Can't Send emails to hotmail

[mealto]

So Lloyd,

What you are syaing is, becasue our domain is not on the same IP as our mailnig IP, it is considered SPAM? If so, how do other companies resolve this. It would bs surprising that web host would offe unique IP's and have mail go out with each of these IP's. Thoughts?

[lloyd_tennison]

I said nothing of the kind. I said, if you remove all original headers of the email, then you are effectively the creator. So, if it is SPAM - you just spammed someone.

Read all the notes on the SPF site regarding that including the two links I sent.

[sparek-3]

I'm really not sure if SPF is a good overall solution (but it may very well help in regards to Hotmail). But I think the point that needs to be made is that there's just not a real good reason for forwarding mail off of your server any more. Especially forwarding mail to the likes of Hotmail or Yahoo or other free services.

Perhaps it used to be the case where you had an e-mail client that only checked one mail account, so you forwarded mail to where you only had to check that one account. But now everyone is blocking mail servers because of spam, and forwarding mail is only going to hurt your server.

If you do not forward any e-mail to any hotmail.com addresses, I would bet that more messages to @hotmail.com addresses from your server would eventually reach their intended recipient. Is it plausible to think that you can convince everyone to stop forwarding their mail to their @hotmail.com address? Probably not, but that doesn't mean that it won't help.

Ultimately, if SPF is ever going to be adopted, then e-mail forwarders will have to become a thing of the past and everyone will really need to implement SPF. If this was done, then its possible that SPF could provide a real solution to spam. I just don't think its feasible to think that every person the Internet will see it the same way.

[mealto]

I think I am still a bit lost. With this talk about forwarding an email, are we talking about an end user clicking forward in Outlook or is this something that the server is doing due to how it's setup?

Bottom line is, web host has setup SPF record and everything looks to be in order except for that one yellow warning on dnsreport.com:

domain.com claims to be host host.domain.com [but that host is at xx.xx.xx.112 (may be cached), not xx.xx.xx.114].

Anyone have a fix for hotmail auto junking emails sent via Outlook & webmail?

[freedog96150]

Correct me if I am wrong, but I am reading the use of "forwarding" as being synonymous with "relaying" which is what really creates the problems.

To resolve this problem, I have changed my outgoing SMTP servers in Outlook, Thunderbird, and the like to use the SMTP for the ISP that I am connected to, in my case Verizon. I have also verified that the from and reply to settings have been correctly configured and point to my own domain. Since I started using my ISP's SMTP server, my emails have been getting a much higher receipt rate in my recipients inbox (so I am told).

Using your own domain's SMTP server through your ISP is technically a relay and your Exim logs will show you as a relayer. With Hotmail and Yahoo Mail trying to slow the flow of spam, they are spam boxing relayed email. Whether this practice is correct or not is not debatable as they are doing it and the rest of us must adapt.

[mealto]

Correct me if I am wrong, but I am reading the use of "forwarding" as being synonymous with "relaying" which is what really creates the problems.

To resolve this problem, I have changed my outgoing SMTP servers in Outlook, Thunderbird, and the like to use the SMTP for the ISP that I am connected to, in my case Verizon.

Thanks for the clarification freedog. I was leaning in that direction and thought to try using my ISP's SMTP but mail still ends up in hotmail junk folder. It's really odd. I tried it again after reading your post and it worked! Not sure what is going on but thank you for your informative reply.

[sparek-3]

If you are going to be using your ISP's SMTP server (and there's nothing wrong with that) to send mail from an @yourdomain.com (again, nothing wrong with that). If you have an SPF record, you will need to have the SPF record updated to reflect this. Otherwise, places that check SPF records will see your mail as coming from a source that is not specified in your SPF record.

Also keep in mind that if you are using mail.verizon.net as your outgoing mail server, this does not necessarily mean that the IP sending the mail is whatever mail.verizon.net resolves to. You would need to know the IP of the mail server at Verizon that is sending out your message and update your SPF record to reflect this.

This is where SPF can be tedious and this is why I don't think its a good idea to support blanket SPF records in DNS zones, because you don't know what mail servers a particular user is going to be using to send out mail. If a user has domaina.com set up on your server and you have your DNS templates set to automatically set up an SPF record, then if that user never uses mail.domaina.com to send out mail, and they always use mail.verizon.net, then their messages will never match the SPF records, causing it to always look like spam. To combat this, a module needs to be created in cPanel that allows end users to enter their own SPF IPs reflecting whatever IPs are being used to send out mail for their domain.

Hope this makes sense.

[mealto]

Yes, that makes a lot more sense now. So the managed VPS host added this in the Zone file:

"v=spf1 a mx ~all"

Is this the blanket statement that you were talking about? Any tips to modify / edit this?

[sparek-3]

By blanket SPF record, I really just meant setting up an SPF record for every domain on the server. Some hosts have set up their DNS templates to automatically add an SPF records. However, this does not account for any circumstances where an account user using that domain, is using a different SMTP server to send out mail. This is really what I was referring to as a blanket SPF record.

I must say, that I'm not really an SPF expert. Perhaps the blanket SPF record would not cause problems, someone who understands SPF and mailing protocols may be able to verify or dispute my theory.

If I am understanding SPF correctly, an SPF record of:

v=spf1 a mx ~all

This is basically saying that the IP associated with this particular domain (I'll call it domain.com for argument's sake) and the IPs associated with the MX records for this domain, are the only IPs that are allowed to send mail from this domain. This would work fine if everyone who sends mail from an @domain.com address uses mail.domain.com or domain.com as their outgoing mail server. But if you have, for example, Verizon as your ISP and you are using mail.verizon.net as your ougoing mail server to send out mail from an @domain.com address, then any system that checks SPF (i.e. Gmail, Hotmail, AOL, etc) would view this message as a likely spam message, because the sending source is not listed in the SPF record. Now just how much weight is put on this failed SPF lookup remains to be determined. I'm not sure if Gmail really puts a lot of weight on it, but I do know they check for SPF.

Hope this helps.

[mealto]

v=spf1 a mx ~all

This is basically saying that the IP associated with this particular domain (I'll call it domain.com for argument's sake) and the IPs associated with the MX records for this domain, are the only IPs that are allowed to send mail from this domain. This would work fine if everyone who sends mail from an @domain.com address uses mail.domain.com or domain.com as their outgoing mail server. But if you have, for example, Verizon as your ISP and you are using mail.verizon.net as your ougoing mail server to send out mail from an @domain.com address, then any system that checks SPF (i.e. Gmail, Hotmail, AOL, etc) would view this message as a likely spam message, because the sending source is not listed in the SPF record. Now just how much weight is put on this failed SPF lookup remains to be determined. I'm not sure if Gmail really puts a lot of weight on it, but I do know they check for SPF.

Hope this helps.

I think I understand but funny enough, I am seeing the opposite. When I use my ISP's SMTP to send email, it goes to hotmail just fine. When I use mail.mydomain.com, it goes into the junk folder! Very odd huh? How do you suggest we move forward with this one?

At this point, I can nly guess that this dnsreport and dnsstuff error may be the culprit:

domain.com claims to be host host.domain.com [but that host is at xx.xx.xx.112 (may be cached), not xx.xx.xx.114].

Any other thoughts?

[sparek-3]

You probably have someone or had someone on your web hosting server (not necessarily your hosting account on that server) that was forwarding their mail to Hotmail. This resulted in Hotmail rejecting/blackholing your e-mail when it is sent from your web hosting server. As a result, Hotmail views any message that is coming from your web hosting server IP as spam or just does not accept it. Why? I don't know. I could go into a big long rant as to why eventually everyone is going to be blocking everyone and e-mail will not be a very good communication tool (hey, if you block all mail coming to your server, you're guaranteeing your users won't receive spam).

Your ISP's SMTP server is likely not list in a Hotmail blacklist or other form of rejection and that is why it is being accepted. As to why the SPF record is not having any affect, I suspect this is just the way Hotmail weighs SPF records. As much as SPF has been touted, I just really don't think its been fully accepted as a spam prevention tool. I think servers that do check SPF are configured more in the way of treating SPF matches as legitimate mail and SPFs that do not match, they are just ignoring the SPF and treating it like a normal message. So if your SPF matches your message is more likely to be accepted (although this does not explain why your messages sent from your web hosting server are going to the junk folder, perhaps Hotmail's internal blacklist takes precedence) but if you send a message and the SPFs do not match, then the fact that the sending IP and the SPF record do not match does not factor in the decision on how to mark the message, instead SPF is ignored and the message is treated just as if the SPF record did not exist.

This is a prime example (and I should note that I really don't know if this is how things are working or not) of how difficult it is to add something to a standard communication medium. In order for SPF to be effective, everyone has to use it, every domain has to have an SPF record, and every mail server has to be willing to completely disregard messages when the IPs and the SPF records do not match. But SPF is just not accepted enough for ISPs and mail servers to do this. If mail server reject messages from domains that do not have SPF records or from servers when the SPFs do not match, then they will be rejecting a lot of mail.

And again, I should stress that while it may sound like I'm stressing the importance of SPF, I'm still not sure if it is a viable solution. A lot has yet to be determined regarding SPF.

[mealto]

Just an update. Noticed that when we use PHP to send out an email through the Tell A Friend script on our site, the mail never gets to Hotmail, Yahoo or Gmail. It works when we send it to our own domains, mind you, these are hosted the same same VPS as the TAF script. We have also tried our TAF to a different domain and low and behold, NO EMAIL!

This is not looking good. Can anyone provide any info to help us the trouble shoot?

[yawsh]

I'm having the same problem.
I tried what ever since 3 weeks.. Noting works till now.

The server is sending emails to anywhere.. Except to hotmail accounts.

What I figured out that web mail can send emails to hotmail ... only PHP and to be specific, vBulletin forums are not sending emails to hotmail accounts and sending to others like yahoo, gmail ..etc

I tried upgrading PHP from 4.4.2 to 4.4.4 and did not work and I went back to 4.4.2

is there any resolution to that?

[yawsh]

Just wanted to add that even by sellecting SMTP to send emails from VB it did not work ..



Regards
Mohamed

[mealto]

This is not good. Does anyone know if this a PHP issue or a Cpanel issue?