[plug] [OT] hotmail hostility

[sol]

Thanks Alex, Ryan and Phillip for your replies.

It looks like you guys may be right on. Right after I emailed the list I 
emailed abuse at hotmail.com (NB: I wasn't expecting a reply within the month.)
The auto-responder partly answered my question. FYI, see below:
<snip>
*************************
I. Limiting Junk E-mail ("spam")

Hotmail employs the following methods to help protect you against spam:

  - We limit the number of individual recipients for each e-mail message.
  - We don't allow numeric characters at the beginning of an e-mail address. 
Any Hotmail sign-in name beginning with a numeric character is a forgery.
</snip><snip>
Do:
  - Remove yourself from any unprotected member directory.
  - Open another e-mail account that you can use as an address for newsgroup 
and listserve publications or for posting on bulletin boards.
  - Use the "Block Sender" option in Hotmail to block the delivery of e-mail 
from a specific sender.
  - Use the Junk Mail Filter feature of Hotmail to filter spam into your Junk 
Mail folder.

Don't:
  - Use your primary account to post to an online service or any Internet 
bulletin board.
  - Use your primary account to post in a Usenet newsgroup or mailing list.
</snip>

In other words, if you want to use a hotmail account don't join any mailing 
list, bulletin board, usenet group, or online service. In fact don't do 
anything useful with your hotmail account except reading our advertisements.

I'll let you know if I find out anything else useful. Unless I get a more 
useful response from M$N Hotmail, I may just have to mail (in batches less 
than 50) those subscribers with hotmail addresses letting them know that they 
won't be receiving mail from our list anymore. :-(

regards; sol


On Thu, 3 Apr 2003 10:55 am, Bennett, Phillip wrote:
> IIRC, it was on the Register or The Inquirer that they mentioned that
> hotmail is putting in limits to the number of addresses a message can be
> sent to (for spam reasons).  Looks like there was over 50 addresses on the
> mailing list and this is probably why it rejected it...
>
> HTH,
> Phil.
>
> On Thu, 3 Apr 2003 10:39 am, Ryan wrote:
> > On Thu, 2003-04-03 at 10:32, sol wrote:
> > > Sorry, this is an off-topic question, but if anyone is likely to know
> > > the answer it is - ironically - you guys/gals :). Plus it could open up
> > > a fabulous opportunity to bitch about Micro$loth.
> > >
> > > An email sent via Mailman to a mailing list just got a reply from
> > > postmaster at mail.hotmail.com saying:
> > >
> > > "This is an automatically generated Delivery Status Notification.
> > >
> > > Delivery to the following recipients failed."
> >
> > I read somewhere recently (forget where) about some new limits they have
> > put in place to reduce hotmail's reputation as a spammers haven.  I
> > think they all related to the number of messages per day that a member
> > could send and the number of receipients they could put in each message,
> > so I can't see how that would affect you unless your mailman list is
> > sending through a hotmail account somehow.
> >
> > Similarly, Telstra's server are notorious for random outages and
> > denials, so it isn't too much of a stretch for hotmail to have a problem
> > also.
> >
> > So in summary: I don't know :)
> >
> > Ryan