deliverability issues
Today, Wednesday, October 11th, many senders are reporting trouble (specifically, delayed mail) when attempting to send email to Microsoft-hosted subscribers. Here’s more on the issue from Steve Atkins from Word to the Wise. I’m keeping a close eye on my Office365 admin dashboard to watch for updates on this issue. Microsoft has logged this as “incident EX680695” and those with O365 admin access can go to Home -> Health -> Exchange Online -> Health to see the current status and click on the incident/advisories there to find the latest details. Here’s a direct link to that incident information, which likely only works if you have appropriate access.Many (but not all) senders were impacted, seeing “451 4.7.500 Server busy” delivery delays when sending to email domains hosted by Office 365 / Exchange Online. Many of the senders reporting trouble were located in the EU; suggesting that the issue may be EU-specific, or specific
That screenshot above is from an email message that I received recently. I get a lot of wacky emails, but this one takes it to a whole new level. This person did not research his target very well, and I find the content to be borderline deceptive. They are careful to say “I have results about” not “I see that you’re having trouble” to sort of hedge the bet, as if to say “I have information about your spam folder percentage” only to find out that the percentage is zero, and to be met with the defense “but zero is a percent.”This is silly. And I share this silliness not to name and shame (note that I have not shared the sender’s last name or company), but to point out that you can’t always trust everything that people tell you. In this case, I run my own dedicated MTA, with
Multiple folks are reporting Gmail delivery issues today — both “571” style spam bounce blocks and spam folder placement. Some of the affected folks seem to be sending corporate mail, outbound from Proofpoint or Microsoft O365 hosted environments. It happens to some folks from time to time, but there are enough reports of it out in the wild that I think that perhaps Google released a significant Gmail filter update within the past 1-3 days and that it might be a bit buggy. It already sounds like some of those same folks are now seeing improvement. If you’re affected, be sure to submit sample messages via the Gmail Sender Contact Form — though they do not always respond, they do review every ticket, and in a scenario like this, sending them data and feedback is important. (Click here to learn more about that sender form process.)Of course, you need to