Hotmail blocking mail
 

I've just fixed a long-standing problem, and it turns out the problem was "Hotmail".

I'm in a rural group of three churches, with a large team of folks doing all kinds of stuff. We use e-mail as the primary communications tool, as you would expect.

Two folks in the team kept not turning up to meetings, or complained they didn't have the agenda, and so on. So I did some digging: both use Hotmail as their e-mail.

I set up a hotmail.com address for me, and sent it some messages from my official and some other e-mail addresses. NONE arrived. Then I looked closer, and saw a little label on the mail screen saying "Junk". In there were all the messages I'd sent, marked "Microsoft SmartScreen marked this message as junk and we'll delete it after ten days."

They weren't particularly junky messages - unless you think a meeting agenda, a set of meeting minutes, and a message with the details of a funeral are "junk".

Those two folks now have webmail addresses on the Church system and are getting all their mail. But if you have Hotmail, check very carefully and very frequently what's in your "Junk" box. It may not be Junk.

It's not really hotmail's fault
I everyone should look through the titles in the junk mail folder in ANY mail system, after all it tells you how many messages there are in the folder so you know they're in there. I very rarely get non junk mail in my hotmail junk box but if I do I just highlight it an click on the 'not junk' button. That way the next time a message comes from that person it goes into the in-box.

If you are using an organization's E-Mail system then it is possible that, if they send out news letters/flyers etc, then someone has moved it to the junk file and when it's auto-deleted after 10 days the address will be added to the list of spammers at Hotmail and all mail from them will be treated as spam.

GG - yes it is!

http://www.pprune.org/computer-inter.../411044-m.html

http://www.pprune.org/computer-inter...behaviour.html

...only inbound to Hotmail! No-one else.

As I say, I'm all for stopping Spam but when it ain't Spam..........................the kids at M$ do get carried away with their own importance a bit.

This isn't "me" - vaguely computer literate and aware of how this stuff works. This is ordinary folk, using Hotmail because they were told by someone that that is how e-mail works. Nobody told them to click on the very small "Junk" word in a row of other words, and they didn't.

There are about 100 such people on our church contact lists. All but two get their mail with no problem. Two used Hotmail and didn't. Now, they don't use Hotmail and they do again.

I've had the same thing with both Yahoo and Gmail.

Pays to check your spam folder periodically.

I use Gmail and have had very, very few false positives with it.

These Hotmail users were not getting mail from a dozen or so different people with different ISPs, none of it spam, and none of it with anything that even vaguely resembles spam.

That's a bit like going out , buying a television, and then only watching one channel because you didn't know there were any more, or you couldn't be bothered to learn how to change channels.
Computers are complex things and people who use them should at least educate themselves in the basics of the programs they use and what the main functions are.
Anyone wanting to receive mail from an organization that has it's own e-mail system should open an account with that system as it's more efficient .


I know you hate microsoft BOAC but it's not really their fault if people don't bother to take the trouble to read the help pages or view one of the many 'How To' videos that MS produce about a product, it's all about education. .

Gmail now underpins VirginMedia email (blueyonder, NTL, etc.) and I have been very satisfied with the default spam filtering.

I check the spam list once a week or so, and very, very rarely find anything that's not spam.

I also take full advantage of the ability to mark messages as spam from the inbox, so never receive any more from that sender again.

SD

- wrong! I am a M4 user. What I hate is the whizzy bang 'ideas' these kids come up with which intrude into innocent users' innocent use. If you read my links you will see that I did everything required, including SPFs in 'consultation' with M$ Hotmail 'help' who eventually stopped answering when they couldn't fix it, and still emails were being blocked as 'spam'. "See you at 1500". Nasty spam, you'll agree?

This came from my host:
"As the error is occurring on their servers, our logs will not contain anything useful. They simply show our email server attempting to send the email to hotmail, and getting that error message in response.

Like most of the large free email providers, hotmail will often block legitimate emails as part of their "anti-spam". If the recipient uses email for anything important, a reliable email provider should be used who will not block emails without the users permission. Attempting to get any information from hotmail about why it was blocked will prove futile, the same as with most of the other big free providers."

My bold and excellent advice. Trouble is, how to persuade your contacts? Plus, of course, the other "big free providers" are not so paranoid.

BOAC,

I'm with green granite here. Yeah, I don't mind a bit of Microsoft bashing myself... but only in the appropriate circumstances.

It sounds like you are attempting to treat Hotmail as a commercial service, expecting the same support and reliability levels you would get from a paid service.

But as much as the internet and email has become a commodity (or even a "human right" if you ask some people), fact remains that the home user is not prepared to pay for the true cost of implementing systems and processes required to provide, maintain and support the IT infrastructure.

The rise of all these "Free" advertising reliant services in the past decade has done absolutely nothing apart from make the providers even more vicious about cost-cutting measures required in order to make their service even remotely commercially viable. Saying people like M$ and Google can afford it won't cut it, they quite rightly treat their services as seperate business units that are expected to be self-sufficient.


In terms of your specific problem, if you think about how long hotmail has been around, the size of their userbase and hence the volume of mails they have to process, you don't realise how much effort is required for them to constantly keep ahead of the spammers who are always pushing the boundaries. And because Hotmail are providing a free service, they are limited into what technologies can be deployed.

So there you go. I'm unsympathetic to people who expect mission critical reliability out of their IT whilst not wanting to pay anything (or close to nothing) for it.

Trouble is, Mixture - I don't use Hotmail. Some of my clients do, though. That is the problem. Why cannot they do what other services do and mark email as 'spam' for the receiver to decide? Similar to BT Yahoo's way of putting their decisions on what is spam into a spambox - of which a large number of 'average' users do not know - and then deleting same emails after 30 days without as much as a 'by your leave' to the user.

I can assure you that my non-Hotmail email provider does this too.

And even worse - it doesn't move spam to a "junk" folder, it just silently deletes it.

And this is because I've configured it this way, because I want it this way. There's no way I'm going to look at a spam folder every day to see if there are any real messages amongst the thousands of spam, so they might as well be deleted immediately rather than cluttering up someone's disk for a fortnight.

GtW - do you also throw all letters with, say, a printed address, in the bin before opening them in case they are mailshots?

If you think Hotmail's spam policy is bad, you've never tried to interface with AOL. :yuk:

I don't think the analogy applies at all.

It's more like buying a television and changing channels etc, but not checking the setup screen to see if it's hiding some channels because MS doesn't approve of them.

These are normal, unsuspecting internet users who have signed up for hotmail expecting it to do what it says on the tin. They didn't know that it was blocking mail - take a look at the mail page and see if you, as a non-expert, would realise there was blocked mail in there. I found it because I was looking for it. These two did not.

Happily we have a domain and server which will accommodate them, and they are now happily receiving their mail.

No, just the ones that look like junk mail in the two or three seconds it takes me to walk from the doormat to the bin.

If they're real people and they're that bothered they'll follow up any rare failure to respond. If they weren't that bothered then neither am I.

Actually, I've always found the Hotmail junk filter rather good. Like any filter, it will sometimes block something, based on whatever criteria it uses, that was not junk.
No problems with Hotmail at all, except that now and then it's a little slow.

That is debatable on two points:

a) It appears that their SmartScreen® system is not so smart after all, and
b) they could do what my freemail provider does, which is send you a daily summary of what's been caught by the spam filter. A quick scan of it takes seconds and has been helpful on the few occasions on the last 14 years when it got overzealous (e.g., with the likes of Easyjet confirmation messages). It does learn from its mistakes too, or you can easily whitelist the sender.

So yes, it is their "fault", in a way. It is also yours, as they are taking advantage of your low expectations.

Why would I want a summary of what is already there and on obvious view? All I need need to do is click on the folder marked 'junk' and all the headings are there for me to see, I don't need yet another e-mail telling me what is in the junk box.
And exactly why do you state that I have "low expectations"? Low expectations of what?
As far as I'm concerned hot mail is a perfectly useable e-mail system, my point was if you don't understand how the concept works then you will never get the best out of it.
80% of all e-mails sent are spam so I think that all mail servers do a good job of ditching spam but every now and again they will get it wrong, whoever owns them.

Hotmail
 

Those are FREE email services...You get what you pay for.. Try finding help if you have any trouble.

By the way... Have you ever asked why they offer the service for free?

Just because they are such nice people?

No... They are scanning your email... In other words.. Data mining..

I would recommend an email address or an account with a real Internet Service Provider that is there to help you and take care of you.

Bill

Because it's neither 'there' nor 'in obvious view'. Read on.

Except that if you are using an email client, there may be no "folder marked 'junk'" for you to see (in any case if using POP3, or if not subscribed via IMAP, as is most often the case).

I see you only use webmail. In that case, the notification is not particularly useful. In fact, I do not get it if I log in via webmail, only when using a mail user agent (e.g., Thunderbird).

Low expectations as regards the level of service they (Hotmail in this case) are able to offer. What has happened to Keef's quasi-correspondents did not need to happen and indeed would not happen if their email provider offered a better service, but they are not going to be doing that as long as their users' expectations are met by the current service.

Exactly. It meets your expectations...

...and this demonstrates how low those are. Your point is valid, and you have to draw the line somewhere as to the level of skills required, but where?

Clearly, you wouldn't expect a typical email user to know by heart RFC2822, be able to recite significant sections of RFC2821, and be capable of decoding by hand a MIME-encoded multipart signed message. On the other hand, you probably expect a typical email user to have at least basic reading (and possibly writing) skills, maybe even the capability to use a computer or other electronic device (although this is not strictly necessary, nor is the ability to read come to think of it).

Quite where you draw the line between those two is the million Denarii question. In my opinion, based on whichever knowledge and experience I might have in the subject area, the usability threshold for basic email could be much lower than is generally the case.

There are two ways of getting it wrong: ditching a good email (false positive), and letting through a bad one (false negative). A good system will always be biased towards the less harmful alternative--something which Hotmail appear not to be getting as right as they could.

Yup, bbrunton is correct.

Oh for gods sake you two you just don't get it do you? stop having this attitude that everyone else are morons.
I use hotmail for one reason only to keep my identity anonymous (yes I do know it could be traced back with a certain amount of effort) for logging onto sites I don't wholly trust and I don't want to know my name. As for data mining, that could apply to ANY mail scheme, where is your prove of that statement bbrunton? Or is that just another made up fantasy of the let's bash MS brigade?

But I'm not. I'm using hotmail as it's meant to be used, as a web mail system, jf you use it in any other way you invalidate the original concept, and cannot complain if it isn't as you want it.

100% wrong, for banking etc I use a completely different set up using my IP providers mail system which can be used, and is, either way. And even that puts good mail into the spam folder sometimes.

One way that Hotmail decides what is junk is by harvesting the addresses from the junk mail folders as it deletes them and adding them to the list, so I can, in theory, get sites banned just my moving a properly directed e-mail into the junk folder, but I don't know what number of 'refusals' are required for that to happen. But it's perfectly possible that is what has happened in Keefs case. It would be interesting to look into why hotmail decided it was spam, after all someone may have used their server as an illicit mail server to send out spam.

I have no idea how a variety of clergy and diocesan addresses, plus most of the churchwardens north of Ipswich all got marked as "spammers" by Hotmail. Nor do I much care, since the affected folk no longer use Hotmail.

I was trying (and failing, it seems) to warn people to search out and check that little word "Junk" on the mail page of their Hotmail.

I got the impression from your post that your system was a WAN with a central server that handled e-mails, if it is then it would only be that server that would be on the black list, not the individuals. It should be mentioned to your IT guru just incase there is an issue, after all, hotmail must have some reason to have decided your e-mails were junk

:O that's a bit grandma/eggs on this forum :O but I know what you mean.
The real problem lies with the people who said use hotmail and perhaps even set it up for them but didn't bother to explain these things properly. If I'm asked then I sit and guide them through the set up procedure (it's better if they do it, it gives them confidence....well usually) I then go through the thing with them getting them to click on all the basic features and explaining what it does and most certainly and explanation of junk mail would be included.

Probably one of them, or someone else using the same server, is a spambot, so one of the blacklist services that hotmail checks with is blacklisting the entire server.

Not one where you run your own server. And not very likely for those of us who pay for email service from a hosting company - their business is renting hardware and bandwidth, not snooping on their customers' traffic

Hmmmmm don't some companies check e-mails leaving the company for certain keywords or attatchments nowadays then?

I did say could no where did I say it was likely which, as you say, is not

I apologise for the misunderstanding. I never meant to imply that everyone else are morons. Although some clearly fall in that category. :E

Bye http://www.chiptape.com/chiptape/qt/...aving%2025.gif

No, the incoming mail that got junked was from a mix of people on a variety of servers. Some are on the Diocesan LAN, but most are using their home e-mail on BTInternet, Plusnet, Gmail and others. The "false positive" rate was too high for me to go chasing after it - the easier fix was to stop using Hotmail.

We have a website on a server hosted by a reputable UK company. I operate that for the benefice (the three churches). Alongside http and https, it provides POP, SMTP, imap and webmail, which we use for Church matters (and two folks use for all their e-mail).

I didn't provide training in the use of Hotmail, since they were using it before I moved up here from Essex (and until last week I'd never used it either). They aren't using Hotmail any more; I did provide brief training in the use of webmail on our system, and they are happy.

Sorry Keef , I misunderstood, I thought all the missed messages had originated from your Diocesan LAN hence my comments.