Yahoo! Meets Error 553, and Error 553 Wins
Wednesday, May 21, 2008
It seemed like a good idea at the time: Yahoo! UK would upgrade its anti-spam security by derailing any emails going through its servers (which it runs for its partner British Telecom) that did not have a matching British Telecom/Yahoo! address in the From: field. However, thousands of British Telecom customers who have their own domain names discovered that they were essentially locked out of the system. Not only did their emails not get sent, but they received a perplexing message saying that they had "error 553" and providing a link where they could "validate their domain." For now, the "upgrade" has been temporarily removed, but it will be rolled out again shortly. Brace yourself, and read all about it in The Guardian.