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Why Are My Emails Not Getting To Hotmail Or Yahoo Customers


Customer:
A couple of days ago people on my site were able to receive emails from my site if they were Hotmail users. However, this has all changed and suddenly the emails stopped being delivered. They do not reach Junk or Inbox, there is no bounce back, they just disappear. The only time when Hotmail will deliver a message is if I have originally sent an email from Hotmail to the site and then replied. Otherwise, they just disappear.

Windows Live Hotmail Support:
We have identified that messages from your IP are being filtered based on the recommendations of the SmartScreen filter. SmartScreen is the spam filtering technology developed and operated by Microsoft. SmartScreen is built around the technology of machine learning. SmartScreen's filters are trained to recognize what is spam and what isn't spam. In short, we filter incoming emails that look like spam. I am not able to go into any specific details about what these filters specifically entail, as this would render them useless.

However, we also base our spam rating on the reputation of the sender. One way to positively impact the reputation of your IP is to obtain SPF/Sender ID records. This technology allows SmartScreen to better track emails from your IP, weeding out spoofed messages. You can find additional information on creating SPF records at http://www.microsoft.com/senderid

Please confirm that your emails comply with MSN Hotmail's technical standards. This information can be found at: http://postmaster.live.com/Guidelines.aspx

I hope that the information that I have provided to you has been helpful. You may also be able to find additional information on common delivery questions at the Hotmail Postmaster Site found at: http://postmaster.msn.com/. I would like to highlight some key areas which I believe are appropriate to your company.

Hotmail has created the Smart Network Data Services program. This is a service that helps legitimate email senders work with their customers and partners to reduce spam originating from their IP. http://postmaster.msn.com/snds/. This program allows a sender to monitor the 'health' of their IPs.

Monitor user complaints. Hotmail also has a sender complaint feedback loop program Junk Email Reporting Program (JMRP). Enrollment in this, free of charge, program will benefit you as a sender as it will keep your e-mail lists updated and populated with interested MSN Hotmail Customers. Participation in this program will remove those MSN Hotmail Customers who do not want to receive e-mails from your company. If you are interested in joining this program please visit Http://support.msn.com/eform.aspx?pr...ail&ct=eformts.

While using the SNDS tool, enrollment in the JMRP, or having your IPs registered with Sender ID will not allow emails from your mail servers to bypass our filters, these are in place to help legitimate companies deliver their emails to Hotmail Customers.

SenderScore Certified Mail Program. Many legitimate mailers and marketers have qualified and joined this "whitelisting" program to improve mail deliverability and decrease email from being filtered to the Junk E-mail Folder. Sender Score is a third-party program, administered by Return Path. Sender Score (www.senderscorecertified.com) is the only White Listing service to which we subscribe.

The troubleshooting steps in this email are recommendations only. Microsoft makes no guarantees that following these steps will guarantee deliverability to MSN, Hotmail, or Live.com customers.

Suggested Resolution:
You can create an SPF record for your domains under the email authentication section in cPanel. Just enable SPF and wait 30 minutes for the warning to go away. Our tech support department can also set up an SPF record for your domain, just Contact Support and ask them to "please set up an SPF record for my domain." They will let you know when this is done.

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