Update Outlook / Hotmail Blocking Emails

[Matt]

Hi All,

Unfortunately, over the last few weeks, Hotmail / Outlook / Live have started mass blocking IP address and IP ranges. This has included most of my own IP address on my shared hosting platform, across several different providers.

Unfortunately, I've been trying to work with them for the last 3 weeks to have this block removed, but they will not remove any of the IP's from their list. Unfortunately, there isn't anything further I can do about this, because other than Outlook, my IP addresses are clean across all the spam black lists. Microsoft are also unwilling to provide me with any additional details. However, because they are blocking across multiple higher level service providers (which I'm using both in the UK and the US), it's Microsoft taking the effective "Ban Hammer" and not allowing end users to work with them. I've opened several tickets, and they are simply not willing to work with me to unblock them.

The only way this can be mitigated is on a user by user basis, and you will effectively need to route your emails through a 3rd party SMTP provider, such as Amazon SES / Sendgrid / Gmail

https://www.lowendtalk.com/discussion/157983/hotmail-started-blocking-mailchannels

This has been taken out of my control as I've mentioned above, as Microsoft aren't willing to even review the mails sent from any of the IP ranges I've sent them over.

 

[Matt]

So I've been testing a solution where I can use a smart relay (Sendgrid), to send only emails destined for Outlook / Hotmail etc.

They are even blocking Sendgrid!

 

[Matt]

I'm having some success routing Hotmail etc. through sendgrid over night on 2 of the servers. If this doesn't work, I'll have to look at moving provider again for the shared hosting servers (which means having to move all your site's to a new server once it's ready).

 

[Matt]

I'm currently looking into provisioning new servers to replace CP1 and CP2. Updates to follow.

 

[Matt]

Hopefully some good news!

“Hello,

My name is Anirudh and I work with the Outlook.com Deliverability Support Team.
We have implemented mitigation for your IP (185.198.190.80/28) and this process may take 24 - 48 hours to replicate completely throughout our system.

Sincerely,
Outlook.com Deliverability Support”

Had some help from my provider to work on the main shared hosting servers, and hopefully in 24/48 hours we should be good to go again.

 

[toad]

i moved most of my emails away from outlook because they kept blocking access from my email because my ip was different, then they required a phone number and i only had one phone number, it was such a pain,

i use mail.com now, expect they are blocked by many servers,

i hate hotmail and outlook!!

but i hate spammers more!

 

[ATTyp]

Edvard Munch must have been tortured by Microsoft's mail undelivery-insanity. No other things is so horrendous.

 

[Pete]

Had some help from my provider to work on the main shared hosting servers, and hopefully in 24/48 hours we should be good to go again.

Two years later and it looks like this issue is back. Not a problem for me as I can also send from mac mail via postmark, but just letting you know for information in case it's useful.

This message was created automatically by mail delivery software.

A message that you sent could not be delivered to one or more of its
recipients. This is a permanent error. The following address(es) failed:

[email protected]
   host eur.olc.protection.outlook.com [104.47.14.33]
   SMTP error from remote mail server after pipelined MAIL FROM:<[email protected]> SIZE=11439:
   550 5.7.1 Unfortunately, messages from [51.89.152.65] weren't sent. Please contact your Internet service provider since part of their network is on our block list (S3140). You can also refer your provider to http://mail.live.com/mail/troubleshooting.aspx#errors. [VI1EUR04FT034.eop-eur04.prod.protection.outlook.com]
Reporting-MTA: dns; cp1.mattwservices.uk

Action: failed
Final-Recipient: rfc822;[email protected]
Status: 5.0.0
Remote-MTA: dns; eur.olc.protection.outlook.com
Diagnostic-Code: smtp; 550 5.7.1 Unfortunately, messages from [51.89.152.65] weren't sent. Please contact your Internet service provider since part of their network is on our block list (S3140). You can also refer your provider to http://mail.live.com/mail/troubleshooting.aspx#errors. [VI1EUR04FT034.eop-eur04.prod.protection.outlook.com]

 

[Matt]

Yep, it's crazy. I have blacklist monitors in place for all my servers, and they randomly go into and out of blacklists, even though some of them don't even send direct email, purely because providers are blocking whole IP ranges. Nothing I can do about this unfortunately

 

[Matt]

During the migration of cp4.mattwservices.uk, I've started to use a new smart relay, which uses it's own custom setup, along with mailchannel as a backup relay option.

I'm using this as a smart relay on cp4.mattwservices.uk and rs1.mattwservices.uk and specifically set it to only process emails to a specific subset of domains:

domains = !+local_domains : hotmail.com : hotmail.co.uk : outlook.com : live.com : yahoo.com : live.ca : yahoo.ca : gmail.com

As part of this, they scan and analyse outgoing emails to help prevent spam, and keep both my servers and their own sending IP addresses clean.

I get logs and stats showing sending and receiving details as part of this.



Seems to be working well so far

 

[Pete]

Suddenly after years of everything being fine, we have got a couple of sending fails notices from yahoo hotmail and live.co.uk e.g.

Action: failed
Final-Recipient: rfc822;xxxxxxx@yahoo.com
Status: 5.0.0
Remote-MTA: dns; smtp.sendgrid.net
Diagnostic-Code: smtp; 550 The from address does not match a verified Sender Identity. Mail cannot be sent until this error is resolved. Visit Sender Identity to see the Sender Identity requirements

These are not being sent from mattw so we know there is no issue here, they are sent via Postmark smtp

Just wondering if anyone else is getting this happening again?

 

[Matt]

These are not being sent from mattw so we know there is no issue here, they are sent via Postmark smtp

Just wondering if anyone else is getting this happening again?

Can you PM me one of those failed addresses Pete? My cp1 server uses Sendgrid for smart relay based on sending address. I suspect you are still sending something via my server via a domain that's not verified.