Microsoft MXs changed over

Today on MailOp it was announced that the migration of Microsoft freemail domains to the office 365 backend. Over the next week the mx*.hotmail.com mail servers will stop working. Check your settings, folks, and make sure you’re correctly querying DNS before sending.

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Microsoft deprecating SmartScreen filters

At the beginning of the month Microsoft announced that they were deprecating the SmartScreen filters used by the desktop Microsoft mail clients. These are the filters used in Exchange and various version of Outlook mail. This is yet further consolidation of spam filtering between the Microsoft free webmail domains, Office365 hosted domains and self hosted Exchange servers.  The online services (hotmail.com, outlook.com, Office365, live.com, etc) have been  using these filters for a while. The big change now is that they’re being pushed down to Exchange and Outlook users not hosted on the Microsoft site.
EOP was developed for Outlook.com (and friends) as well as Office365 users. From Microsoft’s description, it sounds like the type of machine learning engine that many providers are moving to.
Microsoft has published quite a bit of information about these filters and how they work on their website. One of the best places to start is the Anti-spam Protection FAQ. Something senders should pay attention to is the final question on that page: “What are a set of best outbound mailing practices that will ensure that my mail is delivered?” Those are all things  deliverability folks recommend for good inbox delivery.
Poking around looking at the links and descriptions, there is a host of great information about spam filtering at Microsoft and how it works.
A page of note is their Exchange Online Protection Overview. This describes the EOP process and how the filters work.
MS_filterProcess

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Microsoft Send

Microsoft Send is a new mail client by Microsoft for iPhones and soon Windows Phone and Android phones. Send is designed to send quick, short messages to contacts. Instead of building a chat application build on a proprietary protocol, Send sends and receives its messages over email and uses your existing mailbox to handle the messages. What makes Send neat is that I can start a conversation within the app and when I get back to my computer, I can log into Outlook Web Access and continue the conversation.
MicrosoftSend
 
Messages to and from the Send app do not utilize subjects lines.
 
Messages Sending a message from my personal account with Office365 to my Word to the Wise account and the email looks like any other email I received except with the #Send on the subject line.
Inbox
 
The message goes through the same outbound mail servers as if I sent it from Outlook or OWA, so emails pass SPF.
 
SPF
 
If you are signing with DKIM, the emails will be signed and authenticated.
DKIM
 
(Office365 will sign emails with DKIM soon, it’s on the Office RoadMap.)
For an email to show up within the Send app, the subject contains #Send.
Microsoft has taken a unique approach to building a messaging app that utilizes existing SMTP infrastructure. If you’re sending to a tech savvy list, take a look at your logs to see how many recipients are using Microsoft Send and consider reaching out to them specifically using #Send.
 

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