554 5.7.9 Message not accepted for policy reasons
Sample bounce line
554 5.7.9 Message not accepted for policy reasons
What it means
Yahoo rejected the message, and its help article says it may be due to an issue with the sender not using DMARC. When a message is automatically forwarded from one provider to another, it can appear to come from an unauthorized server if the forwarding provider isn't using DMARC.
Why it happens
- An email was automatically forwarded from one provider to another and appears to come from an unauthorized server because the provider isn't using DMARC.
- The original sender's domain publishes a DMARC policy of p=reject, so Yahoo rejects the forwarded message per the domain's instructions.
How to fix it
- View the raw message headers of the bounced email.
- Look for X-Yahoo-Forwarded, which shows the message was forwarded and includes the address it was forwarded to.
- Look for p=reject, which shows the original domain uses DMARC and the message is being rejected per its instructions.
- Yahoo's Sender Hub says not to retry a 5xx rejection, and to authenticate mail with SPF and DKIM (bulk senders also need a DMARC policy). For forwarded mail it suggests considering ARC.
DNS record examples (replace example.com and the values with your own):
example.com. IN TXT "v=spf1 include:_spf.your-mail-provider.example ~all" ; one SPF record per domain; use your provider's real include value
selector1._domainkey.example.com. IN TXT "v=DKIM1; k=rsa; p=PUBLIC_KEY_FROM_YOUR_PROVIDER" ; selector and key come from your mail provider
_dmarc.example.com. IN TXT "v=DMARC1; p=none; rua=mailto:[email protected]" ; start at p=none, tighten only after reports look clean
Check your domain now
Many of these errors come from missing or broken SPF, DKIM, DMARC or reverse DNS records. Enter your domain to run the free check.
Related errors
No related errors listed yet.