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Hotmail Blocks Gmail Emails (and Invites)
bonhomme_de_neige writes "Emails and invitations sent to Hotmail from Gmail accounts do not bounce, but nor do they arrive in the recipient's Inbox - they vanish mysteriously into the aether. Joel Johnson writes in his Gizmodo weblog that invitations he sent to a Hotmail address bounced (this even received coverage from ZDNet). Search Engine Roundtable writes that several ISPs are blocking Gmail. It's already well-documented that Yahoo moves Gmail invites into the Bulk Mail folder. I've personally confirmed the Hotmail and Yahoo blocking." Please note: I've not been able to verify this one way or another.
Mega-corporations don't play nice? Really? I'm absolutely flabbergasted!
Stop corporate
Please note: I've not been able to verify this one way or another.
;)
But I won't let that stop me from posting it!
I would expect this from Microsoft. They can blame the spam filters, to try and save face, but the simple fact is, they are simply taking a page from their own rulebook; they don't want to lose advertising revenue from people switching to Gmail, so they are breaking the law and interfering with email. If Microsoft had successfully bought Google to trash it, Gmail would not have existed at all. For those of you just tuning in, Hotmail is owned and operated by Microsoft, after they bought the service in 1998. I was a Hotmail member prior to Microsoft being involved and the service has declined significantly since the old days. Although many of the features have improved since then, the bulk of the Hotmail service is becoming increasingly unreliable for email that just "has to get there".
In other news, we've got lots of Gmail invites for military folks here, so if you want Gmail for large files and you are a soldier, or if you want to donate your invites to soldiers, check us out. This is not just for American military, but any democratic military, such as Canada or the UK.
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
Hotmail is still not as efficient at blocking Gmail as Internet Explorer is efficient at unblocking pop-ups.
Mountains out of mole hiles. It's just a spam filter blocking bot mail.
Quality over Quantity.http://www.virusgaming.com/
I just tested to three hotmail accounts, invites and standard emails get through fine. Not sure about yahoo tho.
I've invited two people on their Hotmail accounts, and both received the emails just fine.
"I'm not sure which is the bigger disappointment; my failure to formulate a unified field theory, or you."--Stephen Haw
The sad thing is that I'm not really surprised... disappointed, perhaps, but not surprised.
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
... if I were a spam filter, I would have seen the gmail email as spam too... I mean LOOK at it.
"When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back!" -- Cave Johnson
Please note: I've not been able to verify this one way or another.
Are the editors finally trying to verify things around here?
If that's the case, I commend them.
Until Slashdot fixes the funny modifier, use insightful or interesting. The poster knows your intentions.
So thats why my G-mail invite never showed up!!
I got an invite from my buddy, he even sent it to me using his gmail address. me thinks this story is FUD.
To test, I sent two messages from GMail: one directly to my Hotmail account and one which I only CC'ed to my Hotmail account. The CC'd message arrived immediately but the direct message (sent first) arrived about 5 minutes later.
I have an hotmail account, and my cousin was able to send me a Gmail invite to that account a week ago. Perhaps the situation changed, I don't know.
Please direct all bug reports to
Just sent my hotmail account a mail from my gmail account. The message didn't bounce and arrived in my hotmail account just fine.
So at least hotmail isn't using dirty tactics.
Hate me!
I just sent a test message from my gmail account to my hotmail address and got it right away.
It looks like Hotmail staff finelly discovered procmail and /dev/null.
When am I gonna get my invite to meet G-man?
That party's been delayed for ages now.
i recieved all of mine perfectly, i have no greedy filters set either
PEBKAC
I've found that my posts don't format quite right w/o a sig.
I just got my invite on saturday and it went into the bulk folder, but I have it specified that way. That night i sent out several emails to people all with hotmail accounts and they all recieved theirs
How exactly is filtering incoming e-mail against the law?
It's possible that the blocking is happening because of some poor sap's unfortunate legal name. He might actually be named "Instant Winner", or "Free Vacation". Crazy hippies.
stuff |
Had some problems sending to hotmail for a few hours last week but that's about it. I guess it's just hotmails spam filters trying to adapt to a new email domain sending thousands of email to its customers.
Growing pains are to be expected.
After reading most of these links (I know.. I actually RTFA), these blogs and other articles were posted months ago (back in April!). Perhaps they have since changed their ways after numerous postings about it?
Hmmm.
I invited someone with a hotmail address about a week ago, and they accepted with no problem. So unless they've suddenly changed their policy after the first several thousand invites went out, this is an isolated email problem reported on one person's weblog. Spam filters moving the invite into a bulk mail folder is to be expected - it is an automatically generated email sent out in bulk, after all.
So the core of this Slashdot "article" is some posting on one guy's blog about losing a invitation he sent to his girlfriend. And that's been extrapolated into "Hotmail blocks Gmail".
If you read the blog article the writer blows all credibility when he reveals that someone just told him about the "Sent Folder":
Update: Thanks to everyone telling me to check the Sent folder. I can at least retrieve the invites now.
When are people going to realize that blogs are the equivalent of public urination on the web. People post stream of consciousness bullshit dressed up as "information" or even "facts" and because it's on a blog, well then, it must be true.
John.
Not that I would put it beyond Microsoft to block a competitor, but if you RTFA you see that a possible reason for the invites being bounced is that they are being picked up by the spam filters.
k in g-gmail-invitations-015942.php
http://www.gizmodo.com/archives/is-hotmail-bloc
Sorry but this came right out the box of Microsoft's dirty tricks. If you can't get your e-mail then you can't switch services, microsoft already has to deal with Linux, why not shut out Gmail while we're at it? At least this time it won't cost a small company millions because Microsoft didn't like them. I just wonder how many people will sue when they lose money through Ebay when buying one and it never arriving.
I like muppets.
...by spam bayes outlook plugin, almost missed the three week window too, so yeah, it does look very spammy.
I am NaN
I just sent an invite to my niece last night. Went through fine. Put away the tinfoil.
-
I Concur with parent. My hotmail account accepted a Gmail invite not more than 20 min ago. I had no issues, other than Gmail being down/slow, probably being slashdotted...
Richard
Post: Sigged, for your pleasure.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Or in other words, you are practicing the old time honoured passtime of spreading a rumour.
Great work.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
As recently as last week. I got a g-mail invite to my hotmail account, signed up, and am now using gmail. Works fine.
- Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
It's already well-documented that Yahoo moves Gmail invites into the Bulk Mail folder. I've personally confirmed the Hotmail and Yahoo blocking.
Much as I enjoy wearing my tinfoil hat, I think it can be dispensed with here.
Both Hotmail and Yahoo mail have been plagued with spam, and with users demanding they do something about that spam. Indeed, that's one reason people are interested in GMail.
Since almost all spam -- anything we think of spam, anyway -- arrives in mass quantities, and a logical way to reduce spam is simply to look for many addresses receiving the same email.
So a decent first cut at filtering bulk spam (and recall that both Yahoo and Hotmail use "bulk mail" folders) would be to take an MD5 sum of each email (not including the "To" address header lines, of course), stick the sum in hash table or other database, and increment a counter for each email with that MD5 sum. Once the counter reached some arbitrary large-ish number, you'd mark all copies of that emails spam.
Since the GMial invite varies slightly, it's clear that something fuzzier than an MD5 sum is being used, but the principle remains the same.
The first N GMail invites weren't marked as "bulk email"; after the counter threshold was reached, all the rest have been.
So all we've learned from this is that, even during this invite-only beta test, GMail must be sending out a hell of a lot of invites, and that, yes indeed, Hotmail and Yahoo customers demanded and got "bulk email" filtering.
So take off the tinfoil hats -- you'll have a real reason to wear them soon enough.
Opinions on the Twiddler2 hand-held keyboard?
I had an invite sent to my Hotmail address yesterday, and it arrived safely in my inbox within seconds. However, a message I sent from my Gmail account to somebody else's Hotmail went into their 'Junk Mail' folder.
Either way, I'm sure Microsoft will rectify this situation, or risk losing customers.
Mr. Brin is becoming Mr. BrinNigma, or the Riddler. I can imagine him sitting in a huge throne, with GOOGLE carved into the throne's back and a stream of green binary data flowing from a CISCO switch right into his head, while Serge is laughing demonically. After all, information is what makes one powerfull.
;)
Maybe M$ sees itself as a Batman of some sort
You can't handle the truth.
Nothing like a little /. FUD, eh?
Just sent emails from gmail to Yahoo and gmail to Hotmail, both went through almost immediately.
Next!
I've been corresponding through my gmail account with a distant friend who has a hotmail address for about 2 months. He has had no trouble receiving any of my e-mails. The submitter's situation, however, seems legitimate.
...and it worked perfectly. I was able to get the invite in my Hotmail Inbox. So unless there are people with differing experiences, I'd say this is an over-reaction :)
Never underestimate the predictability of human stupidity...
but it worked just fine for me today.
btw this:
You are currently using 0 MB (0%) of your 1000 MB.
is a lot nicer to see than 10% used in hotmail for 6 e-mails, none of which are html or have pics.
Can anyone login to gmail currently? I got my invite in hotmail this morning, signed up, but gmail keeps saying: " Gmail is temporarily unavailable. Cross your fingers and try again in a few minutes. We're sorry for the inconvenience."
:(
Sucks
What's happening to Microsoft? Where is its aggressiveness going?
1 a2b3c4 d5e /gmail/ it would be common; then a character (I have seen only 'a's till now), followed by a '-', then 10 characters and then again a '-' and 10 characters
I am disappointed that MS is not doing even this one properly. I just copy pasted the link from a second gmail invitation that I received and sent to my brother's hotmail account and he received it just fine
A gmail invitation mail would include a link that'd be like
http://gmail.google.com/gmail/a-1a2b3c4d5e-
(No this one wouldn't work unless I am god or you are)
Till
Damn!!! Is it that difficult to search for such a pattern in a mail and hijack it??
I am disappointed MS, I am seriously disappointed
(Opera or GMail!?! I cho(o)se Opera)
I tried that. Yes, I have my own SMTP server. It was nice, fast, and super reliable until AOL/Comcast/Time Warner/pretty much everyone began blocking email from everyone except megacorp SMTP servers.
12:50 - press return.
yeah someone might want to check a few more facts before they make blind statments like this. seems to me like someone wanted to bash MS alittle more with out actualy bothering to see if it was true or check there email again or wait 20 minutes.
Its not that i actualy like MS its just the actual truth.
I got my invite just fine and so did my brother.
both of us got the invites through hotmail.
Non-smokers die every day --Bill Hicks
A Gmail invite came to my Yahoo account just fine.
Just so y'all know: I used http://www.gmailswap.com to get the invite. Thanks guys!
~D
This sig has been enciphered with a one-time pad. It could say almost anything.
This is not the first time Micro$oft does something stupid to counter competetors.Search for XFree86 in msn search used to result in pr0n links.
fifteen jugglers, five believers
Very funny in a warped sort of way. If email begins to fail regularly, this may be the straw that brings in full goverment regulation and all the blessings and other stuff that entails...
Remember at the dawn of the electrical age there were competing companies with many different voltages, made for exciting interoperability issues. Goverment regulation could be a blessing.
Other companies as Outblaze have similar practices. Recently, all emails from the un.org servers were BLOCKED. Outblaze claim that the sysadmin @ un.org blocked their servers for spam or other stuff (viruses, etc) and did not respond to their emails. What Outblaze did is the most stupid thing ever. I will not be renewing my subscription with them (www.operamail.com).
I may nderstand if they decided to block an ISP server, but blocking servers of the United Nations is just MORONIC; I doubt this happens outside the US.
Has anyone encountered similar stupid acts?
Bought a dirt-cheap account on Ebay on Saturday; the seller sent the link to my Hotmail account, and it never appeared in the inbox or the trash.
Had him send it to my main email address after reading this article, and the link worked fine. Needless to say, I'll be ditching Hotmail within 24 hours. This makes me incredibly angry.
http://www.farmerbob.org
"All I know is that when it comes to free email services, sometimes you get what you pay for"
Hmmm, if I send that e-mail message body to my dad's pay MSN account, it goes thru...
However, I will not attribute to malice what can be explained by stupidity. Hotmail has been so unreliable of late that at work we're close to the point where Hotmail addresses will not be accepted as a primary email address. Incredibly stupid filters tend to be at the root of the problems. If too many messages look the same Hotmail calls them spam and they vanish into a black hole. Meanwhile, actual spam fills many a Hotmail inbox.
account and I am able to forward back and forth without problems. I'd like to see some independent verification of this.
Don't be a looter...and yes, I know that it's spelled with an "A" instead of an "E".
I had the same thing happen to me when i ordered my modchip for my xbox a year ago. I had it send the confirmation email to my hotmail account (my mistake) which hotmail auto blocked.. I ended up trouble shooting this with their tech support and the only way i was able to recieve email from that domain was if i put their domain in the whitelist.
I invited a friend to my gmail account, sending the invite to her hotmail account. It worked perfectly.
Less Talk, More Beer.
I have had not one but three instances where gmail invites directly landed in the junk folder. The competition is killing ! both the giants, if Gmail sticks to its stand; it is likely to doom all other email providers.
Hotmail tagging the invites as junk may just be an accident. What about ISPs purposefully blocking all mail from gmail accounts? Nobody here seems to be focusing on that. This seems a much more serious problem.
From the forum mentioned:
"Thank you for contacting us. Unfortunately, due to potential privacy and confidentiallity considerations, we are not accepting inbound email from Google's Gmail service. In order for us to respond to your email, you will need to resend it from a different email account."
But what business of the ISPs is it if I choose to submit to the terms and conditions?
an invitation to
ieshan@gmail.com !?
Thanks in advance
Quick, someone send me a gmail invite to my email at : gmailme ATT linuxathome DOTT c o m. I'll forward it to my yahoo and hotmail account and will post the results here. Okay, okay, this is a desperate attempt to get a gmail invite, but it's worth a try right?
Linux at home
I tried an invite from Gmail to Hotmail and it came through fine for me.
I don't know about all this. My GMail invite when stright to my Yahoo! inbox last night.
you...
My buddy just sent me an invite on friday, and I quickly notified everybody on my hotmail contact list that I was switching over to gmail. I think i even included a little slam against microsoft in the mail. But i see no evidence of blocking invites. Below is a quick copy and paste from my hotmail account
From : XXXXXXX
Sent : Friday, June 18, 2004 3:37 PM
To : Ben Murphy
Subject : Ben, Piyush Patel has invited you to open a Google mail account
| | Trash Can | Inbox
I've been using Gmail and thought you might like to try it out. Here's
an invitation to create an account.
Biatch
XXXXXX has invited you to open a free Google Gmail account. The
invitation will expire in three weeks and can only be used to set up one
account.
To accept this invitation and register for your account, visit
you dont need the rest...
I just sent an invite to a hotmail account, and the person got it.
Did you every stop to think that non-delivery could be the result of an issue at the senders end? Just a thought but they are in beta.
I just want to repeat your post.
I got an invite from my buddy just last week in my Hotmail account from his gmail address.
FUD in my opinion too.
(hopefully everyone else on Slashdot who has NOT had a problem with this happening will post here as well to completely kill this.)
Karma: NaN
Someone has found a way to make lots of ./ers admit to using Hotmail.
I have e-mailed exactly two people in my whole life who had AOL addresses and both just disappeared. No bounced mail and no e-mail got to them.
It's like the post office not delivering your letters to towns they don't like!
I just got my GMail invitation from a friend who sent it to my hotmail account. It doesn't disappear, it goes into the junk mail like Yahoo does. Don't believe me? Here's a screenshot:
http://www.savefile.com/redir.php?id=1344
Business \Busi"ness\, n.;
A scam in which all people involved perceive as beneficial...
Works fine... Sent an email from my gmail.com account to my hotmail.com account. Went directly to the InBox. And I have my Junk Email Filter set to 'Enhanced'.
at how many of you "geeks" use other people's webmail systems. Seems to me that if Linux is so great (and it is) that you would setup your own mail server.
How many people here slam M$ and the turn around and check their Hotmail accounts?
That's what you get for using a free (crappy) service.
My ISP doesn't even have size restrictions on mail folders.
-Nick
"A plan fiendishly clever in its intricacies"- Homer Simpson
(Course, this'll just get modded down to troll level like everything else i say) Sounds to me like MS is just mad that they couldn't get their hands on Google earlier...
And everyone was worried about GMAIL scanning/parsing emails... pffft!
I set my father up with a Gmail invite to a Hotmail account as of last night 11pm EST. It doesn't mean that you can't send the invites as IMs to your webmail-restricted friends.
-Christopher Wu
http://www.christopherwu.net/
Wait a minute. You said it was in your bulk folder. Then you start talking about spam. But Hotmail didn't call it spam.
The invite was certainly bulk. It arrived as a part of a large number of substantively identical email messages. Like with posts to properly run mailing lists and other legitimate bulk email, your invite was solicited, so your copy wasn't spam.
Note that bulkiness is measurable. Simply count messages that match fuzzy checksums.
Spamminess, on the other hand, is far harder to measure, as it depends on the users' sometimes erroneous recollections of whether they solicited the bulk messages.
But Hotmail didn't call it spam. They called it bulk. That sounds quite proper and accurate to me.
Screenshot for proof. I got one yesterday.
Hotmail have been "silently discarding" all mail sent from 6 of my servers since January, none of which are listed on any blacklists and have never sent any spam. So gmail invites going missing really is no surprise to me (and all the other people who own servers that hotmail mysteriously lose mail from).
No? Can't say I'm surprised.
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
...half of Slashdots userbase appears to have a Hotmail address??
Repeat after me: We are all individuals
I would argue that they did in fact bounce, but the bounce was so small that the email was perceived to have hit the server with a "thud", with the ensuing bouncing noises going completely unnoticed.
In other news, young children are taught that airplanes have wings. A man from Chestershire contradicts this, proclaiming that "Aeroplanes have aerofoils, not wings." Experts from around the world are stumped as both are seemingly correct. The case has been referred to a committee of monkeys to decide once and for all.
Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
Seems like the majority of my invites never arrive in my friend's inboxes. To get around this, I send the invite then go into my "Sent Mail" folder to look for the "Sign-up" URL that was sent. I just create a new email and copy and paste the original URL. I haven't had one of these blocked (that I know of). Cheers!
-- http://GatheredTogether.org - Ministries Helping Ministries
I recieved an invite in my Hotmail account instantly
From : [deleted]
Sent : Tuesday, June 15, 2004 1:04 PM
To : Timothy Lee
Subject : Timothy, [deleted] has invited you to open a Google mail account
Any gmail user wishing to conduct an empirical test may send gmail invites to:
whorin4gmailinvites@hotmail.com
this is purely for research purposes.
(yes, this email address is real, and I will report successes to you if you should actually care to send an invite there.)
http://xkcd.com/386/
I sent myself an e-mail from GMail to my hotmail and yahoo accounts (yeah, I have one on each, what's it to you?) and it was delivered no more than thirty seconds later.
Get me Snopes on line 1, I have a new urban legend for them.
the major advances in civilization are processes which all but wreck the societies in which they occur - A.N. White
I had a friend send me a Google Mail invite to a yahoo address. It never arrived.
I'm certain that he used the correct address. I can understand "bulking" gmail invites (don't believe it's an honest mistake, but can understand it's possible) as I have had legitimate invites to mailing lists/web sites get placed into the bulk folder.
I got nothing in my Yahoo account. I was very careful to check the bulk foldler, but nothing ever showed up. Lucky for me, I was able to get the URL for the invite from his sent folder and signed up that way.
I have both a gmail account and a hotmail account and I sent a test. The first email didn't arrive in hotmail, the second email did. Go figure. At least this proves there is no 100% block placed. Now the question is where did my first email go?
Dude, everyone has gmail invites these days. They're giving them away like candy. I think my cat has five or six. Anyone who hasn't been offered a GMail account yet doesn't have any friends to e-mail with it anyway. :P
I've just gotten this to work...
(slightly edited to conceal my secret identity)
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
From : *
Sent : June 21, 2004 10:47:09 AM
To : *@hotmail.com
Subject : tester
Inbox
MIME-Version: 1.0
Received: from mproxy.gmail.com ([216.239.56.245]) by mc5-f3.hotmail.com with Microsoft SMTPSVC(5.0.2195.6824); Mon, 21 Jun 2004 06:47:09 -0700
Received: by mproxy.gmail.com with SMTP id q44so1741952cwc for ; Mon, 21 Jun 2004 06:47:09 -0700 (PDT)
Received: by 10.11.118.20 with SMTP id q20mr562509cwc; Mon, 21 Jun 2004 06:47:09 -0700 (PDT)
X-Message-Info: JGTYoYF78jH5i3J0rEhEWO2gbDf1/JE0
Message-ID:
Return-Path: *@gmail.com
X-OriginalArrivalTime: 21 Jun 2004 13:47:10.0033 (UTC) FILETIME=[3FCD0C10:01C45796]
View E-mail Message Source
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
did you block this?
That was a beta version of Windows, the error message wasn't very confusing, and the reason wasn't hard to understand: Why give out a beta version of Windows and then try to provide technical support for someone else's OS? I'm pretty sure that version of Windows would run over DRDOS, but would always give the warning message.
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
Ha, I just posted about sending 2 emails only gettin one. Well guess what, the first email showed up 7 minutes after I sent it (and the 2nd email showed up instantly.)
This article is bs.
If I posted it under my account they would have rewrote slashcode to mod it -10.
Are you sure government regulation of electrical companies was a good thing? I hardly know any American history though, so this is just abstract, but if a customer wants to buy voltage from one company, why should the government impose a standard voltage? Probably the companies would have agreed to some standard voltage, maybe through a scientific society like, say, IEEE. If companies on the side wanted to offer wierd nonstandard voltage, then they can serve the niche market that wants that.
Now, I think it's pretty low down by Hotmail to block gmail, but as long as they have a notice on their main page or at least in their license agreement that says ``We block gmail accounts'', I don't see a real problem with them blocking gmail, because people know what their getting.
The way I see it, as long as the two sides _know_ the facts, all deals are fair.
So the core of this Slashdot "article" is some posting on one guy's blog about losing a invitation he sent to his girlfriend.
Naturally, invitations of this kind would include the words "penis" and "viagra" (perhaps even "hair loss"). No wonder the mail was marked as junk. :-)
zWhat would an EWOULDBLOCK block, if an EWOULDBLOCK could block would? -- me
I can test. Please. Please PaaaLLLLEEEEEEEAAAASE!
I sent two to Hotmail accounts this morning and they both arrived just fine.
By summer it was all gone...now shesmovedon. --
I had someone send me a gmail invite to my yahoo e-mail and it went the junk folder (not a problem though)
I sent my wife a gmail invite to her hotmail account... and she accepted it/got the msg no problem...
i just sent a message from gmail to my hotmail and it was recieved... ?
I love a good conspiracy, but we might have rattled our tinfoil swords prematurely on this one...
e.
Build Your Own PVR/HTPC news, reviews, &
It also seems to block orkut invites which is a google sponsored community like friendster.
Noone on hotmail has ever gotten my invitations, including checking their 'spam' folder
not servers. On one of my trips to the middle east a few years ago, we had about 5000 soldiers at our location, and about five 56k modems worth of bandwidth to serve them all. Yes, you read that correctly.
Think the neighborhood node for your cable modem is slow in the evenings? Brother, you aint seen nothin'.... and to make matters worse, they also throttled that bandwidth down even more by port... 80 was always the slowest. Fortunately for me, ftp wasn't throttled... so my downloads from kernel.org took hours instead of days (hey, a geek's gotta do what a geek's gotta do).
Increasing the pipe is only part of the issue; you have to filter all that traffic. If you don't control that information stream, classified information will leak, and viruses/worms will run riot. Even on a filtered system, one virus can really make your life miserable. I witnessed this on another delployment... the Anna Kournikova virus got loose in our network... it wrecked havoc for days before we got it under control (send a bunch of lonely, hormonally-poisoned, computer-equiped 19-year-olds a file purporting to be a picture of Anna Kournikova and see what happens... total chaos).
Increasing services to the troops is good, but it has to be done right, or you might end up with more problems than you started with.
Even if a man chops off your hand with a sword, you still have two nice, sharp bones to stick in his eyes.
Please note: I've not been able to verify this one way or another.
Yeah, I think that's the crux of it.
Actually, when a kind slashdotter sent me an invite, Yahoo didn't move it or block it...
Just sent a couple e-mails from my gmail account to my hotmail account. The first one was delayed a few minutes, but the second one went through instantaneously. My friend (who originally invited me) says she successfully invited someone using a hotmail address yesterday.
So, yeah. I'm afraid this is... not true. At least as far as hotmail is concerned.
What? Who cares what they call it? Whatever word you use, a spam folder is a spam folder, and the entire point of its existence is that it's junk you're not supposed to have to read. You can't go around putting legitimate mail in it, causing people to miss it, and then explain it all away by saying, oh, I said it was bulk. What a lame excuse.
I sent a Gmail invite to a hotmail user on Friday, he got it, and signed up for Gmail.
Concerned minds want to know
For a community that is so up in arms about other people spreading FUD, I find "stories" like this to be insanely amusing. Keep up the great work guys...
While it may bring universal (nationwide?) standards to e-mailing, you know that it will be seen as a potential source of revenue.
...and then they start taxing e-mails. A penny or two per e-mail is something the public could be cowed into, despire what we /.ers think about it, and by the time it can be adequately questioned, the public will be too accustomed to paying, the gov't too accustomed to collecting, and we'll be stuck.
Shortly thereafter, they'll set in place a registration system that wants you to put in a checking or credit card account with the rest of your information...
I think the continued deregulation is worth risking a GMail invite or two.
___ In the words of Gen. Douglas McArthur: "I'll be right back."
I mailed a gmail invite to a Hotmail address this morning, and it got through fine.
I dunno.
It's fun though, isn't it?
Gmail sends email and violates the RFC. the RFC for SMTP clearly says that the receiving server must send a banner before the sending MTA can say "HELO" or "EHLO".
Gmail sends its hello before the banner is returned. Many ISPs will block this sort of direct-to-mx/ratware technique on site.
Our mail server does this.
If only I could have a more snappy address though. Even in ye olden days of Windows 95 all the best ones were taken :-(
When I am king, you will be first against the wall.
;)
;)
Send any and ALL Gmail invites to...
pils3n@hot mail dot com
(replace the '3' with an 'e').
This is strictly, er, for research!
Yeah, thats it!
Can someone invite me to gmail? :)
Pleassseee
I didn't use the preview button, so get over it!!!!
Mike
It appears that there has been a lift on the 'blocking':
....
From: myname
To: myname
Subject: Kyle, xxx has invited you to open a Google mail account
"scholars never agree and fools seldom differ"
I don't know where all these reports of "worked fine for me" are coming from. Not only did my emails not go through - Hotmail formatted my hard drive and later a man in a dark blue suit came to my house and kicked my dog.
--I'm not talking about dance lessons. I'm talking about putting a brick through the other guy's windshield.-
I stoped using Hotmail when they woulnd't do anything about spam mail and continued to spam my inbox with upgrade offers that would reduce spam. POP3 FOREVER!!!
Sorry, but I seem to be on the trailing edge of technology today. What is this invite stuff? Seems I don't get invited to nothing anymore!
So that's how you get a Gmail account: post a transparent plea on Slashdot. Thanks (you know who you are)! :-)
I've found that my posts don't format quite right w/o a sig.
I have GMail accounts and I was sent the invitation through Hotmail. Thanks for reminding me though, I do need to check the ground straps on my copper cage at home and change the foil on my helmet. Shiny side out ya'll! GMail invitations are likely seen as spam because of the headers... sent as "from" one address but the sender is another. There's lots of email that does this. More likely is the "press" wasn't smart enough to look in that other folder. It's FUD alright and Yahoo! couldn't have paid for better press coverage. If you care about your email that much, don't use free email providers like Hotmail or Yahoo!. Use your ISP (as long as it's not AOHell), run your own server or pay to have one run for you. Then only you will decide how to implement spam protection. Baaaa! Baaaa!
To be accurate, Hotmail's spam folder is not called either a bulk or spam folder. It's called 'Junk E-Mail'. I agree with your semantic dissection of bulk vs spam (anyone who's spent time configuring an MTA, procmail recipes and spamassassin would as well I gather) but Hotmail calls it junk.
Hotmail had this same problem with Orkut's invites a while back.
It will be years before enough people complain that they don't need (and shouldn't be paying for) their ISP e-mail accounts.
I checked back to the referenced blogs ...
/. quality from tanking?
Even the blog posters claim ppl are running around, claiming the sky is falling, for no reason.
Do we need to quarantine posts in order to keep
Cheers,
-- The Dude
I'm not sure what this is supposed to be about, but I guess I'll be nice in my response. I just had someone on hotmail accept an invite from me last week. Ah well, nevermind, THIS IS THE MOST STUPID FUCKING SHIT. "I think maybe hotmail might be blocking gmail invites and gmail email!!" You are so full of shit it is idiotic. Maybe his girlfriend is dense and doesn't check her junk folder. "It just disappeared! I think hotmail is blocking invites!" not.. "My dorky girlfriend didn't check her junk folder." or "maybe I made a simple spelling error." And, if all that was checked.. why isn't it mentioned?
Anyhoo, he says it's a non-story at the end.. but maybe hotmail only blocks some invites.. (whoooo mysterious..) how does this get posted? Just for the trolling?
p
PS Don't get all whiney at me for being overly sarcastic.. this story is a joke, and it deserves to be turned into a human and then strangled in its sleep.
I've personally sent two Hotmail users GMail invites in the past two days (Saturday and Sunday) alone, and I think also thursday and Friday (I'm handing them out to anyone who wants one). They all went through fine.
When will Microsoft finally get tired of these pieces of slander from a company who's interest is seeing Microsoft go down? It's one thing to be a hobbyist site posting this trash, but it's another for a company to.
Way to check your facts before posting a story with the topic "Hotmail Blocks Gmail Emails (and Invites)". Not "Possibly Blocks" or "Might Be Blocking", but "Blocks". It's not like you couldn'tve asked the tons of readers who have already refuted this story.
When The Onion has a more trustworthy reputation than you, you know you've got a problem.
Would you post a "Linus Torvalds found dead in bathtub" story without trying to confirm it?
Seeing as many of the Slashdot editors also work for "real" paper publications, I can't believe you people are still employed with supposed research "skills" like these.
Also invited my wife into Gmail and mailed the invite her Hotmail account as well.
Had no problems receiving the email invtes at all.
Are we talking invites or emails? I sent a plain email from my gmail account to yahoo, and it got there fine.
And as such most of his relatives have gmail accounts. I just photographed his sister's wedding; we've been using the gmail to send the large images back and forth (about 4mb to 6mb each).
Every email from gmail to me gets bounced or delayed for up to 4 days (gmail->hotmail). Any email from anyone else, goes in just fine.
Any email from hotmail->gmail, delayed. Any email using a relay such as my rr.com one, goes in just fine.
Conclusion: Hotmail is dicking with my emails and REALLY pissing me off.
I've received several Gmail invitations, and can confirm that they do not automatically end up in Yahoo's Bulk folder. Of course, this may not be true for everyone.
As a side note - Gmail invitations are being offered in bulk now, and Alexa shows it.
Simpy
Someone kindly gave me gmail invite ... I *think* I registered successfully, but no matter what I do I can't get past a "Loading ..." message on the first page.
So I can't test this problem out.
But I just don't get the excitement people are having about Gmail. If any other company offered a similar service (reading your emails and sending you spam based on those emails) nearly all slashdotters would be outraged. But, when Google does it, it's perfectly OK.
FYI, even if Google is a decent corporation and will respect your privacy, it does not mean that will always be the case!
Feel free to mod me as flamebait, because that's exactly what I am!
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
( Wil, you're good people. Remember that. \m/ )
Money for nothing, pix for free
I got my gmail account a few days ago, and the invite was sent to my hotmail account. No problems.
I just now sent a message from my gmail account to my hotmail account, and it was received just fine.
Gmail is still in beta, right?
A beta service was demonstrating weird behavior when interacting which two other non-beta services.
Your conclusion:
Someone is deliberately blocking the beta service!
My Conclusion:
Gmail is still in beta and may not be a reliable mail system.
Maybe this was on Tuesday or Wedensday of last week, when there was akamai and hotmail issues? "Oh, he's not getting my email, so Hotmail must be blocking Gmail."
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
Well, that runs counter to my experience. A friend did the invite process, email never arrived. I watched over his shoulder so he got the data correct. However, there's a catch, I had set my Hotmail spam filter up on "enhanced level" and all spam so caught got deleted. I quickly changed that when I realized what I did, but probably the damage was already done.
Here's a few possibilities. First, that Hotmail and Yahoo blocks some or most gmail invites. Since some get through you can't prove they're blocking it. Sounds like the most popular conspiracy theory. Second, that Hotmail (and Yahoo) treats the invites as spam (perhaps depending on the user's spam acceptance and retention options). This could delete gmail invites automatically. Finally, perhaps Google didn't send out the gmail invite.
I consider the middle possibility the most likely, I think. Hotmail and Yahoo probably are treating these emails like spam and frankly they are unsolicited advertisement. This is exactly what the spam filters are supposed to catch.
Hasn't anyone with a hotmail address noticed that sometimes you just don't get messages? It happens with them, that's why I don't rely on hotmail, it's just a spam-catcher that I use when I need to put an email address in a public or semi-public location. A friend of mine recently switched to Yahoo because she thought that hotmail was censoring messages of a pagan nature. I figured that was hogwash, but the fact was she hadn't been getting messages she'd been expecting. That's just hotmail sucking, IMHO, no conspiracy needed, just incompetance.
I've actually had a lot of issues with hotmail in the last... 3-6 months? Email bounce with server errors (accounts aren't full so that's not the problem), or there's a lengthy delay between sending the email and it actually being received.
So, this may not be so much indicative of a problem with hotmail and gmail as it is hotmail in general. Possibly they're lagged in processing the some bazillion spams that must pass through there, anyone have any stats on how much spam passes through hotmail daily?
So that's how you get a Gmail account: post a transparent plea on Slashdot. Thanks (you know who you are)! :-)
I hear it's happening on RoadRunner now! wallinbl at tampabay dot rr dot com.
Why waist your time with yahoo, hotmail and crap like that,when there are way better email providers like FASTMAIL
http://fastmail.fm/
ive never had a problem with them at all
Once Gmail does become vailable to everyone, iam sure millions are gonna signup,&then hotmail or anyother company wouldnt dare try blocking mails from gmail id. Already ppl will vet hotmail out for their measly 2 mb inbox.
THEY CANT DO THIS FOR LONG>
Why does yahoo do this
I recieved an invite 2 days ago, so if it is done htey must have done it "first thing monday morning chief" Strange and very unethical if true (but we knew that allready of microsoft :-p )
I had asked the person to send it to Yahoo, and it never showed up in the INBOX or JUNK folders... so I think yahoo is blocking them completely.
She then fowarded the invite to my Hotmail account and it arrived in my inbox. Maybe it blocks an invite sent directly, but if the sender fowards it instead it does go right into your inbox.
I will check gmail out when it is generally available, but I don't want spam from anyone including google.
Eat at Joe's.
This is simply not true. I have been able to receive gmail invites on hotmail. That was a couple of days a go. Unless something has changed between now and then .. I doubt it.
Isn't it nice to have someone to hate
Isn't it nice to beat 'em in to a pulp
That guy ain't like you
Hurry, take him out
It's as good as sex
To kick the fucker about
I think what is being experienced here is the Hotmail blackhole effect. Some emails get through, others are bounch, and others are used to feed the Hotmail beast. I send emails from my shaw.ca account to hotmail and it can take 3 days to get through to the person. There was a while there that my emails where just being munched.
Microsoft, Apple, Google, Amazon what's the difference? All steal money from devs and control with walled gardens.
Personally, I am a bit shocked that MS would be so brazen about this. I am pretty sure that it is exactly this kind of behavior that MS agreed to not do in the latest decree. I wonder if Google can have a lawsuit against MS as well as the group that is suppose to enforce the decree (perhaps DOJ).
This really shows that it is in everybodies best interest to have a large number of small ISPs over a few big ones.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Newsgroups down, email down... sorta feels like Hotmail on a regular basis (Hotmail is at least honest- "Server too Busy" is their response)
Well I got invited to gmail about 3 days ago, and the invite went to hotmail. I got it pretty fast. I wouldn't put it past MS to do this, but I think maybe the submitter needs to not cry wolf so fast.
I only post twice a year, who needs a sig?
Access to GMail using POP/SMTP - work good for me using Windows. Bad point is it runs on Windows only for now as it requires some .net libs installed.
http://jaybe.org/info.htm
All my virus infected bogus gmail invites have made it to their destination, and that's whats important here I think.
...::----::...
I am in no way affiliated with this sig.
I've successfully invited over 5 people with Hotmail accounts. People need to learn to type...
http://www.sampletheweb.com
Everyone switch to google, they aren't going to start blocking themselves.
I'm giving away invites too, mail afbcom@gmail.com to request.
Anyone else having problems even logging into their account today? I keep getting an error:
Server Error
Gmail is temporarily unavailable. Cross your fingers and try again in a few minutes. We're sorry for the inconvenience.
???
THE MAGIC WORDS ARE SQUEAMISH OSSIFRAGE
I personally received a GMail invite. However, on my yahoo account I never received the invite. It was sent twice even! It didn't appear in my inbox OR bulk mail folder (I checked, double checked, and triple checked!). The only way I was able to receive it was the sender forwarded me a copy of the invite. Shame on Yahoo for this. I was going to just use the GMail account for novelty, but after a stunt like this I no longer trust Yahoo to be reliable and plan to switch 100% to my GMail address.
Slashdot should show some integrity and update the banner post to state that this story has been debunked. Leaving it up unchanged is misleading and wrong.
I sent myself an email from my gmail account to my hotmail account. It took some time to get through, but it did eventually come through (just as I was writing a nastygram to support@hotmail.com, so maybe they just installed a keylogger and send the messages through when someone complains, just kidding ;-)).
Anyway, I would have your friend email support@hotmail.com and ask what is going on (and cite the ZDNet article), and at the same time, file a bug report for gmail so they have record of it.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
Then again, this is Slashdot, so we rather print foul stuff about Micr$soft then actually confirm it.
This is a very poor business move too: It shows that Microsoft and Yahoo! are seriously afraid of loosing users to GMail, so much so that they're willing to take away a portion of their users' rights. How do users reflect on this when they find they're being hoarded, and essentially held onto like a cell phone contract. Do not pass Go(ogle). Do not collect 1000GB.
A better move would be to make their service some how more unique than GMail. Businesses prosper because they've found a niche. Whether that niche is for a general need (a grocery store where there are none for 15 miles), or a specific need (a parakeet shop right in the same town as a pet store which has very few parakeets), Microsoft's Hotmail and Yahoo! need to redefine their niche to provide competition for GMail, not attempt to stifle it by hurting their own users. Hurting their own users will only drive them away.
Some people at Microsoft and Yahoo! barely got their degrees in business...
--<Mike>--
Are you a truck?
You said to ask you that.
emt 377 emt 4
pls email one to me ;) phlite at hotmail.com
http://phlite.net Lay out on the beach in Rocky Point, Mexico : http://www.granizo.com
I just sent a message (not an invite) from my Gmail account to my Hotmail account, and though it ended up in my "Junk Folder," it did arrive safe and sound.
I got an invitation today, in my hotmail account, thanks to martin peck
Open Source Java Web Forum with LDAP authentication
one for me as well pls ... v__d(at)hotmail(dot)com ...no more hotmail...finally :)
So all of my nerd friends now have GMail accounts, and I have already had 11 invitations. Yesterday I got 5 at a time.
If you respond to this post I will invite the highest modded replies when I get more invites. Which should be soon since I am using GMail for all of my email exclusively.
--rowan
Back in 1998, Hotmail was blocking all greeting card e-mail from Blue Mountain Arts to their users while allowing greeting cards from their own service. Microsoft was sued (article search). Microsoft lost.
If Microsoft gets sued again, the winner should get an award multiplier for Microsoft being a second-time (3-time? 10-time?) offender.
I hate to sound like another lemming, but wow I would be very grateful to receive a gmail invite:
fxmccloud@yahoo.com
Thanks so much, and take care
-Jared
This has been picked up by Fark, so it must be true.
Is it possible that Slashdot will get farked?
Ok, I'been trying for months now to get a gmail account to claim the username vampire (if it's not already taken, it probably is by now *sigh*). Since pleas on slashdot seem have worked for a number of other people and I'm extremely desperate at this point, I'm posting this "grovel". :P If someone is feeling generous please send an invite to vampire at iglou dot com.
TIA!
Got an invite thanks. Don't send me anymore. So far I can confirm Yahoo mail sends the invite to Bulk email folder (the spam mail folder). See a screenshot here:
http://www.linuxathome.com/images/gmailtest.jpg
Linux at home
Hotmail is known for it's bad "load balancing" tech. They always had a lot of servers randomly delaying and refusing connections on SMTP port and just a few answering them on time.
There are whole threads about that behaviour on most MTA devel lists, like this one, from years ago. Nothing changed since then.
I received my Gmail invite at my regular Hotmail account 3 days ago, and after reading this post I tested the system by sending myself an email from Gmail to Hotmail. Both the invite (sent by a friend while I watched) and the test email came through in less than a minute. I also watched two other people receive invites at Hotmail accounts. I'm not sure if other people encountered problems earlier, but this certainly isn't a current problem.
I just sent myself a little not from Gmail to hotmail and it went through no problems.
I'd love to be invited to use GMail.
Give me an invite.
I'd be more than happy to reply back to this post wether or not it worked.
mebadmagic at yahoo.com
B-)
A friend will come and bail you out of jail, a true friend will be sitting next to you saying, "damn that was fun!"
You who stop others from having freedom of speech by simply killing them shall have no rights to have Gmail accounts. Signed Allah the Mighty from the Skyes.
You do realize gmail invites aren't sent automatically, right?
They're called invites because a person who has gmail already--presumably a friend of yours--has to invite you.
It sounds like the truth behind the matter is that Hotmail just has trouble delivering mail. No plan to prevent email from arriving from GMail, simply an inability for Microsoft's servers to deal with primetime. But didn't we already know that?
I'm sure their TOS has soemthing in there that says they can do whatever they want to do with your mail. You know...that thing you clicked but didn't read - the thing that Northwest judge said didn't apply to you! Wait - that means that what they are doignis illegal then, dpesn't it?
Sort of irrelevant, since it sounds highly doubtful that it is even TRUE.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
Someone have mercy on me and send an invite: wizzyx at rogers.com
That amount of pipe was for the entire base, and included all traffic, not just plain-text email. When you add in web-surfing and email attachments, that pipe bogged down quickly. It was very helpful when we added a webcache that aggressively cached popular pages locally, but that equipment came later; it wasn't in our original boots-on-the-ground manifest.
It sounds like you're inferring that I selfishly sucked down the entire base's bandwidth for my kernel downloads, preventing fathers from receiving pictures of their newborn children and causing marital strife and hardship. No sir, I stayed up and downloaded my kernel updates in the middle of the night to minimize the impact on more-important traffic. I may be a geek and love my computers, but I'm not a complete cretin.
Also, for the record, a bunch of that download traffic consisted of mappacks and updates for the multi-tent counterstrike LAN we had constructed (with our own cables/laptops/switches, BTW, not the military's stuff). Hardship is a given, but troops in the field are usually highly motivated to improve their lot as best they can... a couple of deployments will make almost anyone into a proficient scavenger, jury-rigger, and duct-tape mechanic (the Marines in particular are masters at this). Don't discount the value of a fatter pipe for the troops; I'm sure they'd find creative ways to use it, just as we did.
Besides... 300 baud? Where is your humanity, sir? I think that's against the geneva conventions.
Even if a man chops off your hand with a sword, you still have two nice, sharp bones to stick in his eyes.
I've got a gmail invite that I am willing to give away to a deserving person. email me at mtrupert@NOSPAMyahoo.com
http://rupertzone.net (who deserves a gmail invite?)
[FromTheMorning]
Well, this didn't happen to me. I received an invite from someone just last week on my Hotmail account.
No problem here.
I just bought a gmail account off of Ebay for cheap and got an email address. However, I would like to get a few more. I was under the impression that Google sends invites to the users that the users can forward to whomever they choose. But how is that determined? Does every gmail user get invites to send to others or not?
A couple days ago (I believe it was Thursday last week) attempted to send an email to a hotmail account from gmail. This email got put in the 'junk mail' folder of this person. We did it again just for kicks... and yeap.
I was very disappointed, and I thought that it might have just been a fluke, but I guess I was not the only one to notice.
I have read a lot of replies here that clain the post was a fluke... I think they didn't have a change to see it themselves.
The shortest distance between to points is a chord.
I got five gmail invites for the first five people to respond to this comment! (Please include first/last name and email for the form)
Wherever you go, there you are!
They sent the e-mail in Klingon?o ut.html#sign up
4. Is Gmail available in other Languages?
http://gmail.google.com/gmail/help/ab
I had a couple days ago. I was able to receive a gmail invite just fine.
I was also able to send an e-mail to a friend who still uses hotmail from my new gmail account.
John Hancock
...and lots of other mail...
I got this in reply to my queries to msn/hotmail
about frequent failed delivery of messages to
their servers:
From: "J**** H****"
To: "Phil Dier"
Subject: RE: Problems with failed delivery
Date: Tue, 1 Jun 2004 16:10:11 -0700
Hello,
In the last couple of weeks, MSN Hotmail was experiencing an unusually
heavy volume of incoming mail and this has placed us in the condition of
having our incoming mail servers temporarily saturated with incoming
connections. I would suggest that you make sure that your system is
trying to make connections to more than one IP at a time, that it
rotates connections between different IPs in our MX record, and that you
use persistent connections when you do connect. Many domains will
suspect a server of being a spammer if they stay connected beyond, say,
50 RSET commands, but our system does not do that. We encourage
unlimited RSETs for efficiency's sake.
Our experience shows that the condition will abate sometime around 7 pm
Pacific, so your queues should begin draining at that time, especially
if you follow the recommendations above.
I wish there was something I could tell you for sure but we don't know
what is causing this or when it will clear up.
Sincerely,
J****, MSN Hotmail
I had 2 invites this morning on my Hotmail addy, the first I pounced on, the second I left in the Bulk folder. 2 hours later the second invite is gone from the Bulk folder. Very suspicious.
If he was a real friend, he wouldn't have made me stand on my head a squeal like a monkey to get my gmail addy!
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
I have seen this on 2 different Yahoo accounts. Gmail invites to Yahoo accounts get automatically sent to the Bulk Mail (Spam) folder and do not appear on the new mail notification showing # of unread messages. Luckily I have little spam on this account otherwise the invite would have been buried and automatically deleted after x days.
At least not fully. I have a GMail account. I sent a friend a message at Hotmail. I got a reply this morning from that Hotmail account.
In my experience, any sort of automatically-generated e-mail will fail spam filters. Yahoo marks GMail invites as spam. That may seem suspicious, until you realize that it also marks Orkut invites as spam. Yahoo has no reason to censor Orkut, as far as I can tell. Also, I once purchased a copy of Trillian Pro for a friend, and his e-mail server filtered the e-mail containing his membership info (simply deleted it outright with no trace). It then proceded to filter several "Send me a new password" e-mails, until finally we managed to intercept one.
This is just another reason why I hate spam filters. Filters are not the way to fix spam. We really need to overhaul the entire e-mail system.
Actually, GMail doesn't send you spam. It has a text banner on the side of the message, somewhat like those "Ads By Google" banners, that shows ads with keywords matching the mail you're reading. No advertising messages show up in your inbox or anything like that.
It's more similar to the "Sponsored Links" on the side of a Google search than spam.
...for a mass mailing worm to come out, disguising itself as a Gmail invite. Or some scam. Seeing as they're in great demand and people will do anything to get one. Including writing their email address in plain text on a website that is undoubtly a goldmine for spambots.
SSdtIGFzIGJvcmVkIGFzIHlvdSBhcmUK
I tried sending test messages from my gmail account to my hotmail and yahoo accounts. I then created a mockup invitation using the text suggested in the "Talent Show" blog, and sent it to both accounts. The results:
Hotmail: both the short test message and the invitation were received normally. Neither bounced, neither was shunted into the junk mail folder.
Yahoo: the test message was received normally, but the mock invitation was dropped into the Bulk e-mail folder. (In fact, yahoo created a Bulk folder for me - I didn't previously have one because this e-mail account was previously unused and in hibernation.)
So, of the various claims made in this story, I can verify only the one about invitations sent to Yahoo.
While My friends are very open to all new web stuff, I noticed, that no one accepted my orkut invitation from hotmail...
..
Actually someone told, they never got my invitation.
Anyone knows if hotmail is blocking ourkut too ?
Due to privacy issues I am not willing to open anything with MSN/HOtMAIL/M$, and none of my friends are using that spamhole service anymore
Wish I had thought of the requesting of a gmail invite for empirical evidence idea. Very nice.
because I got an invite yesterday and Mozilla's Junk Mail filter tagged it as spam.
SpamAssassin didn't, though, which proves that those scheming bastards obviously rigged Mozilla 1.7 so that it would filter gmail invitations. There's no other explanation, right?
It couldn't be because the invitation email looks a lot like spam...?
Nah.
It contains a small amount of text, two links, and words like:
- free
- ads
- click, copy, paste
- Enjoy
- offers
- invitation
I'd be disappointed if my email provider's spam blocker DIDN'T put this in my suspect list!Best Buy can have you arrested
Went to GMail Swap. Offered pictures of my rack, and boom I had invites in my hotmail email account. Can't believe people are so interested in my rack, i mean its just a bunch of computers.
Have you ever been to a turkish prison?
justletmelogon@yahoo.com if there's any left...
thats strange. but anyways, for the users who have a gmail account: i've been leaving my gmail inbox browser window open for long periods of time and i've noticed that that google bot keeps hitting my website frequently. This is aparently how they measure how long and frequetly they measure how often you use your account, and such. And, that in turn determines how often you get offered invites to be given away. look at my stats page here and notice how many bot hits i get from google. coincidence? i think not... ;-P
Hotmail didn't block my gmail invitation to a friend at Wed, 16 Jun 2004 10:50:54 -0400.
Maybe they started blocking gmail invitations after that date, or maybe this is just a rumor?
(No, I'm not working for M$; I don't even use Windows as my primary OS)
I got sent a Gmail invitation to a Yahoo account. It showed up in my inbox, not the Bulk folder.
I know there are other messengers (actualy I use amsn on mandrake) and perhaps I should get back to the old ICQ days and put whatever email account I want into my messenger. I think that what led me to the MSN/hotmail thing was that I didn't get unsolicited messages with it like ICQ.
regards
dbcad7
waiting for ad.doubleclick.net
Oooooh wow, 1 gig. It's nothing special. It's not like I login and have an orgasm over the greatness... Seriously though, if you read this, fire off some e-mails at me and I'll respond, see if it gets through, etc.
Now, while we are at it, can someone send an invite to soulhuntre@soulhuntre.com ?
:)
C'mon, you know you have one to spare!
Thanks
--> Fight tyranny and repression.... read
As if hotmail and yahoo are in any position to point the finger at anyone for privacy issues!
Just to let you know, it was my birthday just a couple days ago. In case any of you had forgotten to get me something, I have a GOOD suggestion!
It's cheap
It's fun
It's timeless
It's a Gmail invitation!!! Yeah!
ryankelley at comcast dot net
if yer feelin generous!
> [insert tired 1997 reasoning for using crappy "free e-mail" service]
The easy answer is to get one's own domain.
That you CAN keep forever, and $8/year is WORTH not having to worry about tiny mailbox size, those damn little ads that go on every outbound message, and *ahem* not having to go to a bloated, ad-filled web-interface just to check your e-mail even when you're at home on your own computer!!
I say 1997 reasoning because it wasn't a value for most people to do that kind of thing back when a domain cost maybe $25 or $30 a year just for the registration. But I pay $8/year for the domain and $49/year for "1gbhosting.com" which provides 1GB of webspace/mailbox space and unlimited IMAP/POP accounts. For the average newbie, however, a cheap solution can be found with a few minutes' research: Domain, $8 (GoDaddy). E-mail forwarding: Free. Forward to you@isp-of-the-month.com and voila. Instant, non-sucky, POP/IMAP account that not onl is completely personalized, but also doesn't serve as a billboard for some asshole company every time you give it out: Priceless.
Peek at my post history for more info, but I've still got a few to hand out and I'm getting more every day.
i still ain't ebaying'em.
Extraordinary Vacations. Exceptional Prices
but luckily I looked in my spam folder and saw it. I knew I was getting an invite, so I looked there to make sure. Now I'm migrating all my yahoo mail stuff to GMail. GMail rocks and the label features is very nice.
As of 6/21/2004 at 1 PM EST, Hotmail isn't blocking gmail invites. (Or emails from gmail.com.) I got an invite and a confirmation today at that time.
i'm using hotmail for the past 5 yrs. I would love to join the GMAIL exculisive..... Any invitations PLEASE.
i sent one invite to a friend using Yahoo, and he got it in his bulk mail folder...right before he almost deleted the invite. i also sent another invite to another person using hotmail, and they got it no problem. perhaps hotmail is just now getting rid of Gmail invites.
I think I might set my sig to be:
and we'll see how long Linus goes without denying it! If he waits long enough, then we can take it to be true :-)
i admit i still hang onto it because of IM friends/family (just as i have an AIM account as well). but i hate it. any opinions?
i um...yahoo.
"You get all the fun of sitting still, being quiet, writing down numbers, paying attention...science has it all."
However, you CAN keep one of these "second-rate" email addresses indefinitely.
That's what I thought too. Then one of the services started charging and the other one (altavista) stopped offering it altogether. Doh!
I bought a domain that I can move from ISP to ISP. That is how you keep your email address the same.
I got invited to and did sign up for a gmail account, and of course emailed all of my contacts notifying them of the change. I got a reply from one of my contacts who uses hotmail. it said Re:(subject i put), so I know she got it and read it and just replied to it. Maybe hotmail is only blocking gmail Invites? I know the article specifically said gmail and invites but, from my experiance, my emails from the gmail account are getting through. This was just this morning by the way. just thought i'd mention
I work for E3. When anyone tells me that they didnt
get their email confirmation for E3 registration I
have to look to see if they are HotMail or MSN users, and if they are I have to instruct them on
how to get their confirmations (required to attend) out of the bulk mail folder.
Clearly Microsoft doesnt want anyone attending if they dont make money from it. (Even tho they exhibit at the expo.)
Send the gmail invite to yourself. Then, you can take the text and paste it anywhere. Send it inside a word doc, an attachment. Anything.
All people need to activate a Gmail account is the URL. It dosn't actualy have to go through the email system.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
I invited people with hotmail addresses today. Worked great.
This would be more like your apartment complex putting a "No Solicitors" sign on the gate outside. Oh, and this apartment complex is small and cramped, but it's free to live there.
-Dan
rjmNOSPAM705@mail.usask.ca if you have an invite to give to a lowly emailer.
Hotmail, "msn", and yahoo all seem to randomly eat emails I send to them, gmail or otherwise.
Technical details of failure:
PERM_FAILURE: SMTP Error (state 7): 554 HELO/EHLO: Unable to verify that you are mproxy.gmail.com
----- Original message -----
Best Buy can have you arrested
I know this is Slashdot, where random blog posts are submitted and become fact simply because they bash Microsoft in some way (even though it's turned out that it's completely false), but do you care to cite who this mysterious, unnamed "third-party" is?
I get e-mail about Linux all the time, and it's never, ever sent to the Junk Mail folder. It's cool to pull random facts out of our asses, but perhaps we should take the time to step back and see how foolish it makes this community look? This article is completely false, and it's hilarious to see all the people giving their prepared lectures "Well, what would you expect from Microsoft? Blah blah blah."
The article is completely false, pal. You just lectured Microsoft for absolutely nothing. Who needs to "save face" now?
This is exactly why so many people are unhappy with Slashdot now. It's gotten to the point where complete falsehoods are posted willy-nilly to the front page where it gets hundreds of thousands of hits, and everyone prepares their Microsoft-bash speeches.
If you're feeling generous, send me one at starkruzr@starCANNEDMEATkruzr.com, minus the spam. Thank you! And if you need anything (though I don't know what I can give you), just ask.
+++ATH0
eric512@earthlink.net if anyone out there is feeling generous. Thanks for your time in advance.
I just tried this with two messages, and both were delivered very quickly (in less than a minute).
Don't have a yahoo account to test with.
check your e-mail
please invite
walrus-to-dinner@kitwat.dhs.org
thanks!
Hey can you invite me ?
My email = paperc0p@yahoo.com
I have seen gmail invite threads on forums and first thing that came to my mind: potential abuse for spam e-mail collection.
So, I am not surprised that ISPs are blocking GMail invites. I could be a spammer and send out fake invites in order to collect "valid" e-mail addresses.
Mike
HKSS.com
My brother sent me a g-mail invite this morning to my hotmail account. When sending an invite gmail prompts you for a personalized message. Well my brother called me on the phone to let me know he sent the invite. I found it in my bulk mail folder, with everything but his personal message blanked out. The invite was essentially deleted. He had to send it to my Rediff account (the original 1 gig free email). So it's not a BS story
"An email service blocking emails from a competing email service is surprising. Has this ever happened before? Is this even legal?"
Well, it's their service. Their server space. Their terms and conditions you agreed to. Unless it's in your EULA somewhere that they must deliver 100% of your email, then I'd say it sure as shootin is. One companies invite is another companies spam, by their definition of spam, of course. Too many loopholes here to be mentioned
I know it's unheard of, but don't wait for the law-- Vote with your feet. It's why I got my own domain and email service years ago.
You need a FREE iPod Nano
Not just email specifically from Gmail.
AOL and Yahoo are even worse.
All ISPs know about how regularly the big free email providers (or worse, paid for service in the case of AOL) go down all the time, causing backu-ups for the ISPs' mail servers and headaches for sysadmine.
Remember Hanlon's razor: never ascribe to malice what can be better explained by incompetence.
This article is a fucking load of shit. I'd normally expect this shit from that fucking fag nigger michael sims but i can see that complete and utter laziness is infectious among these obviously overworked slashfuck editors.
At least fucking check on the stories you fucking FAGGOTS!
Spam is spam, no matter if it comes from Yahoo, Hotmail, or Google. Personally, I could care less if I missed out on "The greatest innovation of our time!" I am perfectly willing to be the only kid on the block without gmail - no skin off my nose since I don't need what they are offering. Keep it out of my inbox, please.
I invited a friend who has a Hotmail account to join Google. They signed up with no problems.
Read the GODDAMN comments!!! We all know the story is bullshit!!!
NOW STFU !!!!!!!!!!!
I signed up for Gmail two days ago. The invitation went through fine to my Hotmail account. Is this actually happening or is it just an email fluke?
STFU!!!
In case nobody has mentionid it thus far, some people PAY for extra storage and the privilege of not having your hotmail account dissapear if you don't log on for 30 days. Those people are getting shafted just as much as the "free" hotmail users.
I still have a paid account with them, though I am slowly migrating of of it to my own domain based email address.
So in essence, anyone paying for yahoo/hotmail IS having emails intentionally blocked by a paid email hosting service.
I don't know how hotmail decides what is spam or not, but I've been under the impression that if enough people say "this is spam" it starts to become spam for you as well. In other words, there IS some sharing of spam filters/rules isn't there?
"he drew his sword Ringil that glittered like ice... and he wounded Morgoth with seven wounds..."
anyone wanna let me into gmail?...
alo41490@yahoo.com
*Pity can be expressed with GMail invite to lazyhound2@hotmail.com.
I just got a gmail invite today sent to yahoo and they put it in the bulk mail folder. Thanks to this article, otherwise I would not have thought to look there for it so quickly.
Speak truth to power.
As everyone know Kevin Rose is one of the People behing the gmail machine... so i have put together a file that is double ziped and password protected for everyone to crack. inside is a nice shiney new gmail account...r ead.php?s=&p ostid=3275#post3275
http://www.clanfake.com/forums/showth
have fun
I saw this thread, so I checked my hotmail account stephen_b6@hotmail.com and there were no gmail invites. I wrote to Gmail, and told them what I read on Slashdot. They said I didn't get one because I have to have a friend send me one.
A friend? What part of reading Slashdot didn't they understand?
Will someone send me one so I can be cool and popular?
How do you block an email without reading it?
i just sent a test message (not an invite) from my gmail account to my hotmail and yahoo accounts.
yahoo put it in my inbox.
hotmail put it in my junk folder.
an identical email from my pobox account went to my inbox at each site.
Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler. -- A.E.
The error message did suck:
Something like "Unsupported OS detected. Proceed at own risk (Y/N)?" might have been better. In any event, that code was turned off in the shipping version of Win 3.1.One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
I got the invite on hotmail. Don't know what the main post is talking about.
Thanks, Ben!
-Dan
If it was always going to be designed to run on OSes other than MS', why would you restrict beta users (who are supposed to find problems) to only MS' OS?
It wasn't designed to run on other OSs and Microsoft didn't promise that it would. DRDOS mimicked MSDOS well enough to run it. Microsoft was under no obligation to insure that Win 3.1 would run over DRDOS. The question is did Microsoft deliberately make a commercial shipping version incompatible? Quite likely, but not in that case. They've done so many scuzzy things that there's no point in inventing more.
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
I would be interested in seeing how my university's spam filters treat an invitation to Gmail. I'll also send some messages from the Gmail account to my university account to see if the filters pick out anything in there. The university's mail server assigns a number to every e-mail I get according to it's "spammyness" and I also use a filter in Eudora. Neither of them will prevent me from getting the e-mail, but I would like to see what the two analyses of the e-mail turn up. Perhaps the invite is inherently "spammy" looking. So, if anyone out there has an extra invitation they wouldn't mind contributing to my curiousity, I would greatly appreciate it. I'll post the output from the filters. Thanks! caseyh atnospam clemson dot edu
I would love to have one of these Gmail invites you speak of. I guess I don't have that many friends now that I think of it. What's your cat's e-mail address? Anyway, if anyone out there would be so kind, I would love it if you'd send an invite to caseyh atnospam clemson dot edu. See my other post http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=111775&thresho ld=-1&commentsort=0&tid=217&mode=thread&cid=949167 3
Also, your distinction between release version and beta version is not approriate given that reports of compatibility problems even at the beta stage can adversely affect a product.
This post is BUSTED.
So are your two email addresses;)
I just try with my gmail account.
mails from gmail can reach yahoo inbox instantly, but not hotmail.
please hook me up with a gmail invite =]
my email is jasonatjasoniscool.net
anyways i hope gmail becomes the standard email for people, because i trust google (they actually have ethics) whereas a lot of these other companies dont.
I am partial to the term "celestial bit bucket' And thats my 2 cents.
411 Y0UR 8453 4R3 8310NG 70 U5!! -NSA
One thing that GMail appears unable to do is to show images that are embedded into the email. That's a bit of a poor show, in my book :/. I'm not talking about remotely linked images, either (which you can show at the click of a link), but images that are sent in the email itself.
"I think everyone is an agnostic but just doesn't know" - Frazz
it's kinda flimsy (and funny) how yahoo/hotmail only up their storage by a small fraction (100MB for yahoo 25 flimsy MB for hotmail). Doesn't look like they can afford 1GB. They're just jealous and scared that they'll lose a lot of people to gmail (which is inevitable), so it doesn't surprise me that they're trying to be tricky about it. PS could someone be kind enough to send me an invite please? ichuprovATexemail.com.au
As science struggles on to try to explain.
Oxytoxins flowing ever in to my brain.
I don't about other people but i was able to get a gmail invite into my hotmail inbox.
That's right, GMail reads your incoming mail and decides what sort of advertising you would like.
From epic.org
"California Attorney General Bill Lockyer has acknowledged a letter sent by EPIC, Privacy Rights Clearinghouse, and World Privacy Forum that argued that Google's Gmail service violates the State's strict wiretapping laws. Lockyer wrote (pdf): "The potential exposure of Gmail users to liability for violation of Penal Code section 631 is of particular concern, as are the rights of those who are not subscribers to Gmail but who send e-mail to those who are." Lockyer advised that his office will continue to analyze Gmail and that "I understand your position and share many of your concerns."
(excerpt from the letter)
"IV. It Is Imperative That Google Suspend Gmail Because Users of the Service Could be Civilly and Criminally Liable Under Cal. Pen. Code 631(a)
Section 631(a) specifies that any person who "cause[s] to be done any of the acts or things mentioned above in this section, is punishable by a fine not exceeding two thousand five hundred dollars ($ 2,500), or by imprisonment in the county jail not exceeding one year, or by imprisonment in the state prison, or by both a fine and imprisonment in the county jail or in the state prison." Accordingly, if Google's Gmail violates 631, its users could also be held liable. Private individuals harmed by Gmail users could bring suit under 637.2, which contains a liquidated damages provision of $5,000 per violation."
Methinks ISPs are using "Privacy Concerns" as a way of keeping customers from leaving their quickly aging service. "Hey look, bearded technology pundits with nothing better to do are upset about ads in a radical new free email service. They're waving the privacy flag. We can wave the same flag and lock people in to viewing our contextually inaccurate ads a little bit longer!"
Hi. If it is determined the Google is in violation of 631 of the California Penal Code, users of GMail could be liable for a fine of up to $2,500 or one year in prison. Additionally, private individuals could bring a civil suit of up to $5,000 . In other words, if I send you a "g-mail", believing it to be private, and Google reads that mail, I could sue you for $5,000 and you could go to jail.
How's that for privacy concerns?! These laws are on the books, it is just a matter of determining if GMail violates these laws. www.epic.org
From epic.org
"California Attorney General Bill Lockyer has acknowledged a letter sent by EPIC, Privacy Rights Clearinghouse, and World Privacy Forum that argued that Google's Gmail service violates the State's strict wiretapping laws. Lockyer wrote (pdf): "The potential exposure of Gmail users to liability for violation of Penal Code section 631 is of particular concern, as are the rights of those who are not subscribers to Gmail but who send e-mail to those who are." Lockyer advised that his office will continue to analyze Gmail and that "I understand your position and share many of your concerns."
(excerpt from the letter)
"IV. It Is Imperative That Google Suspend Gmail Because Users of the Service Could be Civilly and Criminally Liable Under Cal. Pen. Code 631(a)
Section 631(a) specifies that any person who "cause[s] to be done any of the acts or things mentioned above in this section, is punishable by a fine not exceeding two thousand five hundred dollars ($ 2,500), or by imprisonment in the county jail not exceeding one year, or by imprisonment in the state prison, or by both a fine and imprisonment in the county jail or in the state prison." Accordingly, if Google's Gmail violates 631, its users could also be held liable. Private individuals harmed by Gmail users could bring suit under 637.2, which contains a liquidated damages provision of $5,000 per violation."
(and yes I posted something similar under the same heading, but I'm posting it again because there's almost 800 messages and none of them even mention this issue!!)
Related to gmail itself and not the users so much (though who's actually held accountable for their own actions anymore?):
l .html
Federal law, and I'm paraphrasing, permits private ISPs to read users' email for performance monitoring reasons, etc. Right now, gMail is a private ISP, as it's open on the basis of invitation only, and they're granted much more freedom by federal laws. When/if they become a public service provider - which doesn't mean free - they fall under more stringent rules. In both cases, though, the eMail isn't exclusive property of the sender, but shared by the recipient *and* the sender. If someone sends me email, and I read it to my coworkers, it doesn't matter that the sender is damaged. Once I've read the message and left it on the server, it's also contained on a "remote storage device". While I may personally be liable for leaking the information, Google has no liability for treating my message (whether someone in CA sent it to me or not) just like any other message that they can legally monitor for performance reasons, etc.
Anyway, all the laws in the world mean jack squat when you sign the form that says "I grant Google et. al. rights to read my email. In exchange I'll use their email service." People can sign away their "rights" if they want to.
Good reading on this topic:
http://www.cybercrime.gov/s&smanual2002.htm#_I II_
http://www.usdoj.gov/criminal/cybercrime/1030_ana
Ah, but I didn't sign away my rights did I? If I send you an e-mail and Google reads it, then I might be able to sue you (at least that is the impression I get), and you might get prison time. Also, Google is not "monitoring" it is "reading" quite a gigantically huge difference. It is the difference between the phone company making sure your lines are in working order, and listening in on your conversation. You wouldn't stand for that would you? Google is even worse than that sort of thing. Google is not only listening in on your conversation, but is then apparently going ahead and selling the sorted information it gathers to third parties!!
If I write you an e-mail that says "Don't tell anyone, but I like butt-sex. This message is confidential" 50 times, and then I later I get an e-mail from another party that says "Rush22 How about some buttlove! We know you love it!" Then I obviously could sue you. Someone now knows I love butt-sex, which is essentially the same as you telling them. Note that it does not even matter who I send this e-mail too. I could send it 50 times to anyone, or everyone, and sue each and every user on Google for the maximum $5,000. woot I'm going to be rich!
Anyway, I don't entirely understand it, but the lawyers at EPIC must understand it, and the Attorney General of California thinks it is a big concern, so unless you are a lawyer too, then you can't completely dismiss it.
The phone company comparison doesn't work, as voice communications are governed by completely different laws than data communications. Note, BTW, that VOIP is considered data and not voice.
:) - and google is currently completely within their rights to voluntarily disclose information (including your full messages) to any public or private entity that they choose. This is because they're a private service provider as it stands right now.
:) Someone else, however, may not be a service provider, and may not have the privledge. You might get somemoney out of them - though sending a message with "this is confidential" doesn't constitute a "meeting of minds" and therefore isn't really a binding contract. The recipient may disagree but still get the message.
:(
I did quite a bit of research on this a few months ago when involved in a bit of a flamewar - that's when most of my in-depth research happens
Using me specifically as an example also wouldn't work, as I'm not only a user but also a private service provider whose service includes remote storage. So, if you send me a message, I can disclose it to anyone I want when I'm wearing my ISP hat, and you can't stop me unless I cause you "significant financial damages", which is something unlikely to come from everyone knowing about your love of butt sex.
There's not much legal expectation of privacy with email, basically. Then again, CA is sort of their own little country with their own inane legal system, so they can probably do whatever they want - including making stupid laws that infringe on my ability to have a nifty free gmail account.
Actually I was under the impression that GMail only advertized on outgoing email...
I've noticed a few other things weird about yahoo and its infamous bulk folder. For about a week and a half now my /. subscription has been placed their instead of my inbox. I had to use a filter to prevent its misdirection.
I'm a virgo and on Slashdot. Coincidence? Yes.
Well, I don't know about you, but I've thought very hard about what privacy is and why I think it should be considered extremely important in this day and age. My information is my property and I will fight tooth and nail to make sure noone I don't want seeing it gets their money-grabbing propaganda-spewing indoctrinating hands on it. I'd suggest everyone else does the same, but.... que sera sera. sigh.
Yeah, I think you're right. Google says it does not sell information to third parties, and only uses the information for the GMail account holder.
Gmail and Privacy
i distributed my share of invites yesterday, all of them to hotmail accounts and every single one got there. i wouldnt have sended them if this article had appeared yesterday, but i did and all of my friends are happy with their new gmail accounts now. none of us have e-mailed to the hotmail account anymore but we'll probably try that. anyways hotmail did work for me, at least this time
Idiot.
I never said that I agree with any of those laws - I do, in fact, actively vote against anyone who tries to reduce my privacy. Even if they hide the privacy invasions behind names like "Patriot Act" or "Ronald Regan Memorial Social Bill", etc. I also strive to provide as much privacy as possible for my userbase, both at work and at home. Unfortunately, that doesn't change what the current laws say. :(
BTW, I wish one of the presidential cantidates was actually against the Patriot act... Damn it.
I haven't been able to log into gmail for the last few hours (Server Error / The server encountered a temporary error and could not complete your request. / Please try again in 30 seconds. ) and ordinarily this wouldn't set off any alarms. After all, it is a beta service.
However, I checked in on Orkut, a Google-provided networking/community bulletin board site, and did a search in "Communities" for "gmail". Yesterday this returned dozens of groups, and at the moment it returns none. Other groups appear to be perfectly operational.
Is it a coincidence that Orkut gmail-related communities disappeared at the same time as Gmail did?
And it doesn't change the fact that you're an idiot.
Google have given me 7 free accounts of one GB each, I don't give a rats ass if their server is parsing my emails to make the small text ads relevant. Every byte you send over the internet is parsed and investigated anyway by ISP and other service providers. I would rather have googles servers give me a heart transplant, than to have some shitty micro$oft employee have access to my email.
and this kind of post is the reasn i have flaimbait posts modded to +5. offensive to some idiot, but an interesting question of the usefullness of slashdot. something to think about.
Microsoft Outlook 2003 Spam Filter: Under the hood
There are multiple problems with what he said: