Cox is blocking outgoing emails with content Cox apparently censors

Question

I have collected several examples of this problem. I spoke to tech support, they refused to believe me.&nbsp; They were polite - they just refused to believe that the bounce backs were content-based.
Sometimes I was forwarding email, but sometimes I wrote my own original email including information critical of the Covid-19 panic and government policies, and I included links to highly reputable websites on the subject.&nbsp; No profanity or obscenity, no attachments, nothing weird. Cox bounced back the outgoing email to all recipients, with this message for each one:
550 [destination email address] message rejected. Refer to Error Codes section at https://www.cox.com/residential/support/email-error-codes.html for more information. AUP#CXSNDR
One of the destination email addresses was my own gmail account. 
I have reproduced this issue -- I have the emails and rejections to show:&nbsp; Cox is blocking the outgoing email based upon content.
Whom do I write to within Cox to complain about this censorship?&nbsp; Does anyone know?
-Richard

dial911book · Answer

Excellent question. I just now tried it.&nbsp; Cox system bounced it back as undeliverable. I sent it to my own gmail account, no text in the body of the email, only the links.

curtb · Answer

What happens if you try sending an email with the same links and no other content at all?

curtb · Answer

Cox system bounced it back as undeliverable. I sent it to my own gmail account, no text in the body of the email, only the links.
Since the error occurred when your email contained no content other than links, you can&nbsp;most likely eliminate content-based as the reason your emails were blocked.&nbsp;
550 [destination email address] message rejected. Refer to Error Codes section at https://www.cox.com/residential/support/email-error-codes.html for more information. AUP#CXSNDR
The description for the CXSNDR error code is: "There was a problem with the sender's domain.&nbsp;&nbsp;Your email failed authentication checks against your sending domain's SPF, DomainKeys, or DKIM policy".&nbsp;
That sounds like a problem with your Cox account.&nbsp; Are you able to&nbsp;send any email with that&nbsp;account?&nbsp;&nbsp;Try using your Cox account to send a "This is a test" email, containing no links or attachments, to your&nbsp;Cox account.&nbsp; Then send that same email to your Gmail account.&nbsp;&nbsp;If you're unable to send email from your Cox account to either account, you can use your Gmail account to contact cox.help@cox.com.&nbsp; Be sure to provide your full name, service address, Cox email address and a link to this thread.
If you're able to send emails with your Cox account, you can perform tests in an attempt to determine&nbsp;the&nbsp;cause of the error.&nbsp;&nbsp;Try re-sending your original email, without the links, first to your Cox account, then to your Gmail account.&nbsp;&nbsp;Then, try sending a test email containing only a link to this Forum thread, first to your Cox account, then to your Gmail account, to see if you can send emails containing links.
Please post your results so that others may benefit from what you find out.&nbsp;

dial911book · Answer

1. I send nearly all of my email every day using one or the other of my two main Cox accounts and they work fine usually.
2. I did as you asked, sent the link of this forum thread to Gmail and Cox accounts. That worked.&nbsp; My Cox accounts work 99.999% of the time. That's how I know these emails are being treated differently (when they are bounced).
3. An email sent this morning from one of my Cox accounts to the other, containing the links, did work.
4. Very interesting -- this morning I sent the very same email from Cox account to Gmail account, which failed as I reported before, but this time it went through.&nbsp; Nothing on my system changed, it is the identical email with the same links.
The only variable I can see is the Cox system algorithms for figuring out what it will block.&nbsp; I have had previous problems with Cox rejecting email that dealt with criticizing government overreaction to Covid -- no links in those emails -- so it appears the issue is within Cox, not something I'm doing.
Based upon the definition of the error message, which you provided above and which I had found previously also on the Cox site, Cox is indeed deciding not to send the email for reasons known to Cox.
I do appreciate your feedback and suggestions.&nbsp; Before posting here, I had run tests and I have the documentation showing Cox is blocking my email based upon its content (links or otherwise).&nbsp; Please let me know what my avenue is for filing a complaint.

curtb · Answer

I'm not disputing anything you've posted, but it seems unlikely that Cox would ever want to get into the business of censoring user email based upon ideological content.&nbsp; They have enough trouble maintaining everything they're supposed to do.&nbsp;&nbsp;

If your emails are only rejected when being sent to a Gmail account. maybe something on the Gmail side is preventing&nbsp;them from being delivered.
Then there's the possibility of a Cox email glitch that prevents a given email from being delivered one time and successfully sends it the next time.&nbsp;&nbsp;
What we need is a better explanation of that CXSNDR&nbsp;error message.&nbsp; I would probably just contact&nbsp;cox.help@cox.com&nbsp;and ask them why your emails are not being delivered.&nbsp;
If you find out, let us know.

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Cox is blocking outgoing emails with content Cox apparently censors

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