casteele,

thank you for your in-depth answer. problem seems to be solved, my provider told me they had fixed somehting related to spam .....

:)

in the last weeks I had troubles to send e-mails to adresses @hotmail.com.

I immediately was notified by pm that "relaying to hotmail.com" was not allowed

today I wrote an email to 4 of my friends, 1 address in the to:-field, 3 in the cc-field.

and again it did not work.  could someone explain to me what is going on?

here

is the raw-text of the email I immediately got back (which in fact is

created by pm on the local computer; I have changed the first part of

any e-mail address below(part before @) for anti-spam reasons ....):

From: Mail Delivery System <>

To: Self

Subject: Mail Delivery Failure.

Date: Fri, 21 Dec 2007 15:14:30

X-PMFLAGS: 16384 0 65537

J7C5INZH.CNM                      

Delivery has failed on the enclosed message for the following

reasons reported either by the mail delivery system on the mail

relay host or by the local TCP/IP transport module:

   550 Relaying to gmx.at denied

   550 Relaying to rittal.at denied

   550 Relaying to wgkk.sozvers.at denied

Your original mail message follows:

--------------------------------------------------------

X-PM-Identity: <Default>

From: <pj@chello.at>

To: gb@chello.at

Date: Fri, 21 Dec 2007 15:14:28 +0100

MIME-Version: 1.0

Content-type: Multipart/Mixed; boundary=Message-Boundary-1908

Subject: =?ISO-8859-1?Q?im_sinne_sch=F6ner_feiertage_und_eines_gesch=FCtzten_privatlebens?=

Reply-to: pj@chello.at

CC: gm@gmx.at,

              rf@rittal.at,

              pnr@wgkk.sozvers.at

Message-ID: <476BD854.29684.F675D9@pj.chello.at>

Priority: normal

X-mailer: Pegasus Mail for Windows (4.41)

-------------------------------------------------

delivery to hotmail is normally a server side problem. Your mail server needs to comply with reverse lookups for hotmail to accept inbound traffic.

I don't think that my provider's mail server has any problems with compying to any standard that is. upc is in business for 15 years serving millions of households in europe. also what has my problem to do with inbound traffic. I am trying to send mail, but this is denied because "relaying to xxxx is denied". what is this "relaying" thing?

Your problem is most likely in your mailserver or how you're configured

PMail for your mailserver, not PMail itself. The key to understanding

this is the fact that "relaying" is being denied: Relaying just means

delivery of your mail message from one server to the next--Mail

clients, such as PMail, usually do not connect directly to each other

mailserver. Instead, they connect to a mailserver on which you have an

account, and then pass your mail messages to that server with a request

to "relay" it to the recipient's mailserver. (Think of it like sending

a paper letter through the postal service. You do not usually walk to

the other persons house and put it in their mailbox. Instead, you give

it to the postperson, and ask the postperson to deliver it to them.

Relaying here is just a more accurate word for "deliver".)

So

what the "relaying denied" message is saying is that either you have

your mail client (PMail in this case) incorrectly configured to

properly interact with your providers mailserver, or your providers

mailserver is suddenly refusing to interact with Hotmail's mailserver.

Most

often, I see these messages when someone tries to use a mailserver they

do not have proper authorization to use--Or no longer are authorized to

use: Some spammers use insecure mailservers that will relay (deliver)

mail for anyone who asks, even if they do not have an account. But

after getting complaints about an "open relay mailserver", they may

secure their mailserver and require additional authentication before

accepting your mail.

Another common cause I see for these

messages are when mailservers are configured to refuse interaction with

certain mailservers. For example, if your provider feels they get too

much junk or have to many problems with Hotmail users, they could

configure their server to reject anything to/from hotmail.com

mailservers. (It could be the other way around, as well. As Peter said,

Hotmail may have done something to their mailservers which makes them

refuse to accept from your provider's mailservers; That's what he meant

about maybe a reverse lookup problem. In effect, Hotmail may be

thinking your provider is not a legitimate mailserver but some spammer,

so it's refusing to accept mail passed through them.)

In short,

you'll have to go through your mail sending (SMTP) settings to make

sure they are all correct--And ask your provider for the proper values;

Even if they've worked for 15 years, one small change could suddenly

invalidate your previous setup. If everything there seems ok, talk to

your provider and make sure they have not blocked or have other

problems interacting with Hotmail mailservers.

HTH,
C. M.