Hotmail Blocks Gmail Emails (and Invites)

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...

[Richard_at_work]

I just tested to three hotmail accounts, invites and standard emails get through fine. Not sure about yahoo tho.

Really?

[asveepay]

I've invited two people on their Hotmail accounts, and both received the emails just fine.

Well gee, it works fine for me....

[arcite]

I got an invite from my buddy, he even sent it to me using his gmail address. me thinks this story is FUD.

testing 1,2,3

[jdallien]

To test, I sent two messages from GMail: one directly to my Hotmail account and one which I only CC'ed to my Hotmail account. The CC'd message arrived immediately but the direct message (sent first) arrived about 5 minutes later.

I did receive one

[DJ Rubbie]

I have an hotmail account, and my cousin was able to send me a Gmail invite to that account a week ago. Perhaps the situation changed, I don't know.

Bullshit.

[Dark Lord Seth]

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...

[hottoh]

Hotmail is how my invite arrived.

Is the article author positive they do not have one of hotmails spam filters turned on?

Re:MS & Google

[DaHat]

so they are breaking the law and interfering with email

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

[JohnGrahamCumming]

So the core of this Slashdot "article" is some posting on one guy's blog about losing a invitation he sent to his girlfriend. And that's been extrapolated into "Hotmail blocks Gmail".

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

[cemaco]

Not that I would put it beyond Microsoft to block a competitor, but if you RTFA you see that a possible reason for the invites being bounced is that they are being picked up by the spam filters.

http://www.gizmodo.com/archives/is-hotmail-block in g-gmail-invitations-015942.php

Re:Well gee, it works fine for me....

[blowdart]

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

[RestiffBard]

I just sent an invite to my niece last night. Went through fine. Put away the tinfoil.

Re:Stunning

[gazbo]

Rubbish. I use Hotmail, a friend of mine uses gmail. I've not had any problems getting his mails, and I've not even had to whitelist him for the spam filter.

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

[orthogonal]

It's already well-documented that Yahoo moves Gmail invites into the Bulk Mail folder. I've personally confirmed the Hotmail and Yahoo blocking.

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

[quintesson]

I had an invite sent to my Hotmail address yesterday, and it arrived safely in my inbox within seconds. However, a message I sent from my Gmail account to somebody else's Hotmail went into their 'Junk Mail' folder.

Either way, I'm sure Microsoft will rectify this situation, or risk losing customers.

Re:MS & Google

[runlvl0]

> so they are breaking the law and interfering with email

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

[Dracolytch]

A Gmail invite came to my Yahoo account just fine.

Just so y'all know: I used http://www.gmailswap.com to get the invite. Thanks guys!

~D

Re:Unable to verify...

[hafree]

I received a Gmail invite through my hotmail account just yesterday without any problems.

Re:Stunning

[sentientbeing]

the guy didnt say it was blocking emails in general but gmail invitations specifically

I have both a gmail and a yahoo...

[Dagny Taggert]

account and I am able to forward back and forth without problems. I'd like to see some independent verification of this.

Re:Stunning

[13Echo]

I sent an invite to someone two days ago, and he still hasn't gotten it.

I can vouch that this is certainly questionable.

Re:Stunning

[bonhomme_de_neige]

I use Hotmail, a friend of mine uses gmail. I've not had any problems getting his mails

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...

[stevesliva]

For what it's worth, I received a Gmail invite through my Hotmail account on Friday without any problems.

A Workaround to this Problem

[wrozmiarek]

Seems like the majority of my invites never arrive in my friend's inboxes. To get around this, I send the invite then go into my "Sent Mail" folder to look for the "Sign-up" URL that was sent. I just create a new email and copy and paste the original URL. I haven't had one of these blocked (that I know of). Cheers!

Re:Stunning

[slimak]

unless your ISP is SBC, then you get a Yahoo! account (even though its @sbcglobal.net).

fwiw... this worked fine last week

[enrico_suave]

I sent my wife a gmail invite to her hotmail account... and she accepted it/got the msg no problem...

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

[MrResistor]

Yeah, that's a great idea... if you want to completely destroy morale!

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 .mil addresses, which I'm sure go through some sort of filtering before delivery. No sane military commander would restrict it much more than that except in the most extreme circumstances.

Re:your own SMTP server? ha!

[soren42]

I had this same problem. The solution is to use your ISP's SMTP server as a relay host. For example, in my Postfix main.cf, I have the line:

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

[It'sYerMam]

The motto: huzzah for email forwarding.

You get all the advantages of a real email address without the changiness.

Re:Stunning

[RichM]

Hotmail and Yahoo! are not ISPs. They're a couple of second-rate e-mail services.

MSN [msn.com] and Yahoo [yahoo.com] are ISPs.

Orkut

[CGP314]

Hotmail had this same problem with Orkut's invites a while back.

Re:WHAT IS A GMAIL INVITE?

[Anonymous Coward]

Gmail is a beta mail server offered by Google. They give you 1GB of space for holding mail, and it features an incredible user interface and great searching tools.

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

[metamatic]

Or pay $12 a year for pobox.com redirection and spam filtering. No ads, and you can send the mail to whatever real e-mail account you like, and change it at a moment's notice (unlike personal domains).

Hotmail generally sucking

[phorm]

I've actually had a lot of issues with hotmail in the last... 3-6 months? Email bounce with server errors (accounts aren't full so that's not the problem), or there's a lengthy delay between sending the email and it actually being received.

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!

[Anonymous Coward]

yahoo used to have a 6mb limit; but they recently "upgraded" me to 100mb.... I wonder if they smell the possibility of losing ad revenue from the possible exodus to gmail/ or the likes when they go live?

confirmation

[jasong911]

I had 2 invites this morning on my Hotmail addy, the first I pounced on, the second I left in the Bulk folder. 2 hours later the second invite is gone from the Bulk folder. Very suspicious.

Re:WHAT IS A GMAIL INVITE?

[Flagbrew]

I got my invite fine at my hotmail address.

Re:WHAT IS A GMAIL INVITE?

[thatnerdguy]

so did I, and i also sent email from my gmail account to my hotmail account just fine.

Re:Stunning

[Blkdeath]

My only problem with that is if they start to use those keywords to profile me. I don't want google or any one for that mater knowing that I recieved 210 e-mails with the word f**k in them over the last two months.`

If you don't want computerized algorithms running over your e-mail on a daily basis, there are two things you should do;

1. Run your own e-mail server
2. PGP-encrypt all outgoing / request (demand) all incoming mail be likewise encrypeted.

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..

[Anonymous Coward]

I just tried this with two messages, and both were delivered very quickly (in less than a minute).

Don't have a yahoo account to test with.

My Invite was blanked out today

[redrumsquad]

My brother sent me a g-mail invite this morning to my hotmail account. When sending an invite gmail prompts you for a personalized message. Well my brother called me on the phone to let me know he sent the invite. I found it in my bulk mail folder, with everything but his personal message blanked out. The invite was essentially deleted. He had to send it to my Rediff account (the original 1 gig free email). So it's not a BS story

One little detail I haven't seen mentioned...

[Lazyhound]

...e-mails sent to Hotmail accounts tend to "disappear" at the best of times. I work at a call center*, and I get frequent call-backs from people using Hotmail who never received e-mails sent to them, despite it being registered as sent in our systems; others have mentioned receiving mail 2+ hours after it was sent. I doubt this is anything more sinister than shoddy service on Microsoft's part.

*Pity can be expressed with GMail invite to [e-mail].