing the password is not systematic.

If a new password is needed, make sure it is sufficiently strong. Use a reputable password generator and choose a long, complex passphrase that is unique to this address.

Go further

To manage the aliases and redirections of your email address, see the guide Using email aliases and redirections.

To view your filters and auto-replies from the webmail, see the guides Using your email address from the Roundcube webmail and Using the Zimbra webmail.

For specialised services (SEO, development, etc.), contact OVHcloud partners.

If you would like assistance using and configuring your OVHcloud solutions, please refer to our support offers.

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