A c/p from an email I sent to a mailing list. I think we’re seeing a new normal, or are still on the pathway to a new normal. Here’s my theory. 1) Hotmail made a lot of underlying code changes, learning from 2 decades of spam filtering. They had a chance to write a new codebase and they took it. 2) The changes had some interesting effects that they couldn’t test for and didn’t expect. They spent...
A bunch of folks reported problems with Microsoft’s SNDS page earlier today. This afternoon, our friendly Microsoft rep told the mailop mailing list that it should be fixed. If you see problems again, you can report it to mailop or your ESP and the message will get shared to the folks who can fix it. The other big thing that happened today was Gmail rolled out their new inbox layout...
People throughout the industry are reporting phishing notices in a lot of mail going through Microsoft properties this morning. I even got one in an email from one of my clients earlier today Multiple people have talked to employees inside Microsoft, and I suspect their customers have been blowing up support about this. I know they’re aware, I suspect they’re frantically working on a...
Benjamin asked in the comments where in the interface the “unsubscribe” or “block” popup appeared. This is the dialog box Microsoft uses when the add the “unsubscribe here” link at the top of a message. Screenshots taken today from my Hotmail account: At this point we have 3 of the major webmail providers (Yahoo, Microsoft, Gmail) using List-Unsubscribe headers...
Things have been a little unsettled at Microsoft webmail properties over the last few months. A number of ESPs reported significantly increased deferrals from Microsoft properties starting sometime late in November. Others saw reduced open rates across their customer base starting in late October. More recently, people are noticing higher complaint rates as well as an increase in mail being...
This is the time of year when everyone starts posting their predictions for the coming year. Despite over a decade of blogging and close to 2500 blog posts, I have’t consistently written prediction articles here. Many years I don’t see big changes on the horizon, so there’s not a lot to comment on. Incremental changes are status quo, nothing earth shattering there. But...
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.
Microsoft is still in the process of rolling out new mail servers. One thing that is new about these is some new codes on their error messages. This has led to questions and speculations as to what is going on. host outlook-com.olc.protection.outlook.com [104.47.9.33] said: 550 5.7.1 Unfortunately, messages from [10.10.01.01] weren’t sent. Please contact your Internet service provider since...
There’s been quite a bit of breakage and delivery failure to various Microsoft domains this month. It started with them changing the MX for hotmail.co.uk, then the MX for hotmail.fr… and both these things seem to have broken mail. I also saw a report this morning that some of the new MXs have TLS certificates that don’t match the hostnames. What’s going on? Historically...
Dear Laura, Can you help me understand the Microsoft SmartScreen filter? I’m working on a new project and we’re not able to get to the inbox at Microsoft. Our SNDS/JMRP health is great, not a problem that we can see, but when we contact the support team we’re told we’re being flagged by SmartScreen. It seems impossible to try and find any information or ways to rectify this issue...
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