Apple 'Mail' & 'Hotmail'

[HOLMES]

This is my first posting to the MUGOO Message Board so I hope that I have taken the right approach.  If not, my apologies ... and don't hesitate to correct me.

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I'm using the "Apple Mail" e-mail programme to send and receive e-mail.  As far as I knew any e-mail I sent was being received by the recipient if I did not get an undeliverable message back.  Until recently I did not know I had a problem.

Guess I was wrong.

I have just re-made contact with a friend in Spain.  Apparently we have been sending each other e-mails for some time and wondering why the other has not replied.

My friend uses 'hotmail' and has not received any of my e-mails.  Also, another friend (hotmail user) in the Ottawa area has just informed me of not getting one of my e-mails. There may be others.  Seems I have no way of knowing.

Yet I occasionally do get e-mails from hotmail users!

An Apple Discussions Forum mentions installing a "HttpMail Plugin Version Tiger 1.48 by Daniel Parnell".  This I have done but the problem remains.

A review of dozens of the 'hotmail' related topics in 'Discussions' did not reveal a problem quite like mine.  Maybe I missed it!

As far as I know the only problems are with hotmail.  Everything else is OK.

Any help will be most appreciated.

My Computer
Processor:  733 MHz PowerPC G4
Memory:  1.12 GB SDRAM
OS:  Mac OS X Version 10.4.7
Mail Programme:  Version 2.1 (752/752.2)

[MacMoore]

Hope this can be of some help to you.

http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/10842

Brian

[MikeB]

Hi,

This could be that your ports are not configured properly unless you already resolved this issue because I send and recieve mail all the time from my iBook using mail.app but I had to change the port before I could send any mail.  The default port was blocked by some protection I had on my system so i changed it to 58 and everything sent out ok to everybody I know. I use .Mac and all my friends use hotmail.

Hope this helps,
Mike

[sam]

Sorry MikeB - You're referring to the port number of an SMTP server... Hotmail uses a HTTP protocol which only works with the plugin. I believe you can use another SMTP server to send e-mail with your hotmail address.

Your friends most likely use the online interface to hotmail...

Try using your ISP's SMTP server... Contact your ISP and ask them for their SMTP server.

Good luck!

S.

[ben schmidt]

> My friend uses 'hotmail' and has not received any of my e-mails.  Also, another friend (hotmail user) in the Ottawa area has
> just informed me of not getting one of my e-mails. There may be others.  Seems I have no way of knowing.
> Yet I occasionally do get e-mails from hotmail users!

Hi Holmes,

If you are not receiving bounceback mail messages, it's likely that you are using correctly formed email addresses that point to someone --- although not necessarily to your friends. Bounceback messages normally originate from the destination email server -- i.e. the server-part of the email address: joe-user@some-ISP.com. For example, if the server "some-ISP.com" doesn't have a userid "joe-user", it would normally return a bounceback message.  Unfortunately with the growth of spam, estimated by some to be up to 40% of Internet email traffic, some ISP's have turned off bounceback on their mailservers -- as the spammers used the lack of bounceback to log an address as valid. With bounceback turned 'off', the spammers can no longer differentiate valid from invalid addresses at such ISPs.

>An Apple Discussions Forum mentions installing a "HttpMail Plugin Version Tiger 1.48 by Daniel Parnell".  This I have done but
>the problem remains.

The Plugin you refer to is to allow you to read your HotMail inbox using the mail.app GUI, rather than having to log onto the HotMail web interface. It doesn't have anything to do with whether your recipients use HotMail or not. Do you actually have a HotMail account? If yes, is it your HotMail address that you are giving to your recipients?

I'd focus on two areas:

1) Is your mail.app setup otherwise working?

Who are you using for your email service? Your ISP? dot Mac?  Can you compose an email message to yourself from mail.app and do you receive it? Is the 'from' address in such a message as received by you, the one you actually give out to your recipients?

2) What is the status of Junk mail filtering at both ends?

It's possible that at either end, your messages to each other are being inadvertently classified as junk mail and silently routed to junk mail folders. 

For example, does your ISP advertise junk mail aka spam mail filtering? Is it enabled? Do they offer a location you can go to and periodically review what's been classifed as 'junk' mail. Perhaps your recipient messages are there? Even if your ISP does not offer a Junk Mail service or it it does but it has been disabled, is your own mail.app's Junk mail folder activated? i.e. does your mail.app's Junk folder ever contain any items? Have you looked in there?

At the other end, have your HotMail recipients added your email address to their Hotmail's Safelist? Just have them log into their Hotmail accounts, and click on 'Options'.

best,
...b