[exim] Hotmail and 552 Too many recipients

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Author: Stian Jordet
Date:  
To: exim-users
Subject: [exim] Hotmail and 552 Too many recipients
Hi,

I have a user which have a soccer contest going with his friends and
co-workers. They are now about 60 participants. For a couple of years he
have been sending out the results and standings to everyone
participating. This have worked great.

This weekend I got a mail from him, telling me he had got a mail from
"Mail Delivery System". I asked him to forward it to me (see below, some
email-addresses obfuscated to prevent the innocent).

He has all the recipients in the BCC field of his mailer (Thunderbird).
He used to have 14 hotmail recipients, but he added two new before he
sent this particular mail, and about 40-45 other recipients.

Two questions: 1) is the reason Hotmail now rejected his email that it's
suddenly 16 hotmail recipients instead of 14? I thought it must accept
at least 100 (although I know Hotmail isn't known to adhere to the
RFC's...) Perhaps it's because the recipients are in the bcc-field?
Maybe there is limits there?

2) Why did only six of the 16 Hotmail recipients fail? Oh, stupid me, I
just looked at the logs. It seems (logical enough) that when you use
bcc, it sends one and one recipient. Perhaps Hotmail doesn't like that?
Since it stops accepting mails after 10 recipients... (Weird it used to
work for 14 earlier...)

Other than the obvious "don't let your friends use hotmail", is there
anything I can do to avoid this?

Regards,
Stian

Emne:     Mail delivery failed: returning message to sender
Dato:     Fri, 28 Sep 2007 20:07:18 +0200
Fra:     Mail Delivery System <Mailer-Daemon@???>
Til:     user1@???




This message was created automatically by mail delivery software.

A message that you sent could not be delivered to one or more of its
recipients. This is a permanent error. The following address(es) failed:

  user2@???
    SMTP error from remote mail server after RCPT TO:<user2@???>:
    host mx1.hotmail.com [65.54.244.136]: 552 Too many recipients
  user3@???
    SMTP error from remote mail server after RCPT TO:<user3@???>:
    host mx1.hotmail.com [65.54.244.136]: 552 Too many recipients
  user4@???
    SMTP error from remote mail server after RCPT TO:<user4@???>:
    host mx1.hotmail.com [65.54.244.136]: 552 Too many recipients
  user5@???
    SMTP error from remote mail server after RCPT TO:<user5@???>:
    host mx1.hotmail.com [65.54.244.136]: 552 Too many recipients
  user6@???
    SMTP error from remote mail server after RCPT TO:<user6@???>:
    host mx1.hotmail.com [65.54.244.136]: 552 Too many recipients
  user7@???
    SMTP error from remote mail server after RCPT TO:<user7@???>:
    host mx1.hotmail.com [65.54.244.136]: 552 Too many recipients


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Message-ID: <20070928200100.empiziae74kwk8og@???>
Date: Fri, 28 Sep 2007 20:01:00 +0200
From: Lars-Morten Johansen <user1@???>
To: user1@???
Cc: user8@???
Subject: 21 runder spilt
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