hotmail blackholes mails

[dchepishev]

Hi,

I have one pretty strang problem (at least for me is strange). I can not send email to hotmail. In the log I see that delivery is successfull but the hotmail never shows the email in my inbox.

If someone with hotmail account sends me an email and I reply using the same blackholed server for outgoing mail the email is being delivered in hotmail inbox.

Does anyone knows how can I fix this. Why hotmail is blackholing my server ?

 

[NightStorm]

Are you listed in any RBLs?
http://www.dnsstuff.com/tools/ip4r.ch?ip=ipaddress
Type your mailserver IP into the red spot, and see if it comes up listed anywhere.

 

[dchepishev]

Are you listed in any RBLs?
http://www.dnsstuff.com/tools/ip4r.ch?ip=ipaddress
Type your mailserver IP into the red spot, and see if it comes up listed anywhere.

I am clean. No blacklisted no nothing. It just swallows my emails.

I asked some of my friends with corporate servers to send emails to hotmail and it has absolutely the same behavior. Even though they are from different networks

 

[andy7t]

I'm having the same problem!
Seems you need SPF according to hotmail support.

I also found the if you send via Outlook Express its fine, send via Thunderbird and nothing!

 

[dchepishev]

I'm having the same problem!
Seems you need SPF according to hotmail support.

I also found the if you send via Outlook Express its fine, send via Thunderbird and nothing!

I have SPF and still the same.

 

[hergy80]

Since the end of June(I think) hotmail has been using Symantec's Brightmail filter for spam. They also use internal filtering as well, but of course they won't specify exactly what it checks for, but I think they use a IP filtering as well.

Visit postmaster.msn.com for more information and how to submit a message for testing. They will have you submit an actual message to Symantec as well as Hotmail to see about getting it cleared up and going through. I've noticed more spam come through, and less legit mail make it into my Hotmail Inbox, so hopefully they are working on it.

 

[dchepishev]

Since the end of June(I think) hotmail has been using Symantec's Brightmail filter for spam. They also use internal filtering as well, but of course they won't specify exactly what it checks for, but I think they use a IP filtering as well.

Visit postmaster.msn.com for more information and how to submit a message for testing. They will have you submit an actual message to Symantec as well as Hotmail to see about getting it cleared up and going through. I've noticed more spam come through, and less legit mail make it into my Hotmail Inbox, so hopefully they are working on it.

You know the most stupid thing is that they accept the mail and queue it for delivery and then they delete it. This is not acceptable for anyone. They must reject it or deliver. No other option is acceptable.

 

[sparek-3]

You know the most stupid thing is that they accept the mail and queue it for delivery and then they delete it. This is not acceptable for anyone. They must reject it or deliver. No other option is acceptable.

If you have any type of e-mail filters set up through your control panel or if you have spamassassin set to delete spam messages, then you are doing the exact same thing that hotmail is allegedly doing here. You are accepting the message, and then deleting it.

Don't get me wrong, I agree with you. I'm just saying that you can't just blame hotmail, if any of your clients are also duplicating this process or if any other clients are doing this.

 

[dchepishev]

If you have any type of e-mail filters set up through your control panel or if you have spamassassin set to delete spam messages, then you are doing the exact same thing that hotmail is allegedly doing here. You are accepting the message, and then deleting it.

Don't get me wrong, I agree with you. I'm just saying that you can't just blame hotmail, if any of your clients are also duplicating this process or if any other clients are doing this.

There is a HUGE difference. If one of my clients shoose to blackhole emails, I dont mind, he is the only one who can suffer from this. The thing is that in my hotmail account I dont receive mail not because I chose to do so but because hotmail chooses instead of their clients which is wrong. If they think this is spam they should reject it not blackhoel it.
Besides this, i noticed that this is not only from my servers but probably the entire country, which is really, really stupid idea to filter that way.

 

[davephx]

I have been going crazy with hotmail for almost a year. I have an e-mailed weekly newsletter that goes to about 500 folks. Sometimes hotmail "vaporizes" it (same as your black hole term) and sometimes not. Was working find for a few months until 2 weeks ago. Somtimes it seems content based (newsletter has ads) and sometimes not.

Last nights e-mail could not get to hotmail after trying six times using my usual local host, using my domain server nothing got thru. I can tell since I set up my own hotmail account just to see if messages get delivered.

After many hours of frustration and more hours talking to tech support at both my ISP that has my iP and doman provider I gave up but transferred my e-mails to home laptop. Where it magically worked using a dynamic IP (vs my usual static) using cox at home.

My last hope is its the SPF record problem. For the life of me I can't remember how I set it up which is why I am seraching here. I use to use cox at my office and the SPF has cox.net which is why it may have worked from home. But at office I switched from cox at work to much cheaper and faster (7mb down) Qwest DSL. But I didn't change (since I fogot how) the SPF record. Since I have a static IP I assume I just need to add the static IP from qwest or should I use the qwest.net (I think) domain name?

 

[rossh_cp]

Same thing here.. hotmail blackholes my original mail 100%. I can however respond to mail from hotmail all OK.

I did some testing this is what I have found.......

Any mail generated and that has a net relay in any of the received: lines - blackholed. i.e. mail originates from my PC, smtp to my shared domains MTA, then onto hotmail... this has a net relay in the mails headers, and is blackholed by hotmail. However, use the domains webmail program to send the identical mail, which has no net relay received lines - only (LAN) local received lines. This includes mail from php, perl etc. This will deliver OK (providing it passes spam tests).

Note the only variance in my testing - the absence of the received line from my MUA to cpanels exim. (same MTA connected to hotmail in both cases - same data, etc).

Hence this presents a major problem to all us cpanel / domain owner / remotely hosted domains, etc. This situation means any mail sent through your web site off your PC, will get blackholed by hotmail. We could try to send through our local ISP, but then they are increasingly prohibiting relay of non local sender domains.

This problem needs to be addressed by cpanel... and generic change in the default handling of approved mail relay header addition. When I raise this with my cpanel provider, they say "we can't change the default exim.conf...".

Regards RossH

 

[dchepishev]

Same thing here.. hotmail blackholes my original mail 100%. I can however respond to mail from hotmail all OK.

I did some testing this is what I have found.......

Any mail generated and that has a net relay in any of the received: lines - blackholed. i.e. mail originates from my PC, smtp to my shared domains MTA, then onto hotmail... this has a net relay in the mails headers, and is blackholed by hotmail. However, use the domains webmail program to send the identical mail, which has no net relay received lines - only (LAN) local received lines. This will deliver OK (providing it passes spam tests).

Note the only variance in my testing - the absence of the received line from my MUA to cpanels exim. (same MTA connected to hotmail in both cases - same data, etc).

Hence this presents a major problem to all us cpanel / domain owner / remotely hosted domains, etc. This situation means any mail sent through your web site off your PC, will get blackholed by hotmail. We could try to send through our local ISP, but then they are increasingly prohibiting relay of non local sender domains.

This problem needs to be addressed by cpanel... and generic change in the default handling of approved mail relay header addition. When I raise this with my cpanel provider, they say "we can't change the default exim.conf...".

Regards RossH

We dont need to address cPanel, it is not their fault. It is all fault to HOTMAIL. This is just very very stupid policy. It is not even a SPAM policy.

 

[rossh_cp]

We dont need to address cPanel, it is not their fault. It is all fault to HOTMAIL. This is just very very stupid policy. It is not even a SPAM policy.

Agreed. Now if we want to have it dealt with.. asking MS to fix the freebie mail is not going to work... is it? The answer is to make a mail header... with no relay information included in it. Remove the MUA to MTA details, so hotmail and others can't reject it on this basis. My host adds text headers with my ip origin, my domain etc, so its all duplicated information now anyway.

Is my cpanel host going to do this?? They say "we can't change the default config". So lets have the default config changed here at cpanel - where it originates from.

Make sense now dchepishev ???.

Regards Rossh

 

[chirpy]

I should hope not. That breaks the SMTP RFC's. You are forging the email headers by messing around with the Received: headers lines and are liable to get yourself blocked in RBL's for doing so.

As dchepishev has said, the issue is with hotmail (and AOL for that matter) and you have to lobby them to fix their problems. There's nothing you can do on your server except to stop forwarding spam emails that they're likely to pick up, by filtering them out.

It's for that very reason that many hosts don't allow users to forward email to AOL accounts.

 

[rossh_cp]

I should hope not. That breaks the SMTP RFC's. You are forging the email headers by messing around with the Received: headers lines and are liable to get yourself blocked in RBL's for doing so.

As dchepishev has said, the issue is with hotmail (and AOL for that matter) and you have to lobby them to fix their problems. There's nothing you can do on your server except to stop forwarding spam emails that they're likely to pick up, by filtering them out.

It's for that very reason that many hosts don't allow users to forward email to AOL accounts.

I think you missed the point.... this is not forwarded mail.. not spam... not forged .. nothing BS about it...

This is real genuine hand typed original mail sent from my PC. Sent (via smtps through my domains MTA - your cpanel and exim).. addressed to xyz @ hotmail. The first exim header will show the relay from my home / work IP to the cpanel exim MTA.

Its that first header hotmail picks up on... it sees the relay.. decides its not permitted and blackholes the mail. (of course hotmail has zero authority to decide this).

Now I'm half way around the world.. so maybe hotmail is using geoip to figure no one should be allowed to do this long distance relay. i.e. an "in country" relay is OK, but not across borders. Then again, many many cpanel hosted sites are to people all around the world.

You can see the problem now? The small hosted website is suffering the most here. Can't get through from his own domain, wont' get through from his home or work ISP. It's a problem that is unique to remotely hosted sites. And it will continue to get worse as other major mail systems decide they can drop any mail that shows a relay.

Regards Rossh

 

[rossh_cp]

.... the issue is with hotmail (and AOL for that matter) and you have to lobby them to fix their problems....

Is hotmail going to listen to me... a single nobody?

Every cpanel customer is affected by this... is that at least one million domains?? It would be far more effective if cpanel /whm was to raise the matter with hotmail. Maybe then they would listen and discuss the problems.

Cpanel .. please do something positive for the users of your product.

Regards Rossh

 

[sparek-3]

I think you missed the point.... this is not forwarded mail.. not spam... not forged .. nothing BS about it...

I think what chirpy is saying, is that there are likely users forwarding e-mail off of your server to hotmail.com addresses. This forwarded e-mail includes spam. When hotmail receives these messages, they see the message as coming from your server (and they are right, it is coming from your server). So they may blacklist your server or blackhole your messages. Then even when you send a legitimate message, hotmail's servers see it as coming from the same IP address and immediately blackhole it.

The issue with forwarding e-mail off of your server causing these problems has been discussed before. I view this as a problem with the client. There's really just no reason to forward mail off of your server to another e-mail service. Other than just laziness, and an unwillingness to check multiple addresses. If a client only wants to check their @hotmail.com address, then thats the address they need to use. They don't need to disguise this by using an @theirdomain.com address that forwards to their @hotmail.com address.

I'm at a loss as to who is really to blame for this. I agree that Hotmail really should not be blackholing mail. And I suppose its just an assumption on my part that the reason they are blackholing the mail is because of e-mail forwarders on your server that are forwarding spam messages to hotmail. However, if it is because of users forwarding e-mail off of the server, then I tend to believe that those users are as much to blame, because there's just really not any reason to forward e-mail off of the server.

There is a HUGE difference. If one of my clients shoose to blackhole emails, I dont mind, he is the only one who can suffer from this.

To this comment I do want to say that you are correct. I see what you are saying here. If clients want to set up e-mail filters that accept and then blackhole messages that's their own prerogative. But hotmail/MSN automatically blackholing messages without any input from the affected users is different.

 

[rossh_cp]

I think what chirpy is saying, is that there are likely users forwarding e-mail off of your server to hotmail.com addresses. ..<snip>

I'm sure that is correct.. but. These are not ..repeat NOT forwarded mails. At the risk of overstating this problem...

A user has a cpanel domain. He creates original mail on his home / work PC for delivery to hotmail. His out going smtp in his PC is set for his domians MTA: at 465. He make a new mail for someone on hotmail, and sends it. The exim MTA will add the first header to this original mail.

Received: from [20x.xxx.xx.96] (port=2631 helo=[192.168.2.32])
by abc.xyz.com with esmtpsa (TLSv1:AES256-SHA:256) (Exim 4.52)
id 123456-000165-W7
for [email protected]; Thu, 21 Sep 2006 11:15:54 -0400

Hence hotmail spots the relay from one network to another and blackholes the mail. (they should not - they don't know if the relay was approved).

Now logon to webmail program at abc.xyz.com and send the very same message.. no relay header this time.. and it does deliver. Therefore its not IP range limiting.. not content testing... they are weeding out any relayed mail. And it will affect every cpanel user who uses the domains MTA for his smtp.

Regards rossh

 

[Almighty]

I get this but when my server sends emails out to hotmail addresses

 

[lloyd_tennison]

Two thoughts. First, is his home IP address listed on any blacklists other than for DUN? Also, what about changing the router and director for forwarded email to use a different IP address. I am not sure if the exim advanced editor will allow it, but it is a thought.