[Mailman-Users] list messages lost to Hotmail subscribers lost

[Mark Sapiro]

Jeff Donsbach wrote:

>On Wed, Jun 18, 2008 at 6:49 PM, Mark Sapiro <mark at msapiro.net> wrote:
>>
>> Welcome to the world of pain and frustration that is dealing with
>> Microsoft and Windows live mail spam filtering - yes, they do accept
>> your mail and then silently discard it.
>>
>> I had the same problem. I hammered and hammered with the customer
>> support forms. I could never answer their follow-ups because they
>> wouldn't accept mail from my postmaster address which I used thinking
>> it would give me credibility. My advice here is to sign up for and use
>> a hotmail address in your communications.
>
>Thanks Mark. I was afraid I was going to get an answer like that. :-(
>
>What is the email address to start that process (if you remember)?


I started with the form at
<https://support.msn.com/eform.aspx?productKey=edfsmsbl&ct=eformts>.
It isn't easy to find. It's a pain to fill out, but they do respond to
it. Most of the responses are canned paragraphs they put together. I'm
still not fully convinced they come from humans, but if you are
patient and persistent, you will eventually get the attention of
someone who can help. Just keep stressing that your mail is going to
confirmed, opt-in subscribers who want it.


>> Anyway, they finally put me on a 2 month 'mitigation' during which my
>> mail was accepted and their spam filters were supposed to retrain, but
>> the day the mitigation ended, the started flaging >10% of my list mail
>> as spam (I had also added SPF records prior to the mitigation).
>>
>
>Hmm. That isn't promising.
>
>> My mail still mostly falls in the 'yellow' (10% to 90% spam) range on
>> 'SNDS' (their Smart Network Data Services reporting service), but it
>> is delivered to either inboxes or spam folders, and all mail is
>> delivered to the inbox of those who whitelist my domain.
>>
>> This in spite of the fact that my complaint rate is essentially zero.
>
>Making it to my subscribers Spam folder would be an improvement. Right
>now as far as I can tell, they are just dropping it.
>Well, I'll guess I'll have to bite the bullet and sign up for a
>hotmail.... er, um.... "Windows Live" mail account. I've resisted for
>years.


If it gets to their spam folder, they can whitelist your domain and it
will get to their inbox. The problem that I had initially and that you
are apparently having now is that at some point, they accept your mail
and then silently discard it. That hasn't happened to me again since
the mitigation period, but I'm never relaxed about it.


-- 
Mark Sapiro <mark at msapiro.net>        The highway is for gamblers,
San Francisco Bay Area, California    better use your sense - B. Dylan