I had this problem with Hotmail. They don't have anyone you can speak to on
the phone, only via e-mail. In case it's of any interest to anyone, here's
the dialogue I had with one of their guys (starting with the oldest e-mail
first, so you can read down):
From me to them:
-------------------
"I am writing on behalf of <company>. As a critical part of our business, we
send account activation e-mails to customers who register as a user of our
web site. Without this e-mail, they can not use their account, therefore it
is crucial that they receive this e-mail. We are about to change from the
current plain text version to an HTML version, allowing for a friendlier
format. However, having tested the new e-mail, it gets dropped into the
"Junk Mail" folder every time. It is NOT junk mail and is not even sent on
mass. How can we prevent the mail from being classified as junk (for
everyone, not just one user)?"
-------------------
Their reply to me:
-------------------
"Hello ,
This is Jack Random. I'm a tech for MSN Hotmail and one of my
responsibilities is resolving 3rd party domain issues.
I can understand your concern about the issue of losing your email to us and
your desire to be whitelisted. While no one can guarantee accidents won't
happen there are some general policy guidelines that we like to share with
domains that are concerned with making sure their legitimate mail isn't
treated like spam. Please understand, these guidelines are what we in MSN
Hotmail tier 3 support recommend to avoid being filtered by our system. Hard
and fast guidelines are being established but that process is a long one and
I don’t have any specific timetable that I can give you on when that might
be done.
MSN Hotmail does not do any kind of white listing process, not even for
Microsoft corporate partners. All email sent to MSN Hotmail is subject to
the same filtering process, regardless of origin.
On the domain level we have 2 filtering systems in place. Our own Junk Mail
Filter, which is configurable by the individual customer, and the Brightmail
system, which is an independent contracted service using proprietary
filtering software.
The Hotmail junk mail filter has 3 levels that the customer can select.
"Default," in which it is essentially turned off, "Enhanced," which applies
a set of internal rules to all incoming email, and "Exclusive," which blocks
all incoming email except that with a return address that is already in the
customer's addressbook or in their safe list.
If the customer has their Junk Mail Filter set to "Default" then almost
nothing that reaches our domain will be filtered. If they have it set to
"Exclusive" then they are informed that almost everything will be blocked.
Obviously we cannot simply give you a list of the rules that we use to
filter email on the "Enhanced" setting, since to publish those would render
them useless, but we do have these general suggestions for avoiding that
filter.
1. Account should appear in the To or CC lines.
2. At least 2 received lines should be present in headers.
3. Various From work-alikes (Reply-To, Bounce-To, etc) should be the same
Other than that, simply trying to remain RFC compliant will help to insure
that you are not filtered. You may also let your Hotmail subscribers know
that they can white list you on an individual basis by adding your return
address to their Safe Senders list.
Avoiding being filtered by Brightmail is a bit trickier since we do not have
any direct control over the decisions they make as to what to filter. Still,
we find that following these guidelines will almost always allow any bulk
emailer to avoid being filtered.
1. Must be verified opt-in (aka double opt-in).
2. Must remove people on bounces according to type:
A. 3 hard bounces (5xx)
B. 5 soft bounces (4xx)
3. Privacy Policy must be visible before signup.
4. Any activity which will sign the user up to receive information must be
clearly defined as such.
5. User must have options to opt-out of information sharing before
registration is completed.
6. Communications must be clear and not attempt to disguise content or
origin.
As I said before, there aren't any guarantees that your email will not be
lost or accidentally filtered, but if you do suspect that you are having a
problem sending to MSN Hotmail, then please feel free to contact me directly
at jack_cs25@???. I will be more than happy to work with you to sort
out any issues you have.
Jack"
-------------------
My reply to them:
-------------------
"Jack,
Thanks for the response. Please be aware that the e-mail I'm talking about
is not one that is sent out on mass, it is sent to an INDIVIDUAL recipient
when they join our site. Therefore, opt-in mechanisms etc are not relevant.
I have attached an example mail which was junk-filtered. Perhaps you could
give me some idea as to why this might be. I have tried cutting the content
right down in order to figure out what is causing the mail to be filtered,
but with little success.
I look forward to your reply."
-------------------
Their final reply to me:
-------------------
"Hello Andrew,
I’m sorry but all the information that is publicly available about the way
our Junk Mail Filter works is contained in the text below. I’m afraid that I
can’t get into any kind of question and answer relationship about that
filter since to do so would be essentially the same as giving you the JMF
rules, which as it says below, we cannot publish.
When a customer selects the “Enhanced” setting for the Junk Mail Filter for
their account they are specifically notified that some good email may end
up in the junk mail folder and that it is incumbent upon them to check the
folder from time to time and whitelist any non-junk mail they find there.
They can do this either by adding the sender’s return address directly to
the Safe Sender list on the Options page, or by finding the good email in
the junk mail folder and clicking the “this is not spam” button at the top
of the page.
Jack"
-------------------
Guess there's not much use in trying to get an individual solution - you'll
just have to be one of the many. On the bright side, they are going to
publish official guidelines soon - we'll see how much help they are!
Andrew
----- Original Message -----
From: Eli
To: exim-users@???
Sent: Tuesday, January 20, 2004 6:42 AM
Subject: RE: [Exim] How to deal with Hotmail
Not to play the obvious, but have you tried contacting Hotmail about this?
I'm sure they have a # for ISPs to call in regards to mail problems (just an
assumption though, I haven't checked myself). I had to call AOL about them
blocking some of my servers - took them a week to get back to me (meanwhile
about 4-5 of our servers were blacklisted by them :P), and when they got
ahold of me they didn't give me much of any information about what even
prompted the black hole (gave some excuse about not having an abuse address,
even though we did - they to this date have yet to send us any email to our
abuse address even though I made sure to tell them what it was).
It's worth a shot. Just come off sounding like a System Admin for some
company (might want a website to seem somewhat legit) and they should be
somewhat compelled to help out.
Eli.
-----Original Message-----
From: exim-users-admin@??? [
mailto:exim-users-admin@exim.org] On Behalf
Of Mark Edwards
Sent: Tuesday, January 20, 2004 1:36 AM
To: exim-users@???
Subject: [Exim] How to deal with Hotmail
I have a difficult problem on one of my exim servers. Hotmail accepts
mail coming from my users, but the mail never gets delivered. It just
gets blackholed. The server isn't listed on any public DNSBL's, but it
is serving from DSL (SBC). The other server, which runs the same
version of exim, is also on DSL, but it is on Speakeasy.
My two best guesses as to what's going on are:
1) Hotmail has a problem with the SBC DSL server having a different
reverse DNS lookup (the IP resolves to
adsl-66-122-112-170.dsl.snfc21.pacbell.net. but the forward resolves to
dina.mrtoads.com.)
If this was the case, wouldn't the Hotmail server issue some complaint
and refuse the mail?
2) Hotmail decided to block SBC DSL IP's, but not Speakeasy DSL IP's.
This would seem to be a bit weird, but perhaps they have had spam
trouble from SBC.
Does anyone have any insight into the mysterious and annoying workings
of Hotmail?
--
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