Deferrals at Microsoft

If you’re seeing a lot of “451 4.7.500 Server busy. Please try again later” from Office365 this morning you’re not alone.

Microsoft are aware of the issue, and incident EX680695 says:

Current status: We’ve identified that specific IP addresses are being unexpectedly limited by our anti-spam procedures, causing inbound external email delivery to become throttled and delayed. We’re reviewing if there have been any recent changes to our anti-spam rules to understand why the IP addresses are being limited. In the meantime, we’re manually adding reported affected IP addresses to an allowed list to provide immediate relief.

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Microsoft and SPF

Many deliverability folks stopped recommending publishing SPF records for the 5322.from address to get delivery to Microsoft. I even remember Microsoft saying they were stopping doing SenderID style checking. A discussion on the emailgeeks slack channel has me rethinking that.

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Don’t break the (RFC) rules

It looks like Microsoft are getting pickier about email address syntax, rejecting mail that uses illegal address formats. That might be what’s causing that “550 5.6.0 CAT.InvalidContent.Exception: DataSourceOperationException, proxyAddress: prefix not supported – ; cannot handle content of message” rejection.

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Microsoft using Spamhaus Lists

An on the ball reader sent me a note today showing a bounce message indicating microsoft was rejecting mail due to a Spamhaus Blocklist Listing.
5.7.1 Client host [10.10.10.10] blocked using Spamhaus. To request removal from this list see http://www.spamhaus.org/lookup.lasso (S3130). [VE1EUR03FT043.eop-EUR03.prod.protection.outlook.com]
The IP in question is listed on the CSS, which means at a minimum Microsoft is using the SBL. I expect they’re actually using the ZEN list. ZEN provides a single lookup for 3 different lists: the SBL, XBL and PBL. The XBL is a list of virus infected machines and the PBL is a list of IPs that the IP owners state shouldn’t be sending email. Both of these lists are generally safe to use. If MS is using the SBL, it’s very likely they’re using the other two as well.
 

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