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Email notifications in Outlook


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Just wondering, has anyone else stopped receiving email notifications from BM - and other forums - in Microsoft Outlook? I first noticed that I'd stopped getting notifications from subscribed Youtube channels last week, then over the last couple of days have had nothing from BM and also other forums I usually get them from. Knowing how useless Outlook's spam 'filter' is I did check whether they'd managed to add BM to my blocked senders list but they hadn't (nor had they added Youtube or any other forum) 

 

So, just interested if anyone else is noticing the same?

 

Keith

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Hi Keith. I was just about to post the same question. So thank you. Yes mine stopped working over this weekend. I think the last I had were on Friday. I have Britmodeller in my safe list and as a contact.

Sorry you have the same problem but glad I'm not the only one.

Kind regards, 

Stix

Just now, alt-92 said:

Do you mean the built-in Mail app in Windows, the Webbased Hotmail renamed one,  or the proper Office Outlook version?

All of mine - PC and mobile have stopped.

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If it's more than just BM, then probably this isn't the right section.

That said: Microsoft currently is using several techniques to try and combat spam. DKIM/DMARC and SPF being some of those.
So proper mailflow depends on whether the mailserver is correctly listed as the One and Only Server Allowed to send you mails pertaining to be from BM.

 

What I can see in headers is:
 

Quote

Authentication-Results: mx.google.com; dkim=pass [email protected] header.s=default header.b=nzgF6N80;

spf=neutral (google.com: 154.16.147.20 is neither permitted nor denied by best guess record for domain of [email protected]) [email protected]

So a more strict SPF check (hard fail)  might drop messages from server.bm.com when using BM.com as sender address...

 

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1 minute ago, alt-92 said:

If it's more than just BM, then probably this isn't the right section.

That said: Microsoft currently is using several techniques to try and combat spam. DKIM/DMARC and SPF being some of those.
So proper mailflow depends on whether the mailserver is correctly listed as the One and Only Server Allowed to send you mails pertaining to be from BM.

 

What I can see in headers is:
 

So a more strict SPF check (hard fail)  might drop messages from server.bm.com when using BM.com as sender address...

 

 

I was a software engineer for over 25 years and I'm afraid I didn't understand any of that.... :) (worked exclusively with IBM Mainframes). The only thing I think I may get from it is that the problem is likely to have been caused by microsoft. Again....

 

All I know is for some reason notifications from this site, youtube and a number of other forums stopped arriving these past few days, when there's been no problems with any of them for years. I posted here as I have far more notification traffic from BM than all the others sites combined.

 

Keith

 

 

 

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The techie info is maybe more of benefit of the admins here ;)

In Mainframe speak: drop connection, host not in allow list.

 

The nice part about Sender Policy Framework is that it's relatively simple to do in DNS - and I don't think there's more than 16 servers that will try and send as BM (which is the max for one SPF record)

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I hadn't noticed - until you mentioned it -that I was missing YouTube notifications as well. I still seem to be getting them from Pinterest and Loudwire.

Kind regards,

Stix 

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3 hours ago, keefr22 said:

Was that in Outlook?

No, my point was that BM is sending. I get my mail from gmail via Thunderbird on Linux.

Since notifications from other fora are implicated, it probably is indeed MS. Did you check your SPAM folder? Perhaps MS tweaked the rules? Otherwise, Google found various discussions of ways that might cause some email to go missing.

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9 hours ago, Greg B said:

From the looks of it, its out of our paws for this one.

 

TBH Greg I don't think it's anything to do with BM (or the other forums or Youtube) - I suspected another Microsoft stuff up as soon as it started! And I noticed last night some other functionality has gone awol when composing emails, so gawd only knows what they've done!

 

6 hours ago, dnl42 said:

Did you check your SPAM folder?

 

Yes. First thing! And blocked sender list, allow sender list etc....

 

K

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I have had a quick look online this morning but there doesn't seem to be anything about anyone complaining about current issues with Hotmail/Outlook. I only tried Googling it briefly mind.

Kind regards, 

Stix

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It does look like we're not the culprit, although some email providers do send some of our automated emails into spam.  The funniest part of that is that gmail and hotmail are both pretty big sources of spam themselves, so... IRONY!!!!! :dull:

 

With it being a wider issue, I think we're looking at a Microsoft issue, or there's been an update to one of the mailer apps on servers (MS or Linux, usually) that has screwed with some of the security settings, which some sysadmins may have missed.  I think it's time to speak with your mail providers, give them as many tidbits of information as you can pull together such as domains, dates and turn it over to them to look into.  If enough people start moaning, maybe they'll do something about it :shrug:

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As I said to Greg Mike, I don't think it's owt to do with BM. As to contacting MS support I'd get more sense talking to our cat.... :rolleyes:

 

5 hours ago, PlaStix said:

I have had a quick look online this morning but there doesn't seem to be anything about anyone complaining about current issues with Hotmail/Outlook. I only tried Googling it briefly mind.

 

 

I did the same Stix, couldn't find anything either.

 

Keith

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3 hours ago, Mike said:

If enough people start moaning, maybe they'll do something about it :shrug:

Can you check (or have someone check) the SPF records for britmodeller.com ?

It's configured to do a soft-fail, but if you're sure no other machines from the range will be sending out mails it may be worth it to set it to a stricter hard-fail.

The ~all is soft (and would still allow other hosts)  -all is a strict fail.

v=spf1 +a +mx +ip4:154.16.147.16 +ip4:154.16.147.177 +ip4:154.16.147.178 +ip4:154.16.147.20 ~all

 

It might also be worth it to have a look at implementing DMARC records.

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21 minutes ago, alt-92 said:

Can you check (or have someone check) the SPF records for britmodeller.com ?

It's configured to do a soft-fail, but if you're sure no other machines from the range will be sending out mails it may be worth it to set it to a stricter hard-fail.

The ~all is soft (and would still allow other hosts)  -all is a strict fail.

We have SPF records set up, but the configuration of them is beyond my braincell power.  We have one server at the moment - those few words I did understand. :dunce:

 

22 minutes ago, alt-92 said:

It might also be worth it to have a look at implementing DMARC records.

 

We've got those too.  Again, set up for us by our hosts, IIRC.

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2 minutes ago, alt-92 said:

Beg pardon, DKIM is set up. DMARC is a different type of record :)

 

 

:pardon:

 

Let me have a looksee on the server for a minute, and I'll PM you what we have there.  You might be able to make more sense of them than I can ;)

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I've sent @alt-92 a quick PM of our DNS records relevant to the quality of our email reputation, and hopefully he can throw some light on any inconsistencies in the settings.  I've a feeling that our new server name needs to be added somewhere along the line, so I'll be having a chat with Support.  Our emails are going out as usual, but I'm wondering if somewhere a change has been made to the requirements for a "good reputation".  If our emails (and the other places too) don't meet that new criteria, our mail might be going in the bin or Spam folder.  If we can get that sorted and improve our reputation, we should be interfered with less by these big email handlers. :)

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