Once again in the war on spam, there are friendly casualties. Many users are reporting that their emails are not getting through to Hotmail and Outlook.com users. Some of our clients are reporting that they are not receiving emails to their Microsoft email addresses from us. This of course risks users not receiving important emails about their domains and services.
Microsoft’s latest change to their spam checking software has resulted in a new email rejection notice being sent. Many legitimate users who are sending important emails to Hotmail and Outlook.com email users are not getting through.
The new notice reads:
DB8EUR05FT024.mail.protection.outlook.com rejected your message to the following e-mail addresses:
xxxxx@hotmail.co.uk (xxxxx@hotmail.co.uk)
DB8EUR05FT024.mail.protection.outlook.com gave this error:
Unfortunately, messages from [xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx] weren't sent. Please contact your Internet service provider since part of their network is on our block list (S3140). You can also refer your provider to http://mail.live.com/mail/troubleshooting.aspx#errors. [DB8EUR05FT024.eop-eur05.prod.protection.outlook.com]
Your message wasn't delivered due to a permission or security issue. It may have been rejected by a moderator, the address may only accept e-mail from certain senders, or another restriction may be preventing delivery.
What does it show us
The notice shows that they are using some of the doggy block lists that have been around for many years. Generally these block as much legitimate email as they do spam. They are not at all the best way to reduce spam in an email system. At the time of writing the above address for removal from the list is not working. We are therefore unable to get our IP addresses removed from their list.
How should they stop spam
No-one can deny that spam is a bad thing, particularly the phishing emails that allow hackers to hack your email account. These emails should be stopped but this is not the way to do that. This is a very lazy way to block spam. Considering the amount of money that these large companies make from the so-called FREE services, they should invest some of it back in to the service. Make the spam filtering better, don’t block everything.
It is still unclear as to whether or not you will have to pay to be removed. The normal block lists of this kind offer a “service” to be removed from their block lists when your IP address falls in to one of their ranges. Bearing in mind that ISPs may have tens or even hundreds of thousands of IPs and in some cases millions of IP addresses in their range which they then sell to or use for clients. If one of these IP addresses is suspected of sending spam then the entire range can be blocked causing major problems for businesses. Their intent is to get businesses to petition the ISP to stop the spam from going from their network.
What should you do
If you want to get decent spam filtering without losing important emails, then we recommend that you use this service for your spam and virus checking. If you use Hotmail or Outlook.com then we recommend that you change your email provider to SecuredMail.App. You can optionally have an email sent to you with all the emails that are considered to be spam. That way you will never miss an important email. No bulk IP address blocking, however you can set geographical policies. Very powerful, easy to use and accurate.
Stay safe
CritchCorp Support
