When I try to send a message to any Hotmail address (even replying to an email sent from Hotmail), I get the following error message returned:

The following message to <XXXXXXX[at]hotmail.com> was undeliverable.
The reason for the problem:
5.1.0 - Unknown address error 550-'SC-001 Mail rejected by Windows Live Hotmail for policy reasons. Reasons for rejection may be related to content with spam-like characteristics or IP/domain reputation problems. If you are not an email/network admin please contact your E-mail/Internet Service Provider for help. Email/network admins, please visit http://postmaster.live.com for email delivery information and support'

Any suggestions on how to deal with this would be greatly appreciated. I'm not sure if it's a Spamcop problem or an ISP problem. There is absolutely nothing in the content of the mail or the way I'm sending it that could be construed as a "spam-like characteristic."

Thanks!

-- C

Several FAQ entries exist 'here' that deal with an ISP rejecting/filtering/dropping e-mail. Granted, those primarily focus on spam submittals to the Parsing & Reporting system, but the troubleshooting steps would be the same.

Basically, you need to send an e-mail to multiple targets, one in the To: address line, the other as a CC: ... the hope would be that one of them would go through, which would then offer up the header data that could be sent to JT so he could check his logs and see what's going on from that end ... the same data could be provided to the folks at HotMail so they could actually analyze why their filters suck.

Bottom line, as posted, no one can offer much assistance because there is nothing to work with 'here' ....

I've just tried sending email from my SC email account to my Hotmail box, both using SC SMTP and SC webmail, and they were both quickly rejected (during the delivery attempts) with similar error messages. Therefore, I'd surmise that Hotmail (aka Micro$loth) is indeed blocking all email coming from the SpamCop mail servers. There's no way that any of us can get this resolved by talking to Hotmail...I know that from years and years of experience. This has to be resolved ISP (JT) to ISP.

I'll submit this to SpamCop Email support.

DT

As a short term fix, does Hotmail offer a whitelist function and does that help the messages get through?

They offer whitelisting, but it won't work in this case (and I just tested it, even though it wasn't necessary) because the blocking is happening during the initial server-to-server connection, and Hotmail isn't bothering to do any sort of internal lookups on address validity, whitelisting, etc. -- their servers are simply slamming the door in the SpamCop server's face.

DT

That is what I expected, but hoped for a different answer.

Also, my wife just tried to send an email to her soccer team and I see it is both MSN and hotmail addresses bouncing with the same message.

Thanks for confirming that it's very widespread/complete. The only option at this point is to avoid sending anything to Microsoft-controlled servers from the SpamCop email server, so people should avoid using SpamCop's SMTP and webmail for sending to MSN, Hotmail, etc. until we either hear from JT or it just magically stops happening.

DT

Hotmail feedback page https://feedback.live.com/default.aspx?productkey=wlmail

I for one have invited them to mend their ways, suggesting they are merely tired of having to ignore notifications of the abuse of their services (like bay.livefilestore.com - I mean, how hard can it be to control, especially when they're promptly advised with full details? Yet it goes on and on ...)

The only result anticipated is the momentary sense of satisfaction at having given the clueless sods both barrels. But I guess they'll never see it. Oh well, that didn't last long. YMMV

I hope you're not referring to the SpamCop reporting system messages reaching Hotmail Abuse, because that's probably not the case. Those notices don't get sent from the cesmail server in Georgia. They're transmitted from IronPort servers in California.

DT

You're right - I was.

there is a second part to this message from hotmail with a little bit more info:the lumping of the vague "spam-like characteristics" with "IP/domain reputation problems" is completely unhelpful, but i'm pretty sure i was writing a normal mail through spamcop's webmail system.

anyway, a solution that seems to work for now is creating the mail on hotmail's webmail system. i added my spamcop address as the default "from" address, so i hope replies will come back to my spamcop address and not the hotmail one, as i don't usually check it.

..and meaningless, when you consider the source. The reputation of the Cesmail server is just fine -- I checked multiple IP lookup sites, such as Robtex, SpamHaus, and OpenRBL, and there aren't any problems with [216.154.195.49]. Hotmail/MSN has always been poorly run and it's up to JT to get this blocking stopped.

DT

Emails to a HotMail.com account are being returned with delivery failure:
"The reason for the problem:
5.1.0 - Unknown address error 550-'SC-001 Mail rejected by Windows Live Hotmail for policy reasons. Reasons for rejection may be related to content with spam-like characteristics or IP/domain reputation problems. If you are not an email/network admin please contact your E-mail/Internet Service Provider for help. Email/network admins, please visit http://postmaster.live.com for email delivery information and support' "

Can this be fixed?

Moderator Edit; Moved/Merged this 'new' Topic posted into the Lounge area into this existing Topic on the same subject.

Hi, Chris,
...Please see the first message in SpamCop Forum thread "Spammers love Forum name = e-mail address."

Who is JT?

JT is Jeff Tucker, the owner of Corporate Email Services (CESmail), the company providing email services under the SpamCop name.

DT

...In the "SpamCop FAQ" (see link near top left of every SpamCop Forum page) is an entry labeled "SpamCop's System & Active Staff User Guide." A reference to J.T. appears there.

MSN.com is doing the same thing (no surprise).

Painful. I wouldn't want to be the one to have to deal with the mutts.

IIUC, the only reputation scoring they would be caring about would be in accordance with their SNDS (Smart Network Data Services) system - see https://postmaster.live.com/ (under services). I don't know what SNDS has to say about it but outside of SNDS the whole 216.154.195.0/24 looks good to me. Elsewhere MSN/Hotmail Live talks about rDNS and suchlike which might affect things - though I don't see any problems with c60.cesmail.net [216.154.195.49], etc.

Right, and if he hasn't yet done so, JT needs to request access to that system ASAP. I don't think that any of us have received any indication that JT is even yet aware of this situation, however, which is why I respectfully ask once again:

Wazoo???? Please get in touch with JT.

DT

(on edit: I just discovered that this problem prevented an important message from my wife from reaching a Hotmail address yesterday -- she sent it using SpamCop webmail -- so now this is "personal.")

JT and I are aware of this problem with Hotmail. Some spammers managed to send a few thousand messages out of a SpamCop account yesterday, and Hotmail over-reacted with how long they put us on their blacklists for. It is a temporary problem that will clear itself up, but we have no input from Hotmail as to how long it will take. Generally it takes 24-48 hours.

-Trevor

And just how the heck were we supposed to know that, if you're not responding to all the tickets we've opened up with you???

Have you and/or JT created a login with the SNDS system so that you can track problems?

Any why isn't this mentioned on the Email News page? (the Webmail login page) There's something there about popgate2 and Yahoo, but nothing about the Hotmail/MSN/etc. problems. That's a bit frustrating, Trevor.

I've just sent test messages to Hotmail using both SpamCop SMTP and SpamCop Webmail, and although I didn't receive immediate NDRs from SpamCop's mail server, the messages just seem to have disappeared, not arriving at Hotmail and not bouncing back (I'm also using popgate to grab them from Hotmail and they've not come through that route, either).

So, something has changed, but I don't think the situation is resolved, and it has been over 48 hours.

DT

Multiple test messages I've sent to a Hotmail address have still not arrived, and they didn't generate the blocking messages reported in this topic, either, so things seem to have gotten worse.

DT

Just seen on the webmail login page:

I *don't* use Hotmail for important email communications, but if there's some poor soul who has a Hotmail or MSN account, and I need to send them a message, then it would sure be nice if it could get through to them, which is the whole point of this topic.

And....not all SpamCop Email customers use the webmail regularly, so it would sure be nice to also post these announcements here in the Forums.

DT

Hotmail have lost the plot!
The only email I get in it now is spam?
A test I sent from SpamCop does not even make it to their "bulk folder"?

Exactly....that's been going on since yesterday afternoon...no sign of any of my test messages, but stuff sent from my broadband ISP's SMTP zips right through to Hotmail.

DT

Time to throw your Hotmail away and get your next disposable email from Gmail
They allow 20 meg email attachments and very effective spam control

...No, thanks, I decline to subscribe to a system that protects spammers (http://forum.spamcop.net/forums/index.php?...ost&p=63667).
[link enabled, but I don't think it's the right one?]

I don't know if Gmail protect spammers.
They see to be active in stopping spammers and effective in accurate sorting spam from ham
They though are a bureaucracy often mindless

I have finally received a few of the test messages sent to Hotmail, but only ones I sent today and yesterday...the previous messages have not yet arrived.

DT

All of my missing messages eventually showed up in my test Hotmail account, and messages appear to be delivering instantly now. They were apparently just queuing our messages for an unreasonably long time. We are subscribed to their SNDS service, but it clearly doesn't help. We are currently working on changes to the backend that will limit the impact of these spam runs.

Thanks for the update Trevor. I don't have hotmail/msn accounts to test with.

Thanks for the report, Trevor. We really appreciate being as informed as possible, so if you guys could drop by and post something quick when you're aware of something like this, it would certainly be nice.

I'm pretty sure I sent a few test messages that have never arrived, so I think that there was some sort of gap between when they were outright rejecting connections, and when they were actually allowing messages to be delivered, but that's not all that important now.

DT