Hotmail addresses not emailed using “Send a Message”

[apolloag]

Recently someone in our ward sent out an email to all members of the ward. Myself and two others, who all have hotmail.com email addresses did not receive the message. We could not find it in our spam folders either.

Is this a known issue?

Thank you,

Adrian

[caillines]

There's an ongoing issue with yahoo addresses (see various other threads in this forum). I haven't seen anything specific with hotmail addresses, but that doesn't mean it's not an issue.

[dellijo]

I have had the same issue, with both the ongoing yahoo issue and now the hotmail.
I have been collecting names and forwarding messages from my personal acct.
This is an inconsistent problem. Some people are not getting ward level message, while still receiving Stake, some are vice versa, and some are receiving none at all.

[mikeschern]

This still is a problem with hotmail.com addresses.....members get emails for a while, then they don't. Is something being done to fix this?

[rmrichesjr]

This still is a problem with hotmail.com addresses.....members get emails for a while, then they don't. Is something being done to fix this?

There is a new feature in Church Account settings or in the ward map/directory. By default, new and many other members are opted out of receiving email from 'Send a Message'. It's just a personal guess on my part, but I would think that's part of a solution to this problem.

Meanwhile, it _MIGHT_ help for a member who wishes to receive messages to put the sender email address(es) in their contacts list. However, that may not be very helpful if the member has already stopped receiving the messages.

[newtonjoyce]

I'm glad to hear I'm not the only one having this experience. Actually, I am sad that there are those of us who are.
In this day and age, you wouldn't think this would be happening...I least I wouldn't. I checked the settings on my account and all seems just fine.

It feels like I'm back using 'dial up' all over again in trying to get the kinks smoothed out.
Thanks for all of the input.

[ambldsorg]

I'm glad to hear I'm not the only one having this experience. Actually, I am sad that there are those of us who are.

You are not alone in this, by no means. It has been over a year since you posted this, are you still unable to receive LCR emails?

I've been unable to receive ward and stake level communications via email for over 4 years now. I receive other official Church announcements just fine. For example, this morning I received:

Date: Sun, 24 Nov 2024 09:34:04 -0600
From: Gospel Learning and Teaching from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints <C***********n@message.ChurchofJesusChrist.org>
Subject: Ideas for Meaningful Study and Discussion

Note that in this case the email was sent From message.churchofjesuschrist.org. Those that originate from LCR use mail.churchofjesuschrist.org. This is probably a good design to segregate communications into different domains as it will keep problems isolated to their own functional sphere.

For LCR, I believe that somehow email addresses of members are being added to a blacklist that is in use somewhere between LCR and your service (Hotmail).

viewtopic.php?p=254713#p254713

In this day and age, you wouldn't think this would be happening...I least I wouldn't.

Unfortunately it's not as simple as that. The world has gone bonkers over trying to block emails and as a result there is a lot of collateral damage. When services start blocking communications, for whatever reason, that introduces a lot of uncertainty in the communication system as a whole. This particular warning was made in RFC 5321 section 6.2 about dropping messages lowering the confidence of email in general.

https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc5321.html#section-6.2

I think the biggest challenge is lack of open communication channels with those who are able to diagnose and resolve issues and transparency of what's going on. When someone sends you a message using LCR, they will get back a report that indicates success and if there were any failures, those are listed. Have you contacted those who are sending you messages via LCR to see if they are getting those reports?

In my case, the reports state:

The recipients below were rejected by the server. Please verify their email addresses.

However, I know with certainty that my email address works and that my service is NOT blocking mail.churchofjesuschrist.org. I also know for a certainty that the LCR emails are being delivered via the Amazon SES service (you can see this for yourself by inspecting the email headers of messages that come from the LCR system---if you can get one). Given that, there must necessarily exist a list of addresses somewhere to which my email address has been added that prevents delivery of ward and stake messages. Is this in the LCR system? Is it in Amazon SES? Only those who are the stewards of LCR and the Church email delivery systems can answer this question.

God Bless.

[tobynixon]

Microsoft has become extremely aggressive in branding email sources as spammers and silently blocking all incoming email from those sources. Hotmail.com, outlook.com, MSN.com, live.com, and other email addresses hosted by Microsoft are affected. It doesn't take much to get branded as a spammer by them.

I run a small server and host emails list for a few small non-profits. Microsoft has branded my entire server as a spam source even though every person on every one of my lists requested to be on it. But simply sending a few hundred emails into Microsoft servers in a short period of time can get you flagged as a spam source. So can repeatedly sending to invalid email addresses, which happens when people change email providers but fail to remove their old address from the list and add the new one. And if enough people report an email as spam, such as because they no longer want to be on a list but can't figure out how to unsubscribe, can also get the sender branded as a speaker.

And to make matters worse, it is all done automatically by AI algorithms, not by a human being making a reasoned decision. And it is almost impossible to find a human at Microsoft able and willing to override those AI decisions.

Compare my server, which sends at most to a couple of hundred email addresses hosted by Microsoft, to the Church, which probably sends to hundreds of thousands of Microsoft-hosted addresses, and you can see how easy it is for church email servers to end up on Microsoft's black list.

[ambldsorg]

Compare my server, which sends at most to a couple of hundred email addresses hosted by Microsoft, to the Church, which probably sends to hundreds of thousands of Microsoft-hosted addresses, and you can see how easy it is for church email servers to end up on Microsoft's black list.

I can well believe it. This is why the LCR system needs to do better at delivering accurate and precise bounce messages back to the people who are using "Send a Message". I cannot take a simple email report devoid of detail to my ISP (or email provider) that states:

The recipients below were rejected by the server. Please verify their email
addresses.

This is nigh unto useless in my opinion.

As an operator of an email server you know that good bounce messages include the server that was contacted and what it reported at the time of delivery and are vital to tracking down problems. Such a message would include enough details for those who are using LCR for communication to pass it on to the members who are having trouble and they could then take it up with their provider. Furthermore, good bounce messages would not leave us guessing as to what's really going on.

I may be naïve in thinking that if enough customers of Microsoft were to appeal that Microsoft would relent.

God Bless.