A standard spam deterrent that several major webmail providers utilize is deferred mail. What this means is that your email on send is purposely delayed from 5 minutes up to several hours. For example, you know Yahoo! Mail’s deferment is in effect when you receive an error 451.
It’s most likely true you weren’t doing anything different than what you normally do with your mail, but there are things which trigger mail deferment that aren’t your fault at all. For example, something as simple as logging into your mail from a public Wi-Fi location can set off a flag as a known "bad" IP address. You’re obviously not responsible for that, but unfortunately have to deal with it.
The way around mail deferment is to simply use a different mail account using a different reply-to header in combination with blind-carbon-copy, commonly known by its abbreviation bcc.
Here’s an example using Yahoo! Mail and Hotmail. Bear in mind you could also use Gmail, GMX, In.com mail or whatever you decide to use.
Situation: Your primary email is a Yahoo! Mail account, and one day you encounter the 451 deferment error, disallowing you to send any mail for a few hours – but you need to send out mail now.
Solution: Login to a backup Hotmail account configured with a different reply-to, and bcc yourself on mail-out to your Yahoo! account.
Set up the Hotmail account as follows:
1. Specify the reply-to to point to your primary Yahoo! Mail account:
2. When composing an email from the Hotmail side, bcc your primary Yahoo! Mail account:
What this does is two things. First, when the recipient replies to the email, it will be directed to your Yahoo! account and not Hotmail. Second, the bcc sends a copy of the message to your Yahoo! account that you can drag/drop into the Sent folder; a manual way of synchronization so you can keep track of what went where.
This may not be the most elegant solution in the world, but it works with any mail account – as long as the two accounts are from separate companies (using two accounts from the same company rarely works because both accounts will be deferred at the time you encounter it).
The PCMech.com weekly newsletter has been running strong for over 8 years. Sign up to get tech news, updates and exclusive content - right in your inbox. Also get (several) free gifts.
