Secrets to bypassing Hotmail's junk folder

[HB]

As many of us know, when we send legitimate emails to real customers from
our apps, those emails often end up in the Hotmail (and MSN -- and AOL, too)
junk folder. I've done a lot of testing with Hotmail, using different
domain sender names, different sending IPs, different SMTP servers, etc.,
different email text, and I still can't find out why Hotmail blocks so many
good emails and throws them in the junk folder. The sending IP even has a
domain name lookup record for the mail server on that IP. It seems to go
to the junk folder more with plain text emails than HTML emails, from my
testing. I even sent emails from Outlook, without code, to a hotmail
account to test that, and I still often ended up in the junk folder.
Nothing in my email text is typical of spam messages. Even simple things
like pretending to ask a co-worker if they can join me at a meeting next
week ended up in the junk folder.

So I took some good email text that went through, and started to strip out
sentences and characters until it failed (went to junk folder), and then
tried adding back sentences and characters, etc. I found that you can
write "Jim, [rest of email here]" and get through, but if you change it to
"John, [rest of email here]", it fails. Same with other names. That makes
no sense to me. Us ASP.NET developers should be able to personalize an
email with a first name and get through without that affecting the results!
I also found that sometimes adding a few garbage words or numbers actually
made it go through. One email had a 4 digits number addition near the end,
and it went through every time (whereas before the number it failed). But
if I changed any one of the 4 digits to something else, it went to the junk
folder. That almost suggests there is some algorithm like a MOD10 credit
card checksum algorith that will purposely let an email go through???

Is Hotmail (and the company that manages their filter) just trying to screw
with us on purpose because soon they are going to charge 1 penny/email to
senders if we want a guarantee of getting through the filter? If we don't
work together here to figure these things out, we'll all be paying a penny
per email soon just because they forced us, and not because of real spam
reasons.

I thought maybe some here might know how to get around some of these weird
little things. Anyone have any thoughts/suggestions/findings?

 

[Guest]

That's some amazing analysis. It certainly sounds like Hotmail is clueless
about filtering.

I've come to believe that charging that 1 cent will eliminate almost all of
the junk email I get. Since I only send a few dozen per day, it'd be a good
trade off -- I spend more than .25 of my time clearing junk.

As many of us know, when we send legitimate emails to real customers from
our apps, those emails often end up in the Hotmail (and MSN -- and AOL, too)
junk folder. I've done a lot of testing with Hotmail, using different
domain sender names, different sending IPs, different SMTP servers, etc.,
different email text, and I still can't find out why Hotmail blocks so many
good emails and throws them in the junk folder. The sending IP even has a
domain name lookup record for the mail server on that IP. It seems to go
to the junk folder more with plain text emails than HTML emails, from my
testing. I even sent emails from Outlook, without code, to a hotmail
account to test that, and I still often ended up in the junk folder.
Nothing in my email text is typical of spam messages. Even simple things
like pretending to ask a co-worker if they can join me at a meeting next
week ended up in the junk folder.

So I took some good email text that went through, and started to strip out
sentences and characters until it failed (went to junk folder), and then
tried adding back sentences and characters, etc. I found that you can
write "Jim, [rest of email here]" and get through, but if you change it to
"John, [rest of email here]", it fails. Same with other names. That makes
no sense to me. Us ASP.NET developers should be able to personalize an
email with a first name and get through without that affecting the results!
I also found that sometimes adding a few garbage words or numbers actually
made it go through. One email had a 4 digits number addition near the end,
and it went through every time (whereas before the number it failed). But
if I changed any one of the 4 digits to something else, it went to the junk
folder. That almost suggests there is some algorithm like a MOD10 credit
card checksum algorith that will purposely let an email go through???

Is Hotmail (and the company that manages their filter) just trying to screw
with us on purpose because soon they are going to charge 1 penny/email to
senders if we want a guarantee of getting through the filter? If we don't
work together here to figure these things out, we'll all be paying a penny
per email soon just because they forced us, and not because of real spam
reasons.

I thought maybe some here might know how to get around some of these weird
little things. Anyone have any thoughts/suggestions/findings?

 

[HB]

If they actually had junk filters that work well, both companies and
consumers could be happy, and without charging 1 cent each. Let me remind
you that companies will have to pass that cost along somehow.

I'd sure like to hear of any suggestions if someone here has learned some
good tips.

That's some amazing analysis. It certainly sounds like Hotmail is
clueless
about filtering.

I've come to believe that charging that 1 cent will eliminate almost all
of
the junk email I get. Since I only send a few dozen per day, it'd be a
good
trade off -- I spend more than .25 of my time clearing junk.

As many of us know, when we send legitimate emails to real customers from
our apps, those emails often end up in the Hotmail (and MSN -- and AOL,
too)
junk folder. I've done a lot of testing with Hotmail, using different
domain sender names, different sending IPs, different SMTP servers, etc.,
different email text, and I still can't find out why Hotmail blocks so
many
good emails and throws them in the junk folder. The sending IP even has
a
domain name lookup record for the mail server on that IP. It seems to
go
to the junk folder more with plain text emails than HTML emails, from my
testing. I even sent emails from Outlook, without code, to a hotmail
account to test that, and I still often ended up in the junk folder.
Nothing in my email text is typical of spam messages. Even simple things
like pretending to ask a co-worker if they can join me at a meeting next
week ended up in the junk folder.

So I took some good email text that went through, and started to strip
out
sentences and characters until it failed (went to junk folder), and then
tried adding back sentences and characters, etc. I found that you can
write "Jim, [rest of email here]" and get through, but if you change it
to
"John, [rest of email here]", it fails. Same with other names. That
makes
no sense to me. Us ASP.NET developers should be able to personalize an
email with a first name and get through without that affecting the
results!
I also found that sometimes adding a few garbage words or numbers
actually
made it go through. One email had a 4 digits number addition near the
end,
and it went through every time (whereas before the number it failed).
But
if I changed any one of the 4 digits to something else, it went to the
junk
folder. That almost suggests there is some algorithm like a MOD10 credit
card checksum algorith that will purposely let an email go through???

Is Hotmail (and the company that manages their filter) just trying to
screw
with us on purpose because soon they are going to charge 1 penny/email to
senders if we want a guarantee of getting through the filter? If we
don't
work together here to figure these things out, we'll all be paying a
penny
per email soon just because they forced us, and not because of real spam
reasons.

I thought maybe some here might know how to get around some of these
weird
little things. Anyone have any thoughts/suggestions/findings?

 

[Guest]

I do agree. I've just given up on expecting a good filter. They block the
wrong stuff and let the junk thru.
Authentication of the sender would also probably work -- and not cost
anything. This seems to be generating more interest.

-- Chris

 

[V]

I am not sure if my comment is off-topic, but has anyone done any such
analysis on Gmail?? I hardly ever et spam in my inbox (and very few of
my legitimate mail ends up in the Spam folder).

I don't use hotmail, so can't tell my experience there.

This is an interesting discussion, and I won't mind being part of it,
but I wonder if this belongs to another forum

If there is anyone who wants to start a thread, I would be willing to
contribute some of my time to do more analysis.

Regards,
Vaibhav

 

[HB]

I have tested with gmail and most emails do not go to the junk folder. They
handle it much better than Microsoft.

<< If there is anyone who wants to start a thread, I would be willing to
contribute some of my time to do more analysis.>>

Didn't I start such a thread? I guess I am misunderstanding your point
here.

Yes, I would love to see anyone do some testing, too, and post their results
and learned tricks.

 

[Juan T. Llibre]

re:

If there is anyone who wants to start a thread, I would be willing to contribute some of my time
to do more analysis.

Please limit the discussions in this newsgroup to ASP.NET-related issues.

Thank you for your cooperation.

 

[V]

To answer both the posts from HB and Juan....

I have mentioned in my post that this thread is not a suitable forum
for this topic. (Please read my post)...

So HB - this is my meaning when i say start a thread - Start a thread
somewhere suitable.

And Juan - I agree that this is not the place for such a topic



Regards,
Vaibhav

 

[HB]

I'm not opposed to starting a thread somewhere else, if someone wants to
provide a suggested group, but... I must disagree that this is the wrong
place. The issue here is about sending email from ASP.NET, in batches, to
customers, through code. As someone who has helped hundreds of other people
in this group, I would expect some leniency. I know the issue is more about
the business issues, but who is faced with this issue? ASP.NET developers
being asked to send emails to customers! This is the group of people
affected by this issue. How do we solve the issues? By implementing
specific tricks through code to bypass the spam filters. So, some posts
may be 100% compatible with the group, but this post is still a good 70%
compatible. And considering is already here, please don't simply dismiss
it. Do you know an ASP.NET developer who doesn't send emails from code to
customers or website visitors? I don't.

 

[Juan T. Llibre]

HB,

Nobody can stop you from posting about whatever you want to post about.

That having been said, there isn't any *code* answer which will solve your problem.
Your problem is an issue of the *content* you include in your emails, not a code issue.

re:

How do we solve the issues? By implementing specific tricks through code to bypass the spam
filters.

There's *nothing* you could change in *code* to achieve your goal.

Your mails are sent and delivered by ASP.NET, and there's no code which you could change
to make Hotmail, Gmail, MSN or AOL accept content which their rules classify as "spammish".

This is not a question of "leniency", since these groups are peer-to-peer,
and monitored by MSFT only for SPAM, which your thread clearly is not.

However, the purpose of this newsgroup is to provide a venue
for peers to help each other solve ASP.NET *code* issues.

After sounding out the developers here, as you have done, please try to find a more suitable
venue to discuss circumventing mail server content rules so that your emails aren't rejected.

If you do find a way to circumvent the problem through code, though, please let us all know.
We are always looking for code solutions to programming problems.

This issue doesn't seem to be a programming problem, though.

 

[HB]

While I appreciate you acknowleding that you're not the police of the group,
I still must respectfully disagree. Absent someone else suggesting a better
group, I'll continue here and would appreciate others doing the same.

1) This forum is NOT strictly for coding issues. If people want to discuss
a licensing question for ASP.NET, they can do that here. I've answered many
such questions for people here.

2) This issue affects most everyone who participates in this group, because
most everyone here sends emails from ASP.NET.

3) I do believe there are coding issues that can help. As I noted, sending
an HTML email had different results. Changing header information may help.
Setting a TXT record on the DNS server has implications. The "to" display
name that you set with a .NET property has implications. There are real
technical issues here besides just the raw letters in the email body.

C'mon people, let's focus on the real issue. We're all affected. If anyone
else wants to do testing, you'll see what I mean. It's a good brain teaser
at best.

 

[Juan T. Llibre]

re:

I still must respectfully disagree.

To me, the problem seems to be content-related but, hey, what do I know ?

It will be interesting to see what kind of response you get from others,
particularly as to whether the answer to the problem is in the coding.

 

[V]

Err... So back to discussion then. How do you propose we do this? How
about putting together a more structures list of test cases which we
can run with various service providers (gmail, hotmail, etc.) and then
executing those test cases against each and then publishing the
results??

- Vaibhav

 

[HB]

Sounds good to me.

 

[V]

Why don't we start by you listing all the tests that you did (in a
point form), then I can carry those out for Gmail, and publish the
result.

- V

 

[davidonlaptop]

SenderID Technology

Hello All,

According to this Forum, you have to use the SenderID Technology to resolve the problem.

I am going to try this way and post here if it works.

 

[revmakx_soft]

Hello,

All what ever be the mail content the hotmail filters the emails with the header option. Once you have a perfect header you can stop hotmail from putting you into junk

http://www.revmakx.com/softwares/mailing.html take a look at this script and you can take a demo as well.

If you need more info you can mail me at (e-mail address removed)

Thanks
Revmakx