Messaging Gateway

Hi everyone. 

For the past eleven (11) months I have been trying to resolve a very poor inbox delivery rate into Hotmail.   We are an ESP and work only with top-tier clients yet Hotmail is stating that the "majority of the IP's are considered by SmartScreen as sending spam" (when in fact it's 100% confirmed opt-in, zero spam, but I understand smartscreen so that doesn't matter.)  The problem is, hotmail, per policy, refuses to provide even a shred of a hint as to where the reputation data is coming from.  We've checked our IP's on against every blacklist on the planet along with every possible RHS blacklist/domain blacklist, greylist, etc.  Nothing appears.  Eleven months of searching for an answer, daily, brings me to the next possible area: Brightmail.

What brings me to the Brightmail area is that several years ago I recall there was a connection between Hotmail and Brightmail where hotmail incorporated some of the Brightmail technology into their smartscreen system.    I'm checking to see if there are any humans at Brightmail that are willing to go out on a limb and offer some assistance to see if some of our IP's or client domains are in their GBL or other database that may be causing Hotmail to junk just about everything, even mail from the local Church to their members, and mail from m.o.m.s to their son's overseas in Afghanistan. 

If this is not the correct area to post this message in - my apologies.  I've pulled every rabbit out of every known at to try and figure this out and all the rabbits come up empty.   Any ideas would be welcome.

Thanks

John

Hi,

If you are having delivery issues at a specific company, you really will need to work with that company to determine why they are blocking you. They are best positioned to know the reasons and technologies involved.

With regards to Symantec, you can check if IPs are on the Symantec Global Bad Senders IP list at www.brightmail.com/IQservices , and request investigation if applicable. Additionally the procedure for bulk mailers to investigate Symantec Brightmail false positives is described in this article: http://www.symantec.com/business/support/index?page=content&id=TECH82881 You will need examples of the emails that are blocked to determine if we have filters in place on those messages.

Hope that helps,

Amanda

Thank you Amanda, that information is helpful.   Unfortunately getting any assistance from Hotmail/MSN/Microsoft is impossible.  They will not help anyone, for any reason, ever, when it comes to their smartscreen system (which I understand.)   They do not want real life spammers learning the secrets to bypassing their security/antispam systems - which is understandable.  It would be nice if they could realize there are differences between an ESP with thousands of customers (including Microsoft as a customer) an a real-life spammer, but that's life.

I will check out the URL's you provided. 

John