Hotmail Email Addresses not getting notifications
 

It has come to our attention that many members with hotmail addresses are not getting notifications (this includes @live.com addresses)

Since we changed the email address our notifications are sent from I am seeing the 'bounce back' messages from ones we have sent but have not arrived. A lot of these are ones we sent to hotmail accounts that have been bounced back with a message that we are blocked by hotmail.

We had this problem in the past with AOL which is the reason that we ask members not to use AOL email addresses. I have let Marty know and he may be able to get our provider to try and get us unblocked, but I know from past experience that this can take a long time, even if it's possible.

What you can do if you are using hotmail...

• If you ARE getting notifications let me know by replying here. I want to see if it is all hotmail users or just some.

• If you are NOT getting notifications and you want to get them, can you try using a different email address.

• If you are NOT getting notifications and you are happy to not get them, or if you don't have another email address/don't want to use another email address, then can you set your settings on your account to not receive notifications.

The reason I ask those who don't want to or can't change their email address to change their settings to not get them is that we are more likely to not get blocked in the future if we are not sending to huge numbers of addresses that bounce back every day.

I did, now I don't.
Why isn't the 'bug' that caused these problems not being addressed at source, rather than expecting users to create, or use, new e-mail addresses ? Just askin'.

It's not a bug as such. The problem is that hotmail has blocked our orchidboard server, they incorrectly think we are a spammer. We are sending out the notifications, hotmail are receiving them, but then hotmail reuse to send them to the end user.

We are looking to ask our provider to ask hotmail to unblock us, however none of that is guaranteed and when I've been involved with such a process before it took months.

We had a problem in the past with AOL in the same way. That is why when you register it says to NOT use an AOL account. Now I've found that actually AOL accounts ARE now working, however it was years that they were blocked for.

If we can't get this block by hotmail cleared we will have to ask all members to not register with hotmail accounts.

These blocks tend to happen if we are continually sending out a lot of emails to accounts that don't exist or we can't send to for other reasons.

Our emails all go to users who have subscribed to Orchid Board, who have given their email address and who have chosen on their account settings to receive notifications. We provide an unsubscribe link in our emails and we provide an unsubscribe option on our account settings. All of which mean we are not spammers.

However over time as people change email address but don't tell us (possibly they have stopped using the forum at that point) we get a build up of more and more addresses we are sending to which are invalid.

Or maybe a user (or many) who registered then decides they don't want our emails and rather than un-subscribing they click the spam/junk button on their email, or move the email into their spam folder on a provider such as gmail. This get's fed back to the provider and at some point when the provider sees it happening a lot they decide we are spammers and block us.

Something like that is what has happened here. Hotmail has blocked our whole server (possibly relatively recently as several members have recently been reporting that notifications have stopped). They didn't just block the one email address but all emails sent by our server.

It's not anything we can 'fix'. The fact I am seeing the 'bounce backs' now I have access to the email address we are sending from shows that our servers are correctly sending the emails and that they are reaching hotmail's servers. As I said above we can (through our provider) ask for this block to be removed, but it's not guaranteed it will be.

---------- Post added at 04:13 PM ---------- Previous post was at 04:09 PM ----------

See above about why this is happening, however I can confirm you are one of the users affected by this. When I replied to this thread after your post it tried to send you a notification and I've seen a 'bounce back' because hotmail has blocked it :(

Maybe subscribers who are not getting the notifications could also contact Hotmail and say they want them let thru. It might speed up the process if individual Hotmail subscribers are complaining.

Thanks for looking into this RosieC

May be a good idea. Not sure how to go about that, but if anyone has a way to do it please do.

Our mail server has in IP address of 199.91.126.24 and hotmail are reporting that it is that which s blocked.

Individual Hotmail subscribers should have some form of info in which to contact their provider. At least I do with my e-mail provider. It's not Hotmail tho. With the IP address you provided, I would expect my provider to let it thru to my e-mail if I want it coming thru.

I had the same problem with my outlook.com email address. I believe the hotmail and outlook emails have been merged into one account these days. I had another email address so I changed to that address and have not had any other problems.

I am sure Hotmail wouldn't just block an entire up without a valid reason. Are you certain that the ob server is secure and hasn't been hijacked in the past to send spam? I don't know how these matters should be resolved but I would think that whoever maintains the ob server has some responsibility to find out exactly why emails are bounced back so that the issue can be resolved. I don't even get the emails so cannot fwd them to anyone at Hotmail to investigate.

I get notification emails from OB to gmail, and have never gotten any spam.

I used to get them (with hotmail) and now I don't and sadly missed a private message from someone wanting to come to our orchid meeting last month!

Hotmail is my main persona email and don't really want to use my work one or create others. Hope that hotmail will unblock it, am happy to email and ask them to let it through!

I do wonder, as someone suggested, whether it has been a source for spam at some point though... Usually they wouldn't just block something unless it had?