NationStates Jolt Archive

I've used Hotmail for business and personal e-mails for nearly ten years. Recently (the last few weeks) I've had issues w/ recieving e-mails from a company I do contract work w/. I got a forward from their IT dept about the issue:

"...The bad
news is that
we've discovered MSN/Hotmail is silently blocking e-mail from
us. We gathered
the required information and submitted a request through
Hotmail's Sender
Information Request form to have the block removed. MSN/Hotmail
responded
confirming that mail from our domain is being blocked and
attempted to extort a
$400 fee plus $1,000 per year in order to whitelist our domain.
Since we do not
have a compelling business interest at this time and, in any
case, would be
loathe to submit to the extortion attempt, e-mail from ****.com
to addresses in
the msn.com, hotmail.com, and probably other "Windows Live"
e-mail domains will
not be delivered. The sender does not receive any indication
that the mail has
been blocked. The intended recipient does not receive any
indication that
e-mail intended for him/her has been blocked."

So now businesses have to pay to be allowed to send their e-mails to hotmail users. I'm sure they'll come up w/ some excuse about reducing spam.

wow. thats an unethical business practice if ive ever seen one.

Stop using hotmail and use gmail.

Can you really trust a service run by microsoft?

So now businesses have to pay to be allowed to send their e-mails to hotmail users. I'm sure they'll come up w/ some excuse about reducing spam.

Isn't hotmail a service that's subsidized by advertising? If so, it appears they might be looking for supplemental revenue.

Switch to gmail.

wow. thats an unethical business practice if ive ever seen one.
Only for those of us that are conditioned to think of anything "we" don't pay for as a free thing.

MS is just doing what banks have done for years. Finding revenue streams is how companies stay in business.

It sounds like a good money making idea to me.

It sounds like a good money making idea to me.

It sounds like a terrible money-making idea to me, especially given that superior services are offered free of charge (ie, GMail). If MSN wants to hemorrhage its user base to other companies, this would be one of the best ways of accomplishing that objective.

Switch to gmail.

I dropped Hotmail for Gmail and have never once regretted it.

It sounds like a terrible money-making idea to me, especially given that superior services are offered free of charge (ie, GMail). If MSN wants to hemorrhage its user base to other companies, this would be one of the best ways of accomplishing that objective.

Most users won't even find out about it. If it costs a handful of users, but it results in a net increase in profits it's worth it. I'd be surprised if other free email providers don't hop on the bandwagon.

Thanks for posting that. My friend runs a T-shirt business and has been baffled as to why certain clients never return her emails.

I've also never been able to figure out why she doesn't recieve emails from my work account.

I've stumbled into this, too, from my private email address (my girlfriend wasn't getting any emails I sent her). A workaround: replies to emails coming from hotmail seem to get through.

Basically, Hotmail is shit. Unfortunately my girlfriend won't move to GMail (other free email providers are available) :rolleyes:

Lame for you, good for them, neutral for me, although I will indeed empathize with you.

Hahaha, an even better workaround: If you reply to any email from hotmail, it'll get through.

I just "replied" to an email from my girlfriend's Hotmail account, but changed the destination to my Hotmail account, the subject and the body text - and it got through fine.

HOTMAILZ EXTORTION FILTER IZ CHEEZECAEK.

UpwardThrust or anyone want to tell me why that worked? I'm not hot on email protocols... It has a unique-id that it saves between messages, yes?

those freaking sidebar links keep sucking me back in *curses the sidebar*

anyway, I have like 93 gmail invites, if you want one TG me your email address and I will surely help you out!

Stop using hotmail and use gmail.

Can you really trust a service run by microsoft?

Gmail has...other issues. Mostly privacy related.

Gmail has...other issues. Mostly privacy related.

None that have ever bothered or affected me.

I don't consider email to be a confidential way to communicate because it isn't.

those freaking sidebar links keep sucking me back in *curses the sidebar*

anyway, I have like 93 gmail invites, if you want one TG me your email address and I will surely help you out!
Hehehe :)

I was going to offer mine, but then noticed that you don't need them any more; there's a sign-up link on www.gmail.com.

Gmail has...other issues. Mostly privacy related.

Ooh, pray tell?

I don't consider email to be a confidential way to communicate because it isn't.

This is true. People realise that email can be easily eavesdropped, don't they?

Hehehe :)
Ooh, pray tell?

Rantsite 1: http://www.epic.org/privacy/gmail/faq.html
Rantsite 2: http://www.google-watch.org/gmail.html
Article: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/04/03/google_mail_is_evil_privacy/
Anti-rantsite: http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/wlg/4707
Googles own answer: http://mail.google.com/mail/help/more.html

Btw - I have been happily using gmail since it started, accepting these issues.

*snip*

Interesting, ta.
I don't use it much, I just use have a gmail address for the sake of it, really.

Interesting, ta.
I don't use it much, I just use have a gmail address for the sake of it, really.

Most of it is hot air.
However, I do think that people using the google anti-phishing filter (built-in in firefox), googledesktopsearch, google toolbar and gmail tell the googlecorp quite a lot about themselves. Even if all the info is only read and analysed by computers.

Stop using hotmail and use gmail.

Can you really trust a service run by microsoft?

Why I do use gmail this is not a universal solution for everyone ...

Yes he may be able to solve his problems with the switch but what about the thousands of other contacts the business have that may or may not use hotmail, could a smaller business realistically afford to say "Sorry but we cant support you because of your email"

Sorry for the semi-gravedig, but I just talked to a couple of guys who run my email thingy and one of them said something that I thought might be of assistance to some of the people in this thread:

Ah, it appears Hotmail use SenderID rather than SPF, which is Microsoft's
embrace-and-extend of SPF that breaks it.

I've added null SPF records to <his domain> and <shared domain>. If you are
using SPF and want to send to hotmail account owners (not sure I do), then
add another TXT record to DNS with:

spf2.0/pra ?all

This turns off the broken bit of Sender ID wrt SPF.

When MS's cache of our DNS records updates, you should suddenly be able to
send mail to hotmail (fingers crossed).

Now that's a bit beyond me, to be honest, but here's Wikipedia's article on SPF (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sender_Policy_Framework) (with a link to Sender ID (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sender_ID) at the bottom), for anyone interested.

Anyway, Hope That Helps, and apologies again for resurrecting this; if it's not interesting ignore it and it'll go away again ;)

Unfortunately my girlfriend won't move to GMail
That's grounds to dump her right there.
Bear that in mind in case you ever need an excuse.

I'd use my gmail account, but it feels so wasteful, I only ever get spam anyway.

I find it rather amusing that Microsoft think they are going to make money by blocking companies... but not telling anyone about it.

I dropped Hotmail for Gmail and have never once regretted it.

I second that sentiment.

ftsoaticac! Use smaller local freemailers! Switching to GMail is just using a different 'dominatrix' :/