Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Outlook/Hotmail is no longer blocking my mail server

taoshu.in

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 257 posts

Re: Outlook/Hotmail is no longer blocking my mail server

#121

Post by TobyTheDog123 »

airstrike wrote: post #93
Aardwolf wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Make it cost a few cents to send a mail with it, just like stamps of physical mail. It's mostly intended for receiving anyway.

That's the truth, really. Email should cost [$0.02] or some similar value. You'd solve spam overnight.

With Twitter being worse than ever while also implementing the paid-for blue check, I'm no longer convinced that nominal costs solve much of anything. Maybe it's a different model (per email vs per account w/ Twitter), but I feel like scammers/phishers would pay the premium.

While extremely idealist and would never happen in practice, I think I'd rather see a provider that enforces KYC-esque requirements and is a closed iMessage-esque system. I took my phone number off my main mobile device due to spam (pretty much everyone I know has an iPhone) and have not looked back since.

If I want privacy, I'll self-host. If I don't care, I'll use the monopoly.

Re: Outlook/Hotmail is no longer blocking my mail server

#122

Post by sp332 »

ejb999 wrote: post #115
sp332 wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Poor enough that they don’t have a bank account to pay for the email service.

and yet we assume they are wealthy enough to own a mobile phone and/or computer/tablet to access that email.

Public libraries https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32304320 Subsidised phones and internet access https://www.fcc.gov/lifeline-consumers

Re: Outlook/Hotmail is no longer blocking my mail server

#123

Post by inetknght »

spoiledtechie wrote: post #114

GMail is the worst for email blocking resolutions. They don't have an effective feedback loop built into their system. So when a user does block you, no one is told about it, to be fixed. Therefore lowering your reputation with them over time. How can we as ESPs respond to them appropriately with removal of these people who don't want our emails anymore, if we don't know who the user is? If there are any GMAIL servic…

> How can we as ESPs respond to them appropriately with removal of these people who don't want our emails anymore, if we don't know who the user is?

1. Don't send spam

2. ???

3. Profit!

Literally _all_ email that I've blocked has been from companies where I uncheck the box "send spam to me" and the company sends it anyway, or where the company thinks "oh this guy bought stuff from us, we can now send our daily/weekly/fuckly marketing spam!" or "we got your email from whatever shady place, and now we're sending you our information because you're in our industry" or stupid shit like that.

Gmail does not have a "block everything from this domain feature". I would love to block whole domains from my gmail account. Alas, I run my own email server to achieve it.

Re: Outlook/Hotmail is no longer blocking my mail server

#124

Post by [deleted] »

judge2020 wrote: post #84
freetanga wrote: post #39

I think that governments should offer one free email account per citizen for life. Which you could use or not, but is there for you as a digital inbox… which are the options? - Self hosting is a bit elitist - not for the masses. - A paid-for option (proton, tutta,…) would be cataloged as elitist. People perceive email as free. - A free option provided by a Corporate player will gravitate towards monopolies and lack o…

You'd still need to be able to block these addresses or at least have a reputation system for them, otherwise telemarketers would just tank their own reputation for some sales, or people would pay the homeless to sign up and let them send spam via their digital inbox.

[deleted]

Re: Outlook/Hotmail is no longer blocking my mail server

#125

Post by iAMkenough »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #79
benbristow wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah yes, a government owned email service, what could go wrong?

Nothing? It can exist as a utility alongside other email services.

Nothing can go wrong? In that case, the government should create a public social network as a utility alongside other social media services too.

Re: Outlook/Hotmail is no longer blocking my mail server

#126

Post by johannes1234321 »

blcknight wrote: post #42
freetanga wrote: post #39

I think that governments should offer one free email account per citizen for life. Which you could use or not, but is there for you as a digital inbox… which are the options? - Self hosting is a bit elitist - not for the masses. - A paid-for option (proton, tutta,…) would be cataloged as elitist. People perceive email as free. - A free option provided by a Corporate player will gravitate towards monopolies and lack o…

This would probably work in a lot of European countries or places with high levels of government trust. I could see the German post office for example offering something like this and getting wide acceptance. You’ll have a lot of distrustful Americans commenting how terrible this idea is and the government can’t be trusted. They’d rather get it from a corporation and be subjected to unlimited surveillance capitalism…

Actually there has been an attempt of a state mandated E-Mail service in Germany called De-Mail.

The idea was to put guarantees like identity, delivery receipts and stuff into an email system, so it can be used for legally binding communication.

However it failed for various reasons (privacy concerns as it purposely had no e2e, usability restrictions, cost, ...)

Re: Outlook/Hotmail is no longer blocking my mail server

#127

Post by TobyTheDog123 »

albertgoeswoof wrote: post #9

I run a small transactional email provider ( https://mailpace.com ), our IPs are very rarely added to blocklists- but we are very strict on what we allow through our service, and surprisingly we’ve had no long term delivery issues with any of the big providers. So thanks to the federated/decentralized design of email, is totally possible to be part of the network without any special privileges. We are sending million…

(Unrelated to the OP - but I've been so frustrated by this for so long that it's worth the [flagged])

A product like this is exactly what I've been looking for with pretty great pricing.

The one thing that this (and most providers) are missing is making email easy to test. I'm about to launch a product where email is critical, and there's no way to send an example email (with a non-test email address) to your service and see that you receive it, without it being sent to the To address.

Better yet, the few providers that do support it charge as if it were a real email, when none of the delivery costs exist on their end (there are infrastructure costs, sure, but there is none of the reputation risk nor need for clean IPs, the reason people use transactional services like these in the first place).

Re: Outlook/Hotmail is no longer blocking my mail server

#128

Post by layer8 »

psd1 wrote: post #33
V__ wrote: post #22

Is this mira of a U.S. centric problem? I selfhost my mail in Germany, have one at a smaller mail provider and never had problems. It is also not uncommon for companies to either have a local Exchange Server or use the mail service at their hosting provider. If everything is configured correctly, delivery works fine.

Your experience may not be typical. I ran mail servers before office 365 was a thing, and I often had to get off block lists. There are stories on HN about it being worse, now that you have to request unblocking from MS and Google. Yours is the first comment that doesn't complain.

Nah, I have the same experience as the GP, and in every HN thread about email self-hosting, there are a number of comments along the lines of “I’ve been self-hosting my email for 10-20 years and never had any problems”. My SME employer also self-hosts without issues.

Experiences obviously differ, but it’s unclear where the differences stem from, apart from long-term IP reputation.

Re: Outlook/Hotmail is no longer blocking my mail server

#129

Post by jeltz »

wolverine876 wrote: post #107
huhtenberg wrote: post #90

We go through this every few months. Here's the recipe - 1. Visit https://olcsupport.office.com/ and submit the complaint. 2. Wait for the auto-reply, followed by the "Nothing was detected" email. 3. Reply to the latter with "Escalate" in the body. Within a day, they hammer shit in place and the block is removed.

Do they ever respond? Maybe the block comes and goes, and has nothing to do with attempts to contact Microsoft?

They have always responded to me when I have contacted them. I have had to contact them twice.

Re: Outlook/Hotmail is no longer blocking my mail server

#130

Post by rixthefox »

shaicoleman wrote: post #73

Outlook/Hotmail blocks DigitalOcean. After half a dozens attempts over the years to delist my IP, and following all the best practices (dedicated fixed IP, SPF, DKIM, DMARC, FCrDNS, zero spam, TLS, etc.) I gave up. Eventually, most people realize that their Outlook/Hotmail email service is defective because they're not receiving emails, and they migrate to another email service.

> most people realize that their Outlook/Hotmail email service is defective

This is exactly what I've begun telling people and warning friends and family members about. I run my own email... well I run my own ISP at this point and we have our own dedicated block of IPv6 addresses but still rely on IPv4 addresses from our cloud providers and I've started to grow frustrated by the lack of movement by the incumbent email providers that I've started just straight up telling people don't expect any email delivery from me if you're using any provider that still lacks proper IPv6 on their SMTP servers.

It's no longer my problem and I will happily tell people that their email provider is defective and that they need to find a new host. If that is too much for them, to bad so sad not my problem. I did everything I could do. At some point you have to stop trying to work around "Big Cloud" and their nonsense.

Post reply on HN