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Admins Accuse Microsoft of Hotmail Cap
kurmudgeon writes "The Register is fielding reader tips that Hotmail has placed Draconian limits on the number of Hotmail recipients who can receive an email. The first 10 Hotmail addresses included in a mass email go through just fine, according to these reports. But any additional addresses are returned to sender with a message that reads: "552 Too many recipients." (Microsoft denies it has placed any such restriction on the number of senders.) This would appear to be a violation of RFC 2821, which states: "Rejection of messages (for excessive recipients) with fewer than 100 RCPT commands is a violation of this specification."
No - for every recepient that they reject, they are, in effect, blocking those recipient from receiving the intended message. So they are blocking messages.
... this is a well known anti-spam technique -- it helps thwart dictionary attacks. Hotmail allows 10 recipients, my email server allows at most 1 (one). Of course, my domain only has one email account...
This would appear to be a violation of RFC 2821, which states: "Rejection of messages (for excessive recipients) with fewer than 100 RCPT commands is a violation of this specification."
I love the way the OP makes this sound like a serious criminal violation. Microsoft (or you, or me) is free to violate RFC 2821 till the cows come home. Whether doing so is the best way to handle whatever problem they're trying to address is another matter, but they're not drowning puppies or breaking laws, they're violating voluntary standards, which is not exactly a newsworthy activity for Microsoft.
Proud member of the Weirdo-American community.
Honestly, if everyone followed all the RFCs for email and didn't adapt, spam would probably bring everything to a grinding halt. As it is, with countermeasures and counter-countermeasures in an escalating spiral in the "spam wars", I sometimes marvel that email even still works at all.
Granted, security through obscurity isn't really effective, but why should they bother telling spammers how small to make their batches in order to get things through? Make the bastards work a little bit.
Wow, I've gotten cynical.
The Digital Sorceress
Email is useless. It cannot be relied upon. Mail servers will silently drop your mail after acknowledging receipt. Mail servers will reject your mail for no logical reason. All of this is in the name of fighting spam.
Because of spam, you can assume only that if you send an email and do not get a response that it never got through. If the only contact you have with a customer is an email address, you aren't going to get anywhere. Mail can be blocked at any point between the sender and the recipient without the knowledge or consent of the recipient - telling the recipient that they need to unblock your email is pointless as they may have nothing to do with the blocking.
Face it, email is suitable for sending threatening letters to georgebush@whitehouse.gov, love notes to your girlfriend and jokes to others in the office. And that's about it.
Because web forums suck.
To be honest, I participate on a number of email based discussion lists.. and also to be honest, I would much rather have NNTP access... this could still be nicely structured and accessed in my email client, but not interleaved with my email, and not risk being cast into the junk folder on occassion... I really wish that Google Groups, and Yahoo Groups had an NNTP interface, you could use your user login to access... that would so rock over the email mode..
Michael J. Ryan - tracker1.info
Ok, I might need some further clarification here.
Aren't 55X errors supposed to be permanent, while 45X errors are temporary ?
Why would the sender keep the message on the queue after a permanent error ?
morcego