Hotmail

And I’m having enough of that. If only they’d at least get put in the Junk mail folders… Now, they’re just being blocked and discarded, without having any chance of a user reading them!

I decided to go the extra step and to mail Hotmail about this, with their questionnaire filled (URL’s, e-mail and IP adresses have been removed.):

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 Hello,

I’ve spent the past two weeks trying my best to comply with Hotmail, MSN, and Windows Live’s strict anti-spam policies and requirements. However, despite my best efforts, most of my mail is still blocked by Hotmail while the few that get through are filed in the users’ Junk mail folder.

I have approximatively a dozen of domains. All of them are for personal sites or projects and none of them have yet been for profit. I’m currently transfering domains to my new hosting provider and the most of them are still at my previous provider. The later will only be transfered once I can be sure that Hotmail will not treat my mail as spam.

As for my mailing habits, I may send out on average 20 e-mails per week. Some e-mails may be sent out automatically by my Web sites, but when verifying my logs, they total only a few per month.

Furthermore, I do not send out spam; I also hate receiving spam. That being said, obviously, I never use any fake addresses and I am publishing or I will publish SPF records for my domains. I use my own SMTP server, and for the moment, I’m the only one using it. (I plan to let two other people use it.) However, oddly enough, mail sent from my Web server seems to have more chances to get in a user’s inbox than when I use my own SMTP on which I need to authenticate and connect via SSL. (The server is available to everyone, however, when a mail agent needs to check with my server to see if whether or not an address exists. But mail *cannot* be sent without authentication.)

1. What are the IP addresses of your outbound mail servers (as seen by the receiving server)?

I have three distinct IP addresses, used only by me:
- [removed]
- [removed]
- [removed]
However, mail should always be sent using the first one.

2. Is your server a dedicated or shared server?

My host is a VPS (virtual private server), which is in between.

3. What ISP, operating system, mail transport software, and/or mailing list management software are you using?

My ISP at home is Bell Sympatico. However, I don’t believe this should affect my mailing in any way since I’m using my own SMTP server.

My host is running CentOS Linux 2.4 which is using Postfix 2.2.10 as the mail transport. I have Mailman as mailist list software, but it is not used since I do not have any mailing lists or newsletters sent by e-mail.

4. How are “bounce messages” (non-delivery notices) handled by your system?

They are bounced back to the sender, along with the error message.

5. How frequent are your mailings? What are the volumes of these mailings?

As mentioned above, I send out maybe 20 e-mails per week, on average. This number may be have been a bit higher recently.

6. What are some of the accounts on Microsoft’s systems that you are attempting to send to?

I have my own test account on Hotmail, [removed]. There are several others which I can’t recall right now.

7. Do your SMTP logs show any failed transactions when attempting to send to addresses at MSN, MSN Hotmail or other MSN Services? If so, please include them inline in your response.

All transactions are successful.

8. Can you telnet to port 25 of mx1.hotmail.com from your mail server(s)?

Yes. I connect to 65.54.244.8.

9. Can you traceroute to 216.32.183.201 from your mail server(s)?

Yes, here are the results.

traceroute to 216.32.183.201 (216.32.183.201), 30 hops max, 38 byte packets
1 thtdomains.com (75.126.17.72) 0.106 ms 0.063 ms 0.042 ms
2 cer01.dal01.softlayer.com (66.228.118.225) 0.535 ms 0.759 ms 0.485 ms
3 border2.ge3-1.softlayer-2.ext1a.dal.pnap.net (216.52.189.73) 0.492 ms 0.775 ms 0.464 ms
4 core3.tge5-1-bbnet1.ext1.dal.pnap.net (216.52.191.34) 0.786 ms 2.362 ms 2.781 ms
5 0.ge-0-1-0.GW3.DFW13.ALTER.NET (65.208.15.229) 2.527 ms 0.616 ms 0.563 ms
6 0.so-2-0-0.XL1.DFW13.ALTER.NET (152.63.100.74) 0.861 ms 0.703 ms 0.457 ms
7 0.so-1-3-0.XL1.PAO1.ALTER.NET (152.63.50.205) 48.959 ms 49.099 ms 48.963 ms
8 POS6-0.GW6.PAO1.ALTER.NET (152.63.55.9) 48.957 ms 49.612 ms 50.111 ms
9 microsoftOC48-shadow-gw.customer.alter.net (208.214.136.242) 48.785 ms 47.591 ms 47.978 ms
10 ten7-4.paix-osr-a.ntwk.msn.net (207.46.37.6) 47.930 ms 47.584 ms 47.436 ms
11 ten9-3.bay-76c-1a.ntwk.msn.net (64.4.63.70) 48.963 ms 48.583 ms 48.455 ms
12 netops.hotmail.com (216.32.183.201) 49.138 ms 48.570 ms 48.429 ms

10. Please include samples of a few of the messages you are sending, with complete headers (as seen by your recipients.)

– START OF SAMPLE –
From: <[removed]>
Date: 2006-09-22 5:48:34
To: [removed]
Subject: Hi again

MIME-Version: 1.0
Received: from [removed] ([removed]) by bay0-mc7-f1.bay0.hotmail.com with Microsoft SMTPSVC(6.0.3790.2444); Fri, 22 Sep 2006 01:49:05 -0700
Received: by [removed] (Postfix, from userid [removed])id 626EFF8C1CC; Fri, 22 Sep 2006 04:48:34 -0400 (EDT)
X-Message-Info: txF49lGdW41I6mxbwFhvw0/QNSZdbkneEyOX5kwiEWI=
Errors-to: [removed]
User-Agent: Mutt/1.4.1i
Return-Path: [removed]
X-OriginalArrivalTime: 22 Sep 2006 08:49:06.0032 (UTC) FILETIME=[F6134F00:01C6DE23]

Remi san, Ohenji arigato. I was concerned something like that might be the
case with other classes, too. Well, we’ll see how Kobayashi Sensei will act
on this. I feel sorry for the girl in your class. I would be quite
intimidated, too. But if her Japanese is good enough to be placed in
Advanced I already, even the most advanced youth class would be boring for
her. With the growing diversity in students’ backgrounds, streamlining has
been quite challenging over the years. I hope we can come to some kind of
solution to the situation in the next few weeks before we loose all these
 students!

Soreja doyo-bi ni!

George
– END OF SAMPLE –

Few things to keep in mind about that message sample:

- The message was classified as junk mail. Usually, messages sent by [removed] to Hotmail are discarded.
- The body text was copy-pasted from another e-mail, hoping more randomness in the text will make the message go in the inbox.
- For the same reason, I’ve added the header “Errors-to: [removed]” manually. It is usually not there.
- The “To,” “From,” “Subject,” and “Date,” headers were translated from Japanese to English, since the interface of my Hotmail account is in Japanese.

11. In what manner(s) are recipients added to your mailing list(s)?

This is not applicable. I do not have a mailing list.

12. Provide the URL of your web site.

I have several Web sites. I’m attempting to resolve issues with e-mails sent from @[removed] thinking after that I won’t have the same problems with my other domains.

http://[removed]/

13. Provide the URL of your Privacy Policy.

It is not applicable. People cannot sign up on that site yet. However, if you must know, IP adresses may be stored just for statistical purposes. Furthermore, the site will send an automated e-mail to the user when they sign up or when they wish to obtain a password reminder. I can also use the site to send e-mails to specific users, but after all the years I’ve operated my sites, I never needed to do that. The site’s engine doesn’t seem to provide a way to close a user’s account. However, users can ask me to delete their account at any time, but at this point, I never had any requests to do so.

For the reference of my users, a copy of this e-mail will appear on my personal site, at www.remino.net.

14. Provide the URL at which users opt-in to receive your mailings.

Not applicable. I have no mailing lists.

15. Provide the URL at which users may choose to permanently unsubscribe from your mailing list.

Not applicable. I have no mailing lists.

16. Are you currently a Return Path client? Are you Sender Score Certified?

No. I don’t think it is necessary, since I don’t have any problems with any other providers, and the volume of my personal e-mails is quite low.

17. Do you publish Sender Policy Framework (SPF)/Sender ID records for your IP?

I currently publish a SPF record for [removed]. Once I get my issue resolved with Hotmail, I will publish the record for my other domains, once they’ll be transfered to my new provider.

18. Do you use separate IPs for your transactional vs. promotional/subscription marketing communications?

No, and again, this is not applicable. I have no mailing lists.

19. Are you in the Junk Mail Reporting Partner Program?

No. However, I’d like to be a partner in the near future.

20. Do you use Smart Network Data Services?

No.

Please don’t hesitate to ask me more information about my setup. I really want to get this resolved.

Thank you in advance.

—
Rémi [removed]

While I’m still trying to find way to make Hotmail understand that mail coming from me is not spam, I’m fighting their system against their poor way of converting e-mails encoded using UTF-8.

I usually encode my messages using UTF-8, unless the message is only in English. But here’s something I discovered: the default page encoding of Hotmail depends on the user’s default interface language. Great…

If a Japanese user gets my UTF-8 Japanese mail while using Hotmail, it will display properly. If encoded using ISO-2022-JP (an often used encoding for Japanese-only text), it also displays fine.

But if the user’s interface is in Japanese, ISO-2022-JP-encoded messages will display fine automatically, but not messages using UTF-8 encoding. Even when the user chooses the UTF-8 page encoding in their browser, the message will still look garbled! The only way to see the message properly is to view the source code of the message and select the UTF-8 encoding manually.

So, when using Mutt, after composing my message in JOE, I hit Ctrl-T to manually change the encoding to ISO-2022-JP. (But this won’t work if I write an e-mail that has parts in Japanese and parts in French, because of the letter accents!)

I certainly hope Windows Live will fix all that…

It’s one problem after another! Mail didn’t work, computer freezes for nothing, being spammed by trackbacks, mail doesn’t work again…

If you have an account with Hotmail (including “localised” Hotmail, like hotmail.co.jp), and you’re wondering why you didn’t get an e-mail from me recently, check your “Junk Mail” folder.

For some reason, since recently, everything that I send via e-mail to any Hotmail users get automatically classified in the Junk Mail folder.

I’m currently checking with my hosting provider, in charge of my mail, to resolve the problem. In the meantime, I’ll be using Gmail to send mail to Hotmail users.

(I hate Hotmail. They used to be much better.)