outlook.com
It’s time for another entry in the DELIVTERMS dictionary! Today, let’s define JMRP. JMRP is the “Junk Mail Reporting Program,” the mechanism by which email sending platforms and internet service providers can receive complaints back whenever an Outlook.com (Microsoft OLC) user clicks the “report spam” button to tell Microsoft that they think a particular email message is spam. You might find some older documentation that refers to this as the “Junk Mail Reporting Partner Program” (JMRPP) – that’s an older name for the same thing. Overall, mailbox providers and internet service providers call these types of mechanisms “Feedback Loops.” Thus, the JMRP is the Microsoft Outlook.com ISP feedback loop. A sender must utilize a dedicated sending IP address to sign up for JMRP; the intent is for the owner of an IP address to get complaints back about mail sent from their own IP address. (Platform owners, whether or not
Microsoft’s SNDS (Smart Network Data Services), the reputation portal that provides deliverability feedback for folks sending to Microsoft Outlook.com/Hotmail, appears to be down at the moment. Microsoft has set an “under maintenance” static page in its place, as of my last check at 9:15 am US central time on Wednesday, October 18th.I’ll update this page as I get more information.What is SNDS? Click here to learn more.
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
Starting on August 16th, Microsoft seems to have stopped sending feedback loop reports. Microsoft’s FBL is called the “JMRP” (Junk Mail Reporting Program) and multiple folks are indicating that the email feed of complaint reports that this entails seems to have dried up. Microsoft has been notified but I’ve not heard of any ETA for a fix at this time. I’ll be sure to update this post if/when I receive more information.[ H/T: LB Blair and others ]
Multiple folks over on the Mailop list are reporting that Microsoft OLC (Outlook.com/Hotmail/etc)’s IPv6 inbound mail servers are deferring inbound mail delivery attempts with “451 4.7.500 Server busy. Please try again later” errors. The fix seems to be to stop trying to send it over IPv6 and send the mail to any IPv4 MX record instead, and then your queues will drain successfully.What domains are affected? Likely all domains I’ve listed here as handled by Microsoft, and only if you send over IPv6, and only if the recipient domain is a Microsoft-hosted domain that has an MX record with a hostname that maps to an IPv6 address.If you’re sending mail using an ESP or CRM platform, you’re probably not affected by this. Big mail sending platforms, especially US-based ones, almost exclusively use IPv4 IP addresses, not IPv6.Why is this affecting mail over IPv6 only? Nothing has been confirmed, but I
Check it out! It looks like Microsoft has updated SNDS to provide a bit more info than they provided previously. In the “Comments” column, they’re now including snapshot counts of spam complaints received for that IP address at various points throughout the day.Where it says 10 complaints at 4:30 pm and 18 complaints at 4:37 pm, I think that means that eight complaints came in between 4:30 and 4:37. Might that be useful for folks looking to better identify which sends at which time are generating the most complaints?Note: It appears that the date/time in that comments field is when the complaint occurred, not when the campaign was sent. I’ve seen at least one example where that complaint date in the comments is a few days after the campaign send date. I suspect that could cause a bit of confusion.[ H/T: Mawutor Amesawu and Jennifer Nespola Lantz ]