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.
MS & Google (Score:3, Interesting)
In other news, we've got lots of Gmail invites for military folks here [gmailforthetroops.com], so if you want Gmail for large files and you are a soldier, or if you want to donate your invites to soldiers, check us out. This is not just for American military, but any democratic military, such as Canada or the UK.
Re:Stunning (Score:4, Interesting)
An email service blocking emails from a competing email service is surprising. Has this ever happened before? Is this even legal?
Re:MS & Google (Score:4, Interesting)
If it "just has to get there", you wouldn't be using email in the first place. But even if you are using email, why on earth would you be using Hotmail? If it's that important, you should be using your own SMTP server over which you have control. Instead, you're relying on a third party, that you're not paying, and with whom you have no service level agreement. Not a smart move for data you care about...
Rubbish (Score:1, Interesting)
i recieved all of mine perfectly, i have no greedy filters set either
PEBKAC
Re:Unable to verify... (Score:5, Interesting)
Emails and invitations sent to Hotmail from Gmail accounts do not bounce...invitations he sent to a Hotmail address bounced
Well.. hold on... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Dunno about you lot but... (Score:3, Interesting)
OMG CENSORSHIP! (Score:2, Interesting)
My Gmail invite got put into my spam folder... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Dunno about you lot but... (Score:4, Interesting)
Outblaze (Score:2, Interesting)
I may nderstand if they decided to block an ISP server, but blocking servers of the United Nations is just MORONIC; I doubt this happens outside the US.
Has anyone encountered similar stupid acts?
Yep. It's true. (Score:4, Interesting)
Had him send it to my main email address after reading this article, and the link worked fine. Needless to say, I'll be ditching Hotmail within 24 hours. This makes me incredibly angry.
Re:MS & Google (and Quicktime and DR-DOS...) (Score:3, Interesting)
However, I will not attribute to malice what can be explained by stupidity. Hotmail has been so unreliable of late that at work we're close to the point where Hotmail addresses will not be accepted as a primary email address. Incredibly stupid filters tend to be at the root of the problems. If too many messages look the same Hotmail calls them spam and they vanish into a black hole. Meanwhile, actual spam fills many a Hotmail inbox.
hotmail auto blocked xbox modchip store for me (Score:1, Interesting)
Not my experience. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:MS & Google (Score:5, Interesting)
I really wish they could do it, I'm in the military and am looking at one of those long stints away from loved ones soon... but the fact of the matter is, if it's not for official military use, it won't get funding. That and rolling cable in the desert just makes one more security issue to deal with which requires manpower we can't spare right now.
Yeah yeah, but WIRELESS!.... is a security nightmare right now and lets face it, no matter how many times COMSEC and COMPUSEC are briefed there is always some nimrod on the network violating the security measures.
War isn't about being comfortable, the military's primary concern is that we stay alive, not that we have email. They've actually gone to great lengths to set up call centers and email access as it is, but you could easily wait in line for 2 hours for your turn. But trust me when I tell you that those connections that are allowed are closely monitored (fewer connections mean fewer resources required to monitor them).
Warfare is as much about information control as manpower these days.
Re:Stunning (Score:5, Interesting)
B-e-t-a (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Stunning (Score:3, Interesting)
Hotmail and Yahoo! are not ISPs. They're a couple of second-rate e-mail services. This is yet another reason everyone should steer clear of "free" e-mail altogether.
Everyone has a real e-mail account available to them if they just pay enough attention to know who's offering it (real ISP, college, job) and learn how to set up a real e-mail client. Five minutes.
Re:Stunning (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Mountains (Score:1, Interesting)
As to blocking e-mails from free sites that is a stupid policy it may help cut down on fraud and spam but it kills allot of legit traffic as well, I use hotmail and I get really pissed when I discover some jackass admin has blocked the entire domain. Hotmail itself a free site blocking google a free site makes no sense at all. That can only be an attempt by M$ to marginalize a competitive service by makeing it inoperable with their services which has many subscribers. They also know google could do the same to them in return by the effect is very small as gmail is new and has few subscribers so the damage to hotmail is very minor if any and probably casues more harm to gmails usablility. I am not just being an M$ hater I completely understand the invites being blocked just not the other mail. This is being anticompetitive.
Just Tested It.... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Stunning (Score:1, Interesting)
Well not really! This is like the "No Solicitors" sign you see everywhere nowdays. I guess it's part of their right to block invitations, but blocking "customer service" because of ethnicity or origin that's unethical!
Scanning Emails (Score:2, Interesting)
It worked as of last night (Score:3, Interesting)
No surprise (Score:1, Interesting)
for the "me too" files.... (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm certain that he used the correct address. I can understand "bulking" gmail invites (don't believe it's an honest mistake, but can understand it's possible) as I have had legitimate invites to mailing lists/web sites get placed into the bulk folder.
I got nothing in my Yahoo account. I was very careful to check the bulk foldler, but nothing ever showed up. Lucky for me, I was able to get the URL for the invite from his sent folder and signed up that way.
The problem is pipe (Score:3, Interesting)
Think the neighborhood node for your cable modem is slow in the evenings? Brother, you aint seen nothin'.... and to make matters worse, they also throttled that bandwidth down even more by port... 80 was always the slowest. Fortunately for me, ftp wasn't throttled... so my downloads from kernel.org took hours instead of days (hey, a geek's gotta do what a geek's gotta do).
Increasing the pipe is only part of the issue; you have to filter all that traffic. If you don't control that information stream, classified information will leak, and viruses/worms will run riot. Even on a filtered system, one virus can really make your life miserable. I witnessed this on another delployment... the Anna Kournikova virus got loose in our network... it wrecked havoc for days before we got it under control (send a bunch of lonely, hormonally-poisoned, computer-equiped 19-year-olds a file purporting to be a picture of Anna Kournikova and see what happens... total chaos).
Increasing services to the troops is good, but it has to be done right, or you might end up with more problems than you started with.
Confirmed: False. (Score:5, Interesting)
So, yeah. I'm afraid this is... not true. At least as far as hotmail is concerned.
Re:Mountains (Score:5, Interesting)
But think financially... (Score:2, Interesting)
Shortly thereafter, they'll set in place a registration system that wants you to put in a checking or credit card account with the rest of your information...
I think the continued deregulation is worth risking a GMail invite or two.
Re:MS & Google (Score:3, Interesting)
<mode=geezer><veteran=on>At mumble feet under the North Atlantic there isn't room to form a two hour long line, let alone email or phone access to wait on. I envy you kids that, but I didn't have sand in my dinner at least. :) :)
Re:Stunning (Score:5, Interesting)
But paid-for doesn't always mean better. I'm on NTL, and in the last year the email service has become unuseable (emails sometimes take months to arrive, or sometimes disappear altogether; sometimes connecting to POP or SMTP is very difficult). Paid-for doesn't mean you have more of a position to complain, when your complaints are completely ignored. Whilst gmail blocking seems to be restricted to free email accounts, it is not inconceivable that paid for ISPs may try dirty tactics.
Switching to a free email account (that I still use a "real email client" for) took five minutes, but switching entirely to a new cable ISP would take far longer.
Re:MS & Google (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Stunning (Score:2, Interesting)
So very true. I remember back in the days when we were using MS Mail, I could watch the messages scroll on by the MS Mail Internet Connector, from the initial "Hello" to the text of the message. There never has been any privacy in email. Just read the terms of use of your corporate or college account.
But is anyone reading /. really surprised to see the internet and inter-operability fracturing because corporate interests are squabbling? Or are we so quick to forget this recent example? [com.com] I'm just wondering how long until this becomes a "feature" in Exchange Server...
Re:Stunning (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Stunning (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Take off your tinfoil hats (Score:5, Interesting)
This is true. But, what probably triggered it was this: A few users received Gmail invites and either didn't know what it was, or didn't recognize the person they received it from, saw it was offering another email service, then clicked the button that says "This is Spam". When Hotmail gets a few reports like that the message text gets added to their filters and everyone else's invites start going to the Spam folder.
That's just standard operating procedure. If they didn't have that procedure in place we'd receive 50-100 spams a day in our Hotmail box.
Of course, none of this would have been a problem if Hotmail hadn't sold all of their account lists to bulk emailers years ago. Hotmail is the only service that when I first created an account, instantly started sending me spam before I had even given my address out to anyone. The only way they could have gotten my address is if Hotmail sold it to bulk senders.
Re:Stunning (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Mountains (Score:3, Interesting)
Andrew
Re:Stunning (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Mountains (Score:3, Interesting)
Hotmail is blocking gmail, but not yahoo (Score:1, Interesting)
mails from gmail can reach yahoo inbox instantly, but not hotmail.
Embedded Images (Score:2, Interesting)
For the record (Score:2, Interesting)
Google blocking gmail? (Score:2, Interesting)
However, I checked in on Orkut, a Google-provided networking/community bulletin board site, and did a search in "Communities" for "gmail". Yesterday this returned dozens of groups, and at the moment it returns none. Other groups appear to be perfectly operational.
Is it a coincidence that Orkut gmail-related communities disappeared at the same time as Gmail did?