Email Blacklists - hotmail- Help Please

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nunz

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Topic # 123419 6-Jul-2013 20:58

I have a business customer who is trying to send emails to @hotmail.com addresses. These emails are in response to legitimate business requests where my clients needs to send requested information, paperwork etc to their customers.

All emails to @hotmail are ending up in the junk bin
Emails without attachments have occaisionally missed going to the junk bin
If the client removes an email from junk and replied to it the reply from my client to that email wil end up in the junk bin.

I set up a test account and whitelisted them and reception was hit and miss.

My client cannot always initiate conversations with customers to let them know to check their junk bins (e.g request may be via web form, written request etc.

My client:
Runs their own mail server (server01.heatstore.co.nz )
Has a RIP, PTRs etc to server01.heatstore.co.nz
Has legetimate SPF records
Has a fixed / Static IP address for the last 6 years or so
Has no black listings anywhere
Is not selling viagara etc - they sell peeltt fires, wood fires etc.
Is not virused
Is not running an open spam relay.

Have emailed hotmail with no response with didly.

Happy to privde mail headers if required.

Any ideas? Help? did I miss something?

Cheers
shane
PS - am writing a blog entry about black lists and blocking in NZ here: http://www.geekzone.co.nz/nunz/8488

nunz

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Reply # 850268 6-Jul-2013 21:48

Have you checked mxtoolbox.com and entered your mailserver IP into it. If it is listed in any of the RBLs, then that will be the reason why.

Otherwise it will likely be a hotmail problem.

mattwnz

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Reply # 850269 6-Jul-2013 21:52

Also I note that your blog says that NZ ISPs should whitelist other NZ ISPs, in some form of trust arrangement.
But at least one ISP, Telecom subcontract out their email offshore to Yahoo, so I can't see how they could do it for a start.
Also what happens if one ISP starts getting heaps of spam from another ISP, they would need to blacklist them. Why should NZ ISPs get treated better than other email providers, especially as ISPs are more likely to have spammers using malware on hijacked ISP customer computers?

Lazarui

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Reply # 850328 7-Jul-2013 09:11

Microsoft is not known to help little ESP's much, but their guidelines etc can be found through here: http://mail.live.com/mail/postmaster.aspx

With microsoftyou just have to keep chugging along, It can take some time to get decent responses to them, I take it you went through the form here to contact them?

timmmay

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Reply # 850507 7-Jul-2013 18:48

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Hotmail is unreliable and shouldn't be used for business. Have them call the person for a different email address to use.

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mattwnz

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Reply # 850511 7-Jul-2013 19:05

timmmay: Hotmail is unreliable and shouldn't be used for business. Have them call the person for a different email address to use.

I would definitely agree, as is most free ISP email, they aren't up to business grade. But hasn't hotmail become outlook.com, where they have given hotmail their premium email brand.

nunz

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Reply # 850760 8-Jul-2013 12:03

mattwnz: Have you checked mxtoolbox.com and entered your mailserver IP into it. If it is listed in any of the RBLs, then that will be the reason why.

Otherwise it will likely be a hotmail problem.

AS per my post - Has no black listings anywhere

nunz

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Reply # 850766 8-Jul-2013 12:10

mattwnz: Also I note that your blog says that NZ ISPs should whitelist other NZ ISPs, in some form of trust arrangement.
But at least one ISP, Telecom subcontract out their email offshore to Yahoo, so I can't see how they could do it for a start.
Also what happens if one ISP starts getting heaps of spam from another ISP, they would need to blacklist them. Why should NZ ISPs get treated better than other email providers, especially as ISPs are more likely to have spammers using malware on hijacked ISP customer computers?

Banning an entire ISP as being a spammer - just because one user is virused is nuts. if that was the case no ISP would ever allow email from any other ISP. Every ISP is likely to have at least one hijecked computer on its system.

THe reason to trust NZ ISPs amongst them selves is two fold:
1 - NZ ISPs rigourously work to keep spammers off their systems - if we cant trust our own countries ISP who can we trust.
2 - NZ business need to know that their email will be delivered - it is a matter of National security at an economic level.

Please note - Black lists are only one part of a successful defence. Filtering, reporting and working together is even more important. Blacklists are designed to stop spammers and open relays - neither of those categories applies to the major NZ ISPs.

Take a real world analogy - If NZ Post Auckland stopped taking mail from NZ Post Wgtn because someone said their might be obsene materials or illegal drugs hidden in a piece of mail the economoy would collapse. Our internal post offices trust each other to send mail around - mail from other sources is checked.

For Vodafone to ban all mail from Slingshot (as they did last week) is crazy - slingshot are not spammers. what would happen if all ISPs banned vodafone when vodafone ends up on a black list? Or if they banned Telecom? All govt email, haf of NZ businesses would go nuts when mail wasnt delivered.

ISPs in Nz ar not spammers - blacklisting each other is a bad idea.

nunz

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Reply # 850768 8-Jul-2013 12:12

timmmay: Hotmail is unreliable and shouldn't be used for business. Have them call the person for a different email address to use.

Two things: 1 if unreliable email systems was a criteria for businesses to not send email to their clients then all of xtra and a few others would have to change heir email :)
2- The issue is email is their only source of contact in some cases.

You cannot ask people to quite using one of the big three emaill providers - where would that end up?

nunz

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Reply # 850769 8-Jul-2013 12:13

mattwnz:
timmmay: Hotmail is unreliable and shouldn't be used for business. Have them call the person for a different email address to use.

I would definitely agree, as is most free ISP email, they aren't up to business grade. But hasn't hotmail become outlook.com, where they have given hotmail their premium email brand.

Please read the post - hotmail is what the customer is using - my client runs their own mail server.

nunz

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Reply # 850770 8-Jul-2013 12:14

Lazarui: Microsoft is not known to help little ESP's much, but their guidelines etc can be found through here: http://mail.live.com/mail/postmaster.aspx

With microsoftyou just have to keep chugging along, It can take some time to get decent responses to them, I take it you went through the form here to contact them?

Thanks for the links - I had tried one of those - will try another - no reposnse back yet from first attempts.

nunz

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Reply # 850788 8-Jul-2013 12:43

Well - Those idiots at M$ have done it again - one way to ensure you are likely to get your emails through to hotmail, outlook etc is to sign up with Return Path - which will only cost you a piddly $USD440 per year if you dont send any bulk emails, news letters etc and there is also a $USD200 sign up fee.

cloud services are going to kill the internet or hold us all over a financial barrell. I wonder who has shares in return path - must look that up.

what is more - the M$ get your email out of jail forms require . drum roll please .... APPLE QUICK TIME plug ins in order to work. I wont even discuss or bother putting in the error messages their captcha produces when you get things right.

Unholy father of incompetent techies batman, I think I've hit the mother load.

nunz

Ragnor

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Reply # 850811 8-Jul-2013 13:06

Sorry to ask the obvious question but does your clients email server has spf, sender id and reverse dns setup?

Also I don't see any quicktime on https://support.msn.com/eform.aspx?productKey=edfsmsbl2&ct=eformts - the capatcha is straight html inputs/images?

mattwnz

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Reply # 850828 8-Jul-2013 13:26

nunz:
1 - NZ ISPs rigourously work to keep spammers off their systems - if we cant trust our own countries ISP who can we trust.

Do they though. I have found ISPs difficult to deal with when their IP gets blacklisted, and their frontline staff don't know what it even means. They seem to react to problems rather than stopping them occurring in the first place from my experience. It largely comes down to cost as ISPs don't probably make anything by providing email, so they can't afford to put large resources into it, which is understandable. This is why I think ISPs should stop providing email altogether. I noticed that some of the newer ISPs no longer appear to provide email, which I think is a good thing. People do need to realise that providing email is expensive, especially a good reliable email service.

nunz:
2 - NZ business need to know that their email will be delivered - it is a matter of National security at an economic level.

Please note - Black lists are only one part of a successful defence. Filtering, reporting and working together is even more important. Blacklists are designed to stop spammers and open relays - neither of those categories applies to the major NZ ISPs.

Malware on hijacked ISP customer computers is a major source of spam. Also ISPs seem to use just a single IP for sending email from 10's - 100's of thousands of customers. If they had multiple IPs, then it would be so much of the a problem. But I guess that comes down to cost too.

nunz:
Take a real world analogy - If NZ Post Auckland stopped taking mail from NZ Post Wgtn because someone said their might be obsene materials or illegal drugs hidden in a piece of mail the economoy would collapse. Our internal post offices trust each other to send mail around - mail from other sources is checked.

For Vodafone to ban all mail from Slingshot (as they did last week) is crazy - slingshot are not spammers. what would happen if all ISPs banned vodafone when vodafone ends up on a black list? Or if they banned Telecom? All govt email, haf of NZ businesses would go nuts when mail wasnt delivered.

ISPs in Nz ar not spammers - blacklisting each other is a bad idea.

That is a poor analogy, because spam is largely about the quality of emails bombarding the email network. eg over 95% of email is spam. So ISPs want to stop that 95% otherwise their email would be unreliable and slow. Only 5% of all emails are legit. A correct anology would be if NZ was flooded with letters from overseas (eg say a 1000% increase), to deliver to NZ households, which they don't get paid to deliver. I don't think they would be delivering them.
ISPs may not be spammers,but when a hijacked ISP customer is spamming, they get blacklisted on an RBL, and it affects all custeomrs. If an ISP is wanting to provide email services, then they should have the resources to monitor this 24/7, and get blacklists removed and have hijacked customer computers booted off the network until they have fixed it.
When they blacklist with RBLs, they are only blacklisting a dirty IP, so once an ISP has proven that it is clean, it will get whitelisted again. IPs don't get blacklisted for no reason.

mattwnz

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Reply # 850833 8-Jul-2013 13:35

Ragnor: Sorry to ask the obvious question but does your clients email server has spf, sender id and reverse dns setup?

Also I don't see any quicktime on https://support.msn.com/eform.aspx?productKey=edfsmsbl2&ct=eformts - the capatcha is straight html inputs/images?

Yes, not having reverse DNS can often cause that to happen. The OP hasn't said . If they provided the IP of the problem mailserver it could help.

Lazarui

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Reply # 850876 8-Jul-2013 14:38

mattwnz:
Ragnor: Sorry to ask the obvious question but does your clients email server has spf, sender id and reverse dns setup?

Also I don't see any quicktime on https://support.msn.com/eform.aspx?productKey=edfsmsbl2&ct=eformts - the capatcha is straight html inputs/images?

Yes, not having reverse DNS can often cause that to happen. The OP hasn't said . If they provided the IP of the problem mailserver it could help.

First post op has noted this:

My client:
Runs their own mail server (server01.heatstore.co.nz )
Has a RIP, PTRs etc to server01.heatstore.co.nz
Has legetimate SPF records
Has a fixed / Static IP address for the last 6 years or so
Has no black listings anywhere
Is not selling viagara etc - they sell peeltt fires, wood fires etc.
Is not virused
Is not running an open spam relay.

Server resolved to: 119.224.53.23
From what I can tell it looks fine, but meh not a expert with domains and mail servers.

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