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Yahoo and AOL · permanent error

553: permanent rejection (553)

Yahoo or AOL rejected the message for good with a 553. Yahoo groups 553 with 554 as its permanent errors, so retrying will not help until the cause is fixed.

Yahoo
Provider
Permanent (5xx)
Class
Sources checked
By , email deliverability consultant
Author

At a glance

Code
553
Temporary or permanent
PermanentRefused for good: the message comes back to the sender, and resending it gets the same answer.
Who has to act
The sender. The fix is on the sending side: your domain, your server or your list.

What it means

Yahoo documents 553 and 554 together as permanent errors, and it does not say which reasons go with which code. The reasons it lists are an invalid recipient address, a message that failed the DMARC or DKIM checks for your sending domain, content Yahoo will not accept for policy reasons, other suspicious behaviour that leads it to reject your SMTP connection outright, and a sending IP listed by Spamhaus. Yahoo advises against retrying a message that came back with a 5xx error, and asks list managers to remove addresses that produce one. If 5xx errors arrive consistently, Yahoo reads that as a sign of a wider problem with how you send, and points to its Sender Requirements and Recommendations.

Common causes

  • Your sending IP is listed by Spamhaus.
  • Yahoo saw behaviour from your server suspicious enough to reject the connection permanently.
  • The message failed authentication against your domain's DMARC or DKIM policy.
  • The recipient address is not valid.

How to fix it

  1. 01Do not retry the message. Read the full reply for the reason and any code in square brackets.
  2. 02Check your sending IP on Spamhaus and follow its removal process if it is listed.
  3. 03Confirm that SPF, DKIM and DMARC pass and align with the From domain for this mail stream.
  4. 04Remove the address if the reply says it is invalid, and stop sending to addresses that return 5xx errors.
  5. 05Work through Yahoo's Sender Requirements and Recommendations, and if you still need help, submit a Sender Support Request with the error and your logs.

Sources

What this page rests on, checked on 20 Oct 2026. The explanation is ours; the reply text is the server's.

  1. 554Permanent rejection (554).Yahoo or AOL rejected the message for good with a 554. Yahoo uses this code for several problems, from failed authentication to unacceptable content, so the wording of the reply tells you which.YahooPermanent
  2. 554Failed authentication.Yahoo or AOL refused the message because it failed the checks that confirm the sending domain, such as DKIM against the domain's policy. Yahoo lists this among its permanent 553 and 554 errors.YahooPermanent
  3. 554Recipient does not exist.The Yahoo or AOL account you wrote to does not exist. The failure is permanent: check the address with the recipient, and remove it from any list.YahooPermanent
  4. 553Mailbox name not allowed.The server refused the address because the mailbox name is not allowed there, most often because it is written incorrectly.StandardPermanent

Further reading

All 7 Yahoo codesEvery code in the wikiPaste your own bounce

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