Attention Hotmail Users

I recently realized that Hotmail has started blocking emails from this website. Therefore:

If you signed up with a Hotmail email address, please update your profile by providing a different email address to ensure that you receive our emails (thread subscription emails and password reset emails).

If you don't have any other email address, you can get a free (and much more reliable) email account from Google at: GMail

New signups no longer accept Hotmail email addresses, and you can no longer specify a Hotmail email address in your profile.

Thank you!

I've had hotmail since time began (hah)

But anyway, I think maybe if you specify the email address you're sending from, people can specify it as "not spam" at least for the individual account. Hotmail may still block others who don't do that.

(this is a guess though -- if hotmail is bouncing your email wholesale not giving the account a chance to check it, there's nothing that will fix that)

Hey JB,

How are they blocking them? Is it the "message looks like spam" bounce they have?

If so, I believe there is a process to do some recourse with them about it. In general, some of their users marked your messages as spam, causing x or y content to get picked up.

Quote: bluefire

Hey JB,

How are they blocking them? Is it the "message looks like spam" bounce they have?

If so, I believe there is a process to do some recourse with them about it. In general, some of their users marked your messages as spam, causing x or y content to get picked up.

I'm not entirely sure, but everyone affected has said that the emails don't even show up in their spam/junk folder; the emails simply never arrive. And it's only Hotmail users that have this problem.

I'm not certain that they are specifically blocking emails from this domain. I used to use Hotmail myself a long time ago, but when Microsoft took it over it became very unreliable so I stopped using it. Apparently it has only gotten worse.

Well, if you can find out some specifics on what's happening (for example, a bounce message), feel free to hit me up. I work for the email hosting division of an IT company and consider myself somewhat of an expert on the topic.

Well, I am definitely NOT an IT professional, but I will offer this info in case it is of use to you in this matter.

About two years ago, all of my email messages sent to contacts at an organization were being blocked, with the recipients receiving no notice whatsoever that I had sent a message to them. When I became aware of the situation, I checked with the organization's IT folks. I learned that they use a spam service -- theirs was Barracuda networks -- and the IP address from which my mail was sent had been blacklisted by the service. Apparently this was the result of someone sending bulk spam from a web domain hosted on the same servers as my domain. I contacted my hosting service, and they said that they are constantly fighting spammers who move from domain to domain, getting their spam out and getting others blacklisted. They were not aware that their servers had again been blacklisted, but they were able to work with Barracuda and get the blacklisting removed.

Hotmail might be using a similar spam service, and the WoV domain servers may have been similarly blacklisted. If that is the case, other places using the same spam service would also have WoV email blacklisted, so it might well be worthwhile to find out the specific cause of the mail being blocked rather than just referring people to other email providers. The problem might be more wide spread. It could also be applicable for the WoO domain if that is hosted on the same servers.

Quote: Doc

Well, I am definitely NOT an IT professional, but I will offer this info in case it is of use to you in this matter.

About two years ago, all of my email messages sent to contacts at an organization were being blocked, with the recipients receiving no notice whatsoever that I had sent a message to them. When I became aware of the situation, I checked with the organization's IT folks. I learned that they use a spam service -- theirs was Barracuda networks -- and the IP address from which my mail was sent had been blacklisted by the service. Apparently this was the result of someone sending bulk spam from a web domain hosted on the same servers as my domain. I contacted my hosting service, and they said that they are constantly fighting spammers who move from domain to domain, getting their spam out and getting others blacklisted. They were not aware that their servers had again been blacklisted, but they were able to work with Barracuda and get the blacklisting removed.

Hotmail might be using a similar spam service, and the WoV domain servers may have been similarly blacklisted. If that is the case, other places using the same spam service would also have WoV email blacklisted, so it might well be worthwhile to find out the specific cause of the mail being blocked rather than just referring people to other email providers. The problem might be more wide spread. It could also be applicable for the WoO domain if that is hosted on the same servers.

What you're referring to is called a RBL or DNSBL.

Hotmail generally bounces due to RBLs. If he isn't receiving any bounces, then it's probably not an RBL (although it still *could* be).

It looks like Wizard of Vegas hosts their email with Dreamhost. Given that Dreamhost seems to be a decent host, I would hope they would have multiple sending IPs for outbound email that they rotate through. If one gets on an RBL, the others should still work (unless the whole netblock is added, which usually doesn't happen).

I have dealt with Hotmail flat out deleting messages due to them being too spammy, though.

Just to expand slightly on my experiences two years ago, I was not getting any sort of bounce back to let me know that the messages were not being delivered. It was like mailing a letter that went through a shredder at the post office -- neither sender nor recipient knew of a problem; there was just a loss of communications and no way to clear it up with a follow-up message. I don't know how extensively Barracuda had blocked my hosting service -- one IP address or everything they had.

Quote: Doc

Just to expand slightly on my experiences two years ago, I was not getting any sort of bounce back to let me know that the messages were not being delivered. It was like mailing a letter that went through a shredder at the post office -- neither sender nor recipient knew of a problem; there was just a loss of communications and no way to clear it up with a follow-up message. I don't know how extensively Barracuda had blocked my hosting service -- one IP address or everything they had.

Yep, everyone treats RBLs differently. I believe that you can customize how Barracuda handles RBLs, but it accepts & discards rather than bouncing by default.