Handling Microsofts spam filters and dealing with clients about it

victortruica

Ever since I started my mail server and having clients sending emails, I only had persistent problems with Microsoft (as in sending to @outlook and @hotmail addresses) and no problems with other major/small providers.

I've noticed on the Microsoft forums that I'm not the only one with these persistent problems and I've also noticed that support in that area is not that great.

I'm guessing that other people here have been experiencing problems with Microsoft so my questions are - how do you handle this properly with your clients ? Requesting them to have their e-mail address added to the contacts of the outlook/hotmail account ? Or making filters ? How accepted would be that by clients, as seen from your experience? These would be workarounds for direct mail sending, but what about forwarding, which tends to get even more nasty (as in - not even those workarounds are working) ?

My workaround was to use an external email provider. Of course, the ideal solution would be NOT to use workarounds, and get compliant with Microsofts filters but I'm not seeing a good/approachable way to do this given the fact that I'm doing everything right (DNS,configuration) and Microsoft (forum support, postmaster service) is not telling me whats wrong.

cassa

Check out http://mail-test.com to see what's wrong

victortruica

@cassa said:
Check out http://mail-test.com to see what's wrong

"This domain has been registered. If you're interested in this domain, contact us to check availability for customer use, ownership, or other development opportunities" - maybe it's not available any more ?

Have used several other similar services and as mentioned above - I'm good with all other major/minor providers (not sure if all minor though). The only problem is Microsoft and there are a lot of people in my position. I'm now more interested in the best way to handle it with clients, rather than fixing it, due to the amount of time spent on this and lack of real feedback from ms.

wych

Have you gone through SDNS and asked them to whitelist your IP/domains?

cassa

Sorry, I mean http://mail-tester.com

robohost

http://mail-tester.com/ test with this one

victortruica

@wych said:
Have you gone through SDNS and asked them to whitelist your IP/domains?

Thats the reason why I posted a link to SDNS - I've been through that and everything seems ok

http://mail-tester.com/ test with this one

I've used it before.

wych

victortruica said: Thats the reason why I posted a link to SDNS - I've been through that and everything seems ok

Have you whitelisted them rather than just signing up? If they are blocked for that reason then the mailserver gets and error that matches; https://mail.live.com/mail/troubleshooting.aspx#Codes

There is another form I use for all our shared/managed clients when they register. Will see if I can find it on my workstation.

tommy

victortruica said: Thats the reason why I posted a link to SDNS - I've been through that and everything seems ok

what they said on email? last time I got this reply

Hello ,

Thank you for contacting Microsoft Online Services Technical Support.  This email is in reference to ticket number [xxxxxx], which was opened in regards to your delisting request for xxxx

The IP address you submitted has been reviewed and removed from our block lists.  Please note that there may be a 1-2 hour delay before this change propagates through our entire system.

We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused you.  As long as our spam filtering systems do not mark a majority of email from the IP address as spam-like, your messages will be allowed to flow as normal through our network.  However, should we detect an increase in spam-like activity, the IP address may be re-added to our block list.

Should you have any further questions or concerns, please feel free to respond to this email.

Thank you again for contacting Microsoft Online Services technical support and giving us the opportunity to serve you.

after few hours I don't have problem sending/receiving emai from hotmail/outlook etc.

check your SNDS -> IP Status

victortruica

My IP status page looks the same as your screenshot. My last email received from them is that used for my request confirmation.

jar

They won't list problems on the SNDS page that existed prior to your signing up. They may remove IPs from their internal blacklist or they may ignore you. You have no choice but to forward them bounce emails for removal of each IP, unless maybe you know someone important.

Don't let your clients ever set up forwarders to Microsoft unless you have incredible outgoing filters, but also accept that the problem may be the previous owner of the IP block and Microsoft just doesn't care.

At the end of the day, Microsoft doesn't care if their customers miss important email. They shouldn't be used for serious email services. Impacting public perception here is an uphill battle, but count me in on it

Ikoula

Hello,

First add a SPF record to your domains zones if it is not already done.

Then i had a look on google and found this page https://mail.live.com/mail/policies.aspx it contains a lot of informations concerning microsoft policies.

Falzo

they tend to block new/unknown IPs regardless of the whole (correct) mail and dns setup. so in worst case you won't even get the chance to become reputable.

only thing that works is to register your 'sender information for outlook.com delivery' (and that's not the sdns signup, as @wych already mentioned).
that really needed form is very hard to find, as it seems to be not so widely communicated...

there you'll go: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/getsupport?oaspworkflow=start_1.0.0.0&wfname=capsub&productkey=edfsmsbl3&locale=en-us&ccsid=635714983457075069

wych

@Falzo thanks for the link, re-bookmarked!

Falzo

@wych said: