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."

Re:And the problem is...?

[Gyppo]

No - for every recepient that they reject, they are, in effect, blocking those recipient from receiving the intended message. So they are blocking messages.

I'm in violation too...

[Ossifer]

... 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...

RFCs are not laws

[Angst Badger]

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.

I'm not TERRIBLY pro-MS, but...

[DigitalSorceress]

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.

Hotmail is just one sign

[cdrguru]

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 [e-mail], love notes to your girlfriend and jokes to others in the office. And that's about it.

Re:RFCs are not laws

[glwtta]

I love the way the OP makes this sound like a serious criminal violation.

I love the way you just make shit up. All I got from the summary was that they are violating the RFC, I can't imagine what kind of synaptic misfire would lead anyone to think "criminal" when they read that.

Is overzealous MS reverse-bashing the in thing now?

Re:E-mail is dead for mass communication

[McDutchie]

Why are people still using these? Why haven't they been replaced by forums?

Because web forums suck.

1. You're limited to whatever interface the web forum admins chose. You cannot choose your own interface. You have to use a different interface and/or register a new account for each forum.
2. Most forums lack basic features such as threading and decent filtering/sorting/killfiling. (So do most email programs, but at least you can choose one that has these features!)
3. Web interfaces are s-l-o-w.
4. Outages or being offline means you can't get to the forum.
5. You have to remember to go to them. Mailing lists come to you. (That what really kills most web forums for me. Slashdot is an exception.)

Re:E-mail is dead for mass communication

[aztracker1]

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..

Re:And the problem is...?

[morcego]

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 ?