What does “550 550 5.4.1 Relay Access Denied (state 14).” mean

email

I am getting this message when I send an email to a corporate email address from my google-apps account:

Google tried to deliver your message, but it was rejected by the
recipient domain. We recommend contacting the other email provider for
further information about the cause of this error. The error that the
other server returned was: 550 550 5.4.1 Relay Access Denied (state
14).

Maybe it just means the address is bad, but if I try a definite bad email I get:

Google tried to deliver your message, but it was rejected by the
recipient domain. We recommend contacting the other email provider for
further information about the cause of this error. The error that the
other server returned was: 550 550 5.4.1 @.com: Recipient
address rejected: Access Denied (state 14).

Can anyone suggest why the slightly different responses?

Best Answer

550 Relay Access Denied is often a catch-all response for when mail is rejected, commonly due to falling into a spam filter.

Reasons could include actual spam detection (bulk mailing, or perhaps an overzealous spam filter setting), or a misconfiguration on your Google Apps domain settings where your domain's MX records don't match what IP the server is connecting from (seems unlikely).

I would definitely mention it to the mail administrator of your corporation. You may have uncovered a configuration issue that is also preventing a bunch of other people's email from arriving properly, possibly losing your company business.

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