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Title: Emails To Outlook.com Rejected By Faulty Or Overzealous Blocking Rules

Link: https://tech.slashdot.org/story/26/03/04/1844...

Microsoft spent much of the past week rejecting legitimate emails sent to
Outlook.com, Live, and Hotmail accounts due to what appears to be overly
aggressive IP reputation filtering or faulty blocklist rules. According to
The Register, many senders received 550 errors claiming their networks were
blocked, preventing delivery of invoices, notifications, and authentication
emails. From the report: A block list is a good thing. It helps stem the flow
of spam from networks or addresses associated with junk email. However, the
confusing thing for our reader is that his company was not on Microsoft's
naughty step for email. A look at Microsoft's Smart Network Data Service
(SNDS) showed no issues with the IP. "We're also a member of their JMRP (Junk
Mail Reporting Program)," our reader added, "which is intended to inform us
when people are reporting spam sent from our IPs - except, we never get any
reports." The problem worsened in February. On Microsoft's support forums,
users began to complain about similar issues as the IP net presumably
widened. One wrote: "We are currently experiencing a critical and recurring
email delivery issue affecting recipients at outlook.com, live.com,
hotmail.com, and msn.com," and provided a copy of an error that suggested the
mail server has been "temporarily rate limited due to IP reputation." The
user drily noted, "Although the error indicates rate limiting, in practice no
emails are being delivered." A large number of users, ranging from the
administrator of a server sending automated notifications on behalf of
Estonian Public Libraries to an email provider for healthcare professionals,
chimed in to confirm they too were having delivery problems and Microsoft
support was not helpful. [...] Unsurprisingly, our reader spoke on condition
of anonymity - nobody wants to be the ISP that has to say, "Yeah, we can
deliver your email anywhere but Outlook.com" to customers. We asked Microsoft
to comment, but other than acknowledging our questions, the company did not
respond further.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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