[Techtalk] Email failure messages

[Rachel McConnell]

Hello gurus,

I am not an email server administrator, although I do have a reasonable 
amount of high-level knowledge of how email works.

I get a bounce message whenever I try to send email to a particular 
addresss (name at some.net below).  Normally I would think that the address 
is incorrect, but for other reasons I believe this not to be the case.

Other bounce messages I've seen that use the text "does not like 
recipient" have given reasons like "User unknown" instead of "Access 
denied".  I'm wondering if the below means that my IP address is on a 
blacklist used by some.net?  Or possibly my email address specifically 
(this is not out of the question given the technical knowledge of 
name at some.net and the nature of our relationship).

I've done some googling on this but can only find examples of similar 
messages in archived mailing lists, not anything that explains what the 
responses mean.

Explanations or pointers to explanations gratefully accepted!  If I'm on 
a blacklist, I'd like to ask the lister why and try to get off it.

Rachel

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: failure notice
Date: 29 Sep 2004 10:49:55 -0700
From: postmaster at my.email.server
To: (me)

Hi. This is the qmail-send program at my.email.server.
I'm afraid I wasn't able to deliver your message to the following addresses.
This is a permanent error; I've given up. Sorry it didn't work out.

<name at some.net>:
1.2.3.4 does not like recipient.
Remote host said: 550 5.7.1 <name at some.net>... Access denied
Giving up on 1.2.3.4.

--- Below this line is a copy of the message.
[omitted]