Non-delivery report 550 5.1.8 Access denied, bad outbound sender

Problem

When you send an email, the email is not delivered, and you receive a non-delivery report with this error message:

550 5.1.8 Access denied, bad outbound sender AS(41000001)
Your message couldn't be delivered because you weren't recognized as a valid sender. The most common reason for this is that your email address is suspected of sending spam and it's no longer allowed to send messages outside of your organization. Contact your email admin for assistance.

Reason

Microsoft 365 has added the user to the blocked sender's list because the user has been sending emails recognised as spam or exceeding the limits of the Microsoft 365 plan, for example sending emails to a large number of recipients.

Solution

To resolve this issue see Remove blocked users from the Restricted users portal in Microsoft 365.

You can configure Microsoft 365 to send notifications when an outbound spam email is detected, or if a sender is blocked due to sending outbound spam. For more information see Configure outbound spam filtering in EOP.