


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.
Mountains (Score:5, Insightful)
Honestly... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:MS & Google (Score:4, Insightful)
Is this something new? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Stunning (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't understand why ISPs would block gmail mail anyway. (I understand the invites, though.)
Re:MS & Google (Score:1, Insightful)
Unfortunatly, you interesting comment has gone to waste.
Sorry man.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:MS & Google (Score:3, Insightful)
Then can you cite a legal case to back this statement up?
Dinivin
Re:MS & Google (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Stunning (Score:4, Insightful)
Well, the articles mentions that some email providers are blocking GMail due to privacy concerns. Seems like a bunch of hogwash to me.
Re:MS & Google (Score:3, Insightful)
That Microsoft would even consider doing any such thing.
Consider how safe your data is in a Microsoft proprietary format.
your own SMTP server? ha! (Score:5, Insightful)
Email wars, probably predictable (Score:5, Insightful)
Remember at the dawn of the electrical age there were competing companies with many different voltages, made for exciting interoperability issues. Goverment regulation could be a blessing.
Re:Stunning (Score:0, Insightful)
Re:Honestly... (Score:3, Insightful)
The only way you win for that is by turning the "if not in address book it's spam" spam filter on.
Re:Making a big deal out of nothing... (Score:5, Insightful)
The invite was certainly bulk. It arrived as a part of a large number of substantively identical email messages. Like with posts to properly run mailing lists and other legitimate bulk email, your invite was solicited, so your copy wasn't spam.
Note that bulkiness is measurable. Simply count messages that match fuzzy checksums.
Spamminess, on the other hand, is far harder to measure, as it depends on the users' sometimes erroneous recollections of whether they solicited the bulk messages.
But Hotmail didn't call it spam. They called it bulk. That sounds quite proper and accurate to me.
Re:MS & Google (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Yep. It's true. (Score:3, Insightful)
So, that's interesting. Was it only the invite that was "lost" or regular emails from gmail users too?
Re:Stunning (Score:2, Insightful)
If GMail is blocked by alot of providers, how many users will want to sign up?
Re:Stunning (Score:5, Insightful)
Real ISPs come and go, you are not in college forever, and you dont keep the same job forever. However, you CAN keep one of these "second-rate" email addresses indefinitely. I have had my yahoo account for years, while friends and colleagues change their "real" email accounts year after year, mine has always been the same. I have lost touch with many people because they changed email addresses and never told anyone.
Thanks for the short-sighted answer.
Re:Stunning (Score:1, Insightful)
I kind of like the option of NOT having to change my email account (and notify everyone of the change) just because I change my frickin' ISP.
When I can afford to have hosting set up for myself on my own domain, then I'll move my "Fake" email to my own personally hosted email.
Is this that hard to understand?
Re:Stunning (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Stunning (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Stunning (Score:5, Insightful)
Methinks ISPs are using "Privacy Concerns" as a way of keeping customers from leaving their quickly aging service. "Hey look, bearded technology pundits with nothing better to do are upset about ads in a radical new free email service. They're waving the privacy flag. We can wave the same flag and lock people in to viewing our contextually inaccurate ads a little bit longer!"
Re:Stunning (Score:5, Insightful)
I started my hosting company as a cooperative just so I could get rid of my favorite email "alias," dasmegabyte@mindless.com, which the company providing the alias had sold to spammers when I told them no, I won't give you $10 a month to forward my fucking email with ads at the bottom. Incidentally, I lost a job in 2001 because the hiring staff sent an email to dasmegabyte@mindless.com and I had already dropped that account -- there was too much spam to sort through.
Re:Stunning (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, but your city council does not put the "No Solicitors" sign on your door for you, and give you no option to remove it if you happen to enjoy solicitors.
Re:Stunning (Score:4, Insightful)
BUT I set up my yahoo account 10 years ago, and yes I had a college account, then I left college, had a differant work account, back to college, diff account, Job, diff account, and am now working as a postdoc with a differant account.
My point is I still have the same yahoo account I had when I was 17. I used it in South America, in Germany, in the Port Authority in NYC, Stansted Airport and so on. So, if someone that i met 7 years ago wants to drop me a mail, and doesnt have my work/uni address, they use yahoo. (And I tell them to use my work address from then on.) But the contact is made. And, therefore they cannot be described as "second-rate e-mail services", because when you are in the back ends of the Andes they are the only thing available, and are pretty first rate in those instances. They are a differant type of account, and are useful.
And I take offence at hotmail or anyone censoring my mails.
Re:Stunning (Score:5, Insightful)
What amuses me about all of this is that ISPs and stupid technology writers keep waving that flag, but it's not like Google is trying to be underhanded about how the service works. They seem to make it pretty clear what's going to happen when you sign up.
Essentially, anyone who blocks Gmail invites would be saying "well, I understand that you agreed to what Google offered, but I feel as though I have more say in your decisions, so I'm rescinding your approval and issuing a denial on your behalf". How is THAT not an abuse of privacy? If they really felt that their customers' privacy was at risk, why wouldn't they just offer a warning? Blocking the e-mails is essentially saying that you have more say in your customer's decisions than they do online, PLUS it indicates that you were watching their mail in the first place!
Do you I smell a pile of boving excrement wafting on the breeze from the direction of a few dirty ISPs and freemail providers?
Re:Stunning (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Take off your tinfoil hats (Score:1, Insightful)
So they may not have sold your e-mail address.
Re:Stunning (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Mountains (Score:5, Insightful)
it may not be that 'it's gmail invite' but that it's 'identicle to other mail'
Count Mozilla in on the anti-Gmail conspiracy... (Score:4, Insightful)
SpamAssassin didn't, though, which proves that those scheming bastards obviously rigged Mozilla 1.7 so that it would filter gmail invitations. There's no other explanation, right?
It couldn't be because the invitation email looks a lot like spam...?
Nah.
Privacy - yeah right (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Privacy - yeah right (Score:2, Insightful)
Care to cite? (Score:2, Insightful)
I get e-mail about Linux all the time, and it's never, ever sent to the Junk Mail folder. It's cool to pull random facts out of our asses, but perhaps we should take the time to step back and see how foolish it makes this community look? This article is completely false, and it's hilarious to see all the people giving their prepared lectures "Well, what would you expect from Microsoft? Blah blah blah."
Re:Stunning (Score:3, Insightful)