No longer able to send email via smtphm.sympatico.ca - Rejected message cmx-torrgo002.bell.net

[yorkman]

Up until today, our on premise Exchange Server has been sending and receiving emails great for the past few years with Bell. Today however, all users cannot send email using Outlook connected to our local Exchange server via Bell as the smart host. The error is always the same:

"cmx-torrgo002.bell.net
Remote Server returned '553 MAIL FROM:<XXXXX@ourDomain.ca > does not match authenticated user name'
The following organization rejected your message: cmx-torrgo002.bell.net."

The authenticated user name it's referring to I'm guessing is our Bell email username (example: XXXXX@bell.net ) since that's what our Exchange smart host is configured to use. This has always been working before.

Obviously our personal domain doesn't match bell's domain username and it seems like that's why it's not going through. So it appears Bell implemented a change where now you can only send emails using Bell servers (smtphm.sympatico.ca) if the email you're sending as is your Bell.net email address. Naturally all users will have a different email address than the one that's registered with bell.net.

Can somebody confirm this? I tried adding my email and password in Bell's webmail as another account and reconfigure our Exchange smart host to use this account but it doesn't recognize the username/password. I guess that's not what it's for but it's something similar I had to do when I was with Rogers years ago and that worked.

Is there a workaround or am I the only one that started getting this? I guess I'll now have to buy a cheap smart host and send mail through their server if this isn't fixed very soon.

[BellNick]

Hi there @yorkman 
Thank you for your post and welcome to the Community.
We'd like to have this looked into and have sent you a private message.
Please check your Messages within your profile avatar in the top right corner.
Unsure how to check or send a private message? See How to send a private message

[ChristianT]

I have the same issue, or at least, something that look like it. 

The exact error message I'm getting, on my internal smtp relays, is:

(host smtphm.sympatico.ca[XXX.XX.XXX.XX] said: 421 Service unavailable (in reply from MAIL FROM command))

This used to work for a long time...

[yorkman]

Well don't waste your time here. I've posted here hoping Bell could help. Instead, they called me and only frustrated me more. Had I not purchased a relay from a 3rd party we'd still not be able to send emails.

They're answer? They don't support and never have supported sending emails through their smtp servers, even though I've been successfully sending them via Bell for a decade! Like hello?! And they said they only support webmail and if that works then that's as far as they go. As an IT administrator myself I've never came across such incompetency.

They would not admit they made changes to their smtp servers that stops even their own customers from sending mail through their servers via smtp. The only thing that still works (though I don't really use) is sending via IMAP. Makes me want to go back to Rogers or even Acanac.

Use telnet and see if you can send an email that way. It doesn't work for me, even if I authenticate and send as my bell userid and not use my own domain's email address. Be sure to enter the 'mail from and rcpt' commands in format <userid@bell.net> otherwise you'll get errors. You'll also need to use 'auth login' to authenticate with your bell email id and password (in base64 form). This is just for testing. I tried this and even though it accepted the emails, they don't arrive to any of my test email addresses.

[BellNick · Accepted solution]

Hi @yorkman 
I've confirmed that we now require the From address to match the Authentication address, so you will need to ensure that these match. This is to limit and prevent fraud and spamming.

[BruceS]

Inthe last day or so, I have been experiencing problems with some of my Bell email accounts trying to use SMTP to send email from that account.  I get the following error message from my email client (Thunderbird):

Sending of the message failed.

The mal server responded MAIL FROM <myid.sympatico,ca> does not mactch authenticated user name.  

I can still read email via pop.

I can still send email from the webmail interface for that account.

I can still send mail Thunderbird from exactly one of my sympatico ids and it has the same SMTP account settings as id that fails.

I though it might be related to MFA, so I activated MFA on the account, but that has not made any difference so far in subsequent tests.

Anyone have any ideas?

[BruceS]

Sorry, I missed this thread and now understand the issue.  Hopefully Bell will update their help describing how to use SMTP .....

[yorkman]

Yes as mentioned, you can only send emails where the FROM address is the same as the authenticated username. This used to work for years but Bell decided to quietly disable sending any emails through their SMTP servers unless you're sending and authenticating with your @Bell.net email address. So you can't send emails like john@mydomain.ca, even if you've authenticated with the Bell SMTP server. Even if you're a Bell customer! You'll need to pay up now to use a 3rd party smtp server to send your emails using your own domain name. Bell says you can sign up with them but I do NOT recommend Bell to anyone anymore after they backstabbed me, you and many other Bell customers.

[BruceS]

Thx for your reply.  Yes, I understood this situation from your previous posts (I had not searched hard enough for this thread before starting my own, which a mod merged with this one).

Just to add some historical context:  I have been using Email since the mid 90s (Eudora->Thunderbird() and have sympatico emails I sent via SMTP from 2008.  So for an unsupported feature, it worked pretty well for close to 20 years, perhaps more. 

But I understand their reasons for the  change.  What Bell should have done, however, was announce it in advance and update their own online docs on how to use SMTP email.  Not atypical customer service for Ma Bell.