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lovingboth.. I'd just forgotten how painful.
#1. It's going to be a proper mailserver for BiCon etc stuff, rather than using mine. As I say, I knew doing a new one was painful, so I've been putting doing it off for years.
It runs postfix, a mailserver that will do what's wanted and is also highly secure.
But enough has changed since I did mine that it's not quite working. If I try to get Gmail to send via it, it will acknowledge that the secure login details to do so are correct..
.. but when it comes to actually sending any email, it won't.
Press 'send' and it just sits there.
Close the email, and it vanishes: it's not in sent mail and it's not in drafts either. WTF?!
The server itself sees the 'can I log in correctly' test, but never notices any attempt to send actual email.
Sigh.
Sorting it out's on pause for the moment, mostly because of..
#2. This server just needs to send admin-type email to me and notifications of comments to posts etc to users of a message board.
The former is handed by exim4, a much simpler email server. Because it's had a couple of horrible security issues over the past few years - you could get it to run programs on the server just by pretending you were sending an email to it! - it just sends stuff and the ports it listens to in order to accept email are blocked (along with almost all others!)
That works, even though my mail server is a bit picky about who it will accept email from: lie about who you are or try to not quite follow the rules and it will reject you.
The message board can either use its own routines to send email - sending basic emails is really very, very easy - or talk to a proper email server. Unfortunately, that second bit is a bit flaky and doesn't really work. There's a bodge to allow it to use Gmail to send email, but that's going to stop working within the next year, when Google turn off the option to use such bodges.
But - great - using the own routines works... even the losers at Yahoo! accept them, and it took about a month to get them to accept email from my email server back then..
.. but Microsoft don't. It's all not accepted on the basis of the server's IP address.
OK, it's a new server because it's easier to create a new 64-bit one and move where everyone looks than it is to upgrade a 32-bit server to 64-bit. (I've done it for another one, but it's p.a.i.n.f.u.l. and involves several hours of it all not working. This way, it's literally a switch: use the new one, not the old one!)
Doing that involves a change in which IP address the email comes from.
And it's just that which has lead to the I-don't-believe-there-could-be-worse-losers-than-Yahoo!-but-there-are lot at Microsoft to start refusing to accept email from it. They did before the switch; they don't now.
OK, it could have been abused by the previous owner... looks at about a hundred blocklists.. nope.
The reject message points you at a webpage. That one mentions a blocklist service Microsoft say they use..
.. which hasn't been called that for about twelve years.
Anyway, the renamed version say it's not on their lists either.
You can sign up for a service that tells you how Microsoft are handling your email. I do..
.. but unless you send them at least a hundred a day, it won't tell you anything. And we send them something-teen emails a day.
OK, report it to the losers another way. Get a reply:
"Note: Errors are unlikely, however, if an error is indicated, please resubmit the specific IP or IP range.
Thank you,
Outlook.com Deliverability Support"
That's it!
OK, report it again again, through very gritted teeth..
"Note: Errors are unlikely, however, if an error is indicated, please resubmit the specific IP or IP range.
Thank you,
Outlook.com Deliverability Support"
Again.
But there is another email a few minutes later:
"We have completed reviewing the IP(s) you submitted. The following table contains the results of our investigation.
Not qualified for mitigation
178.62.xxx.xxx
Our investigation has determined that the above IP(s) do not qualify for mitigation.
Please ensure your emails comply with the Outlook.com policies, practices and guidelines found here: http://mail.live.com/mail/policies.aspx."
.. you'll be shocked to discover that the two main links on that, including the Microsoft anti-spam page, give 404 'not found' errors..
"To have Deliverability Support investigate further, please reply to this email with a detailed description of the problem you are having, including specific error messages, and an agent will contact you.
Regardless of the deliverability status, Outlook.com recommends that all senders join two free programs that provide visibility into the Outlook.com traffic on your sending IP(s), the sending IP reputation with Outlook.com and the Outlook.com user complaint rates.
Junk Email Reporting program (JMRP) When an Outlook.com user marks an email as "junk", senders enrolled in this program get a copy of the mail forwarded to the email address of their choice. It allows senders to see which mails are being marked as junk and to identify mail traffic you did not intend to send. To join, please visit http://support.msn.com/eform.aspx?productKey=edfsjmrpp&page=support_home_options_form_byemail&ct=eformts.
Smart Network Data Services program (SNDS). This program allows you to monitor the ‘health’ and reputation of your registered IPs by providing data about traffic such as mail volume and complaint rates seen originating from your IPs. To register, please visit http://postmaster.live.com/snds/.
There is no silver bullet to maintaining or improving good IP reputation, but these programs help you proactively manage your email eco-system to help better ensure deliverability to Outlook.com users."
SNDS is the one that tells me nothing because we don't send enough email to them!
JMRP is also useless, because the users a) don't get the email to mark it as spam and b) want it in the first place...
TL;DR: I said some years ago 'don't use Yahoo!' Don't use Microsoft (outlook / hotmail / live) either.
#1. It's going to be a proper mailserver for BiCon etc stuff, rather than using mine. As I say, I knew doing a new one was painful, so I've been putting doing it off for years.
It runs postfix, a mailserver that will do what's wanted and is also highly secure.
But enough has changed since I did mine that it's not quite working. If I try to get Gmail to send via it, it will acknowledge that the secure login details to do so are correct..
.. but when it comes to actually sending any email, it won't.
Press 'send' and it just sits there.
Close the email, and it vanishes: it's not in sent mail and it's not in drafts either. WTF?!
The server itself sees the 'can I log in correctly' test, but never notices any attempt to send actual email.
Sigh.
Sorting it out's on pause for the moment, mostly because of..
#2. This server just needs to send admin-type email to me and notifications of comments to posts etc to users of a message board.
The former is handed by exim4, a much simpler email server. Because it's had a couple of horrible security issues over the past few years - you could get it to run programs on the server just by pretending you were sending an email to it! - it just sends stuff and the ports it listens to in order to accept email are blocked (along with almost all others!)
That works, even though my mail server is a bit picky about who it will accept email from: lie about who you are or try to not quite follow the rules and it will reject you.
The message board can either use its own routines to send email - sending basic emails is really very, very easy - or talk to a proper email server. Unfortunately, that second bit is a bit flaky and doesn't really work. There's a bodge to allow it to use Gmail to send email, but that's going to stop working within the next year, when Google turn off the option to use such bodges.
But - great - using the own routines works... even the losers at Yahoo! accept them, and it took about a month to get them to accept email from my email server back then..
.. but Microsoft don't. It's all not accepted on the basis of the server's IP address.
OK, it's a new server because it's easier to create a new 64-bit one and move where everyone looks than it is to upgrade a 32-bit server to 64-bit. (I've done it for another one, but it's p.a.i.n.f.u.l. and involves several hours of it all not working. This way, it's literally a switch: use the new one, not the old one!)
Doing that involves a change in which IP address the email comes from.
And it's just that which has lead to the I-don't-believe-there-could-be-worse-losers-than-Yahoo!-but-there-are lot at Microsoft to start refusing to accept email from it. They did before the switch; they don't now.
OK, it could have been abused by the previous owner... looks at about a hundred blocklists.. nope.
The reject message points you at a webpage. That one mentions a blocklist service Microsoft say they use..
.. which hasn't been called that for about twelve years.
Anyway, the renamed version say it's not on their lists either.
You can sign up for a service that tells you how Microsoft are handling your email. I do..
.. but unless you send them at least a hundred a day, it won't tell you anything. And we send them something-teen emails a day.
OK, report it to the losers another way. Get a reply:
"Note: Errors are unlikely, however, if an error is indicated, please resubmit the specific IP or IP range.
Thank you,
Outlook.com Deliverability Support"
That's it!
OK, report it again again, through very gritted teeth..
"Note: Errors are unlikely, however, if an error is indicated, please resubmit the specific IP or IP range.
Thank you,
Outlook.com Deliverability Support"
Again.
But there is another email a few minutes later:
"We have completed reviewing the IP(s) you submitted. The following table contains the results of our investigation.
Not qualified for mitigation
178.62.xxx.xxx
Our investigation has determined that the above IP(s) do not qualify for mitigation.
Please ensure your emails comply with the Outlook.com policies, practices and guidelines found here: http://mail.live.com/mail/policies.aspx."
.. you'll be shocked to discover that the two main links on that, including the Microsoft anti-spam page, give 404 'not found' errors..
"To have Deliverability Support investigate further, please reply to this email with a detailed description of the problem you are having, including specific error messages, and an agent will contact you.
Regardless of the deliverability status, Outlook.com recommends that all senders join two free programs that provide visibility into the Outlook.com traffic on your sending IP(s), the sending IP reputation with Outlook.com and the Outlook.com user complaint rates.
Junk Email Reporting program (JMRP) When an Outlook.com user marks an email as "junk", senders enrolled in this program get a copy of the mail forwarded to the email address of their choice. It allows senders to see which mails are being marked as junk and to identify mail traffic you did not intend to send. To join, please visit http://support.msn.com/eform.aspx?productKey=edfsjmrpp&page=support_home_options_form_byemail&ct=eformts.
Smart Network Data Services program (SNDS). This program allows you to monitor the ‘health’ and reputation of your registered IPs by providing data about traffic such as mail volume and complaint rates seen originating from your IPs. To register, please visit http://postmaster.live.com/snds/.
There is no silver bullet to maintaining or improving good IP reputation, but these programs help you proactively manage your email eco-system to help better ensure deliverability to Outlook.com users."
SNDS is the one that tells me nothing because we don't send enough email to them!
JMRP is also useless, because the users a) don't get the email to mark it as spam and b) want it in the first place...
TL;DR: I said some years ago 'don't use Yahoo!' Don't use Microsoft (outlook / hotmail / live) either.