> On 11 May 2021, at 19:00, Stefano Bagnara via mailop <[email protected]> 
> wrote:
> 
> In my case there was nothing at all in SNDS  (green , complaint <0.1%,
> no trap hits for every day in the SNDS history), but still I got that
> S3150. I've been mitigated when I opened the ticket but I have no clue
> what was the issue so I can't fix anything.

Complaints can only be generated when the mail is in the inbox. If mail is 
going to the bulk folder complaint rates will be low, even zero, because no one 
is given the opportunity to submit a complaint. As for the colors, two things. 
One: SmartScreen filters are a reflection of the content reputation not IP. 
Now, bad content can create bad IP reputation because ’this is an IP that sends 
bad content’ but content / domain rep are different things to IP rep and there 
are different things that create them. I don’t think good content can fix bad 
IP reputation, but it’s not an area I’ve ever explored so I could be very wrong 
there. Two: The colors do not reflect delivery. I have had dozens of clients 
over the years with red labels that reach the inbox. I’ve had dozens of clients 
over the years with green labels that are blocked or go 100% to spam. 

As to why this keeps happening, the underlying issue is simple to describe in 
the abstract. 

Recipients acted on mail coming from those IPs in a way that led Microsoft to 
believe that email was unimportant to their users. Initially, Microsoft put the 
mail in the bulk folder and waited for their users to complain. They also 
polled some of the recipients and asked them if the decision to put the mail in 
spam or the inbox was correct. None of Microsoft’s actual users said that MS 
was wrong. When the mail continued and the senders didn’t seem to care that the 
mail was going to bulk over a period of time then Microsoft escalated to rate 
limiting the sender. The sender still didn’t take action. Users still didn’t 
complain they weren’t receiving mail they wanted. Microsoft decided just to not 
waste the cycles delivering mail their users didn’t want, so they blocked the 
IP. You contacted them, they mitigated the reputation and reset it to basically 
neutral. Then, the cycle started again and they started monitoring how their 
users were treating the mail. Recipients acted in ways that led Microsoft to 
believe that the email was unimportant to their users. GOTO 1

Now, that’s not to say Microsoft doesn’t have some problems with filtering. 
They are one of the toughest delivery nuts to crack right now. The things we 
normally recommend to folks don’t always work as expected. Sometimes they do 
and we can fix things no problem. But sometimes they are just an inscrutable 
black box with variable responses.  

I have some theories as to why that is, but it’s all speculation at this point. 
I do think that spam to O365 is affecting reputation more than folks believe - 
and we have zero feedback from O365 domains either in the form of FBLs or SNDS. 
The other bit of speculation is that Microsoft as an entity just doesn’t really 
care what any outside company or person thinks. They do things The Microsoft 
Way. There isn’t the space inside the company for folks who know what the 
problems are to effectively advocate for change. I think there are lots of 
individuals who care and who see the issues, but the product developers / 
managers / owners just don’t care. They’d care if there were numbers to 
demonstrate the problem, but none of the numbers actually look like a problem. 

They also seem to have excessive problems with filtering recently - they 
blocked google and linkedin links in the last 2 days or so. Maybe getting in 
the press for screwing up their filtering will strengthen the voices of the 
folks internally to get the experts to give input on the product. Maybe it 
won’t. 

laura 


-- 
Having an Email Crisis?  We can help! 800 823-9674 

Laura Atkins
Word to the Wise
[email protected]
(650) 437-0741          

Email Delivery Blog: https://wordtothewise.com/blog     







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