Outlook.com emails being rejected and returned by sbcglobal.net, att.net

Anonymous
2024-08-08T04:28:40+00:00

I am aware of other questions being posted regarding this issue, but most seem to directed to corporate email, and not individual home users as myself.

As best as I can tell this problem started yesterday, August 6, 2024, when any email I sent to an sbcglobal.net or att.net email recipient was rejected and returned with the following message:

Undeliverable: Fw: PRAYER BREAKFAST, SAT AUG 10, 2024, 8 AM, at MIMI's CAFE

To:​ You ​ Wed 8/7/2024 5:15 PM

This message is able to be sent again Send again

Delivery has failed to these recipients or groups:

<recipient email address>

Your message wasn't delivered. Despite repeated attempts to deliver your message, the recipient's email system refused to accept a connection from your email system. Contact the recipient by some other means (by phone, for example) and ask them to tell their email admin that it appears that their email system is refusing connections from your email server. Give them the error details shown below. It's likely that the recipient's email admin is the only one who can fix this problem.

The remaining information contained in the bounce message applied to email administrators, which is not applicable to me as a home user.

This problem occurs on both my windows 11 laptop, and my iPhone 13, and occurs with both classic Outlook and new Outlook. It occurs rather I send to a single recipient to multiple recipients in my contacts list.

I was able to send emails to these recipients as late as last Friday, August 2, 2024.

What solutions does Microsoft have to help resolve this issue?

This

Thank you,

Outlook | Windows | New Outlook for Windows | For business

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  1. Anonymous
    2024-11-15T01:31:51+00:00

    In my experience the problem comes and goes and both companies blame each other. I've started using gmail. AT&T is just crummy with its customer service, and Microsoft isn't far behind.

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  2. Anonymous
    2024-11-15T01:13:31+00:00

    Linda - why isn't Microsoft helping get this resolved? This has been going on for months! It's now Nov 14th. I called AT&T and they said to contact Microsoft. This is happening to many people and needs to be fixed.

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  3. Anonymous
    2024-11-03T00:54:08+00:00

    I don't think Microsoft will get involved because their app appears to be doing what it is supposed to be doing. The email is going out. And in my case at least, arriving at its intended destination. The problem is that the sbcglobal.net servers are rejecting the messages before they reach my inbox. Their IT folks need to read the error messages in their server logs to determine exactly why they are being rejected. It could be an unintended bug created by a server update. It seems that it has been going on a long time. They need to escalate this. They apparently don't intend to do it. Unless we all become a squeaky wheel...

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  4. Anonymous
    2024-11-03T00:44:17+00:00

    I have been having similar problems. I have separate email accounts I use for different purposes and roles. I configured 3 of my outlook.com email accounts to automatically forward all email to a sbcglobal.net email account. It worked fine for about 4-5 days and then it stopped forwarding most (not all) of the email. One message I manually sent from a different outlook.com email address to the same sbcglobal.net account bounced back stating that it was "actively rejected" by the destination server. I called sbcglobal.net support at 877-722-3755. It got escalated to a "technical expert" and it was relayed back to me that all the email coming from my outlook.com accounts were being filtered as SPAM and blocked by ATT without going to the online spam or junk folder. I explained that I don't consider it SPAM and requested that they allow everything through as they did for the first 4-5 days. I couldn't do it myself because it was being blocked and not reaching my SPAM folder. They told me I would have to email the back-office (abuse_******@abuse-att.net) to explain what I needed and why (they have no public phone number). I emailed them immediately. I never received a reply, but almost all the email started coming through the following day. Everything except for email coming from 3 specific sources. ATT hasn't done anything to resolve the issue completely or even told me why it is happening. My work-around was to create a gmail.com email account to forward my email to and configure the new gmail account in my email client. I am not having any problems with GMAIL.

    I would recommend calling the number and emailing the back-office as described above. If they hear from enough of us, maybe they'll make it a priority to resolve the issue. Or maybe they'll tell us that they don't intend to continue supporting the sbcglobal.net domain and they are trying to make us leave by creating these issues and keeping us in the dark about it. Either way, we'll know where we stand and make changes on our end that make the most sense for us.

    Good luck!

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  5. Anonymous
    2024-11-01T21:46:32+00:00

    Seeing this as well trying to send an email from an msn.com account to an att.net account. This just recently started happening to a family member. Not sure how to escalate this further on either side.

    11/1/2024 2:46:11 PM - Server at CP8P284MB2877.BRAP284.PROD.OUTLOOK.COM returned '550 5.4.316 Message expired, connection refused(Socket error code 10061)'
    11/1/2024 2:39:40 PM - Server at att.net (144.160.159.21) returned '450 4.4.316 Connection refused [Message=Socket error code 10061] [LastAttemptedServerName=att.net] [LastAttemptedIP=144.160.159.21:25] [SmtpSecurity=-2;-2] [CP1PEPF00007A4A.BRAP284.PROD.OUTLOOK.COM](http://cp1pepf00007a4a.brap284.prod.outlook.com/ "cp1pepf00007a4a.brap284.prod.outlook.com") 2024-11-01T14:39:58.491Z 08DCF6B40F7B0608'

    I'm inclined to believe it's an issue on AT&T's end, however I would hope that someone from Microsoft would have a contact they could reach out to and figure this out. It seems futile for regular users to somehow call AT&T or Microsoft and try to get through to them that they have a real issue.

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