Hotmail Blocks Gmail Emails (and Invites) 894
bonhomme_de_neige writes "Emails and invitations sent to Hotmail from Gmail accounts do not bounce, but nor do they arrive in the recipient's Inbox - they vanish mysteriously into the aether. Joel Johnson writes in his Gizmodo weblog that invitations he sent to a Hotmail address bounced (this even received coverage from ZDNet). Search Engine Roundtable writes that several ISPs are blocking Gmail. It's already well-documented that Yahoo moves Gmail invites into the Bulk Mail folder. I've personally confirmed the Hotmail and Yahoo blocking." Please note: I've not been able to verify this one way or another.
Dunno about you lot but... (Score:4, Informative)
Really? (Score:4, Informative)
Well gee, it works fine for me.... (Score:5, Informative)
testing 1,2,3 (Score:3, Informative)
I did receive one (Score:4, Informative)
Bullshit. (Score:3, Informative)
Just sent my hotmail account a mail from my gmail account. The message didn't bounce and arrived in my hotmail account just fine.
So at least hotmail isn't using dirty tactics.
Re:Dunno about you lot but... (Score:3, Informative)
Is the article author positive they do not have one of hotmails spam filters turned on?
Re:MS & Google (Score:4, Informative)
Do tell, what law are they breaking? I must have missed the one which says that ISP's and other electronic mail carriers must deliver all e-mails passing through their systems.
Hotmail, like Gmail are run on private networks and anyone using said networks are bound by the whims of their owners and operators.
Blog crap (Score:5, Informative)
If you read the blog article the writer blows all credibility when he reveals that someone just told him about the "Sent Folder":
Update: Thanks to everyone telling me to check the Sent folder. I can at least retrieve the invites now.
When are people going to realize that blogs are the equivalent of public urination on the web. People post stream of consciousness bullshit dressed up as "information" or even "facts" and because it's on a blog, well then, it must be true.
John.
Maybe, maybe not (Score:2, Informative)
http://www.gizmodo.com/archives/is-hotmail-bloc
Re:Well gee, it works fine for me.... (Score:5, Informative)
Same here. A gmail invite sent to google arrived quite happily in my inbox, and I have hotmail's spam filter set to high. Test emails sent from my gmail account to hotmail did arrive.
But hey, lets not let the facts get in way of a knee jerk reaction <g>
Hogwash (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Stunning (Score:3, Informative)
This story is the biggest pile of turd I've read on Slashdot - and I've read some pretty strong contenders.
Take off your tinfoil hats (Score:5, Informative)
Much as I enjoy wearing my tinfoil hat, I think it can be dispensed with here.
Both Hotmail and Yahoo mail have been plagued with spam, and with users demanding they do something about that spam. Indeed, that's one reason people are interested in GMail.
Since almost all spam -- anything we think of spam, anyway -- arrives in mass quantities, and a logical way to reduce spam is simply to look for many addresses receiving the same email.
So a decent first cut at filtering bulk spam (and recall that both Yahoo and Hotmail use "bulk mail" folders) would be to take an MD5 sum of each email (not including the "To" address header lines, of course), stick the sum in hash table or other database, and increment a counter for each email with that MD5 sum. Once the counter reached some arbitrary large-ish number, you'd mark all copies of that emails spam.
Since the GMial invite varies slightly, it's clear that something fuzzier than an MD5 sum is being used, but the principle remains the same.
The first N GMail invites weren't marked as "bulk email"; after the counter threshold was reached, all the rest have been.
So all we've learned from this is that, even during this invite-only beta test, GMail must be sending out a hell of a lot of invites, and that, yes indeed, Hotmail and Yahoo customers demanded and got "bulk email" filtering.
So take off the tinfoil hats -- you'll have a real reason to wear them soon enough [usdoj.gov].
my hotmail/gmail experiences (Score:2, Informative)
Either way, I'm sure Microsoft will rectify this situation, or risk losing customers.
Re:MS & Google (Score:5, Informative)
Do tell, what law are they breaking? I must have missed the one which says that ISP's and other electronic mail carriers must deliver all e-mails passing through their systems.
I think that you're right, but I think that the confusion exists because of existing laws concerning common carriers [atis.org].
Gmail invite (Score:5, Informative)
Just so y'all know: I used http://www.gmailswap.com to get the invite. Thanks guys!
~D
Re:Unable to verify... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Stunning (Score:2, Informative)
I have both a gmail and a yahoo... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Stunning (Score:4, Informative)
I can vouch that this is certainly questionable.
Re:Stunning (Score:5, Informative)
Actually - it happened in this order. Test email sent to Hotmail, did not arrive. Story submitted to Slashdot. Email arrived in Hotmail account several hours later (after other emails I sent from my other accounts _after_ the one from gmail - which arrived almost instantly). I've read several reports of Hotmail both bouncing and vanishing Gmail email - I'm sure if you hunt around you can find even more. It may be that they are changing their behaviour as they realise it'd going to do them more harm then good.
As for the Yahoo one, that is definitely true.
Re:Unable to verify... (Score:5, Informative)
A Workaround to this Problem (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Stunning (Score:5, Informative)
fwiw... this worked fine last week (Score:4, Informative)
i just sent a message from gmail to my hotmail and it was recieved... ?
I love a good conspiracy, but we might have rattled our tinfoil swords prematurely on this one...
e.
Re:MS & Google (Score:4, Informative)
Most of the soldiers I know are able to get through the day because they feel that they're fighting for something important to them: their friends and family. Take away that connection and you take away their reason for fighting, and suddenly you no longer have an effective fighting force (at best, at worst you create more traitors and the problem, rather than being solved, only gets bigger).
Before you say they should use snail mail, would you? In a day when near instant communication is not only possible, but common in every home, restricting soldiers to doing things the old way just isn't acceptable. Never mind the fact that snail mail often ends up chasing a soldier around for weeks before finally catching up to them, and it's not uncommon for it to never catch up at all.
FWIW my soldier friends who're deployed are pretty much restricted to using their
Re:your own SMTP server? ha! (Score:3, Informative)
relayhost = smtp-server.carolina.rr.com
That fixed my problems not being able to send to AOL, Time Warner, the Easter Bunny, and the Jehovah's Witnesses.
And, with SquirrelMail (or any other free software webmail system) set up, I can check my mail from anywhere with a web browser.
It beats using Hotmail any day of the week.
Re:Stunning (Score:4, Informative)
You get all the advantages of a real email address without the changiness.
Re:Stunning (Score:2, Informative)
Orkut (Score:3, Informative)
Re:WHAT IS A GMAIL INVITE? (Score:0, Informative)
Because it is still in beta you cannot sign up for an account. You have to be invited by somebody whom already has an account. Speaking of which, I have a million invites if anyone wants one....
Re:Stunning (Score:4, Informative)
Hotmail generally sucking (Score:4, Informative)
So, this may not be so much indicative of a problem with hotmail and gmail as it is hotmail in general. Possibly they're lagged in processing the some bazillion spams that must pass through there, anyone have any stats on how much spam passes through hotmail daily?
Re:Wait till Gmail Opens up for all! (Score:1, Informative)
confirmation (Score:2, Informative)
Re:WHAT IS A GMAIL INVITE? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:WHAT IS A GMAIL INVITE? (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Stunning (Score:3, Informative)
If you don't want computerized algorithms running over your e-mail on a daily basis, there are two things you should do;
Otherwise, I hate to say it, but your e-mail is analyzed by every server it passes through. As for profiling, well, that's the norm. But think of it this way - you're getting e-mail for free. What did you expect? They give you 1 gigabyte of free storage on a highly advanced, redundant, failure-resistant geographically diverse network for ... FREE. If they profile you, sorry, but you have no right to blow the "Privacy" trumpet. You get what you pay for.
I can send mail from gmail to hotmail fine.. (Score:1, Informative)
Don't have a yahoo account to test with.
My Invite was blanked out today (Score:2, Informative)
One little detail I haven't seen mentioned... (Score:3, Informative)
*Pity can be expressed with GMail invite to lazyhound2@hotmail.com.