User activation emails not getting to hotmail accounts?

thetgc · Post by **thetgc** » Thu Jan 21, 2021 1:37 pm

I seem to have an ongoing issue with my forum where user activation emails are not reaching anyone who has a Hotmail or MSN account.

My domain is not blacklisted anywhere and neither is my server IP address.

It seems that the emails are sent from the site but Hotmail and MSN delete them before the user sees them.

My hosting provider has contacted Hotmail about this but there is never any response. I have also tried.

As I have "user activation" set it means I need to manually activate these accounts. This would be fine but it is not a small forum. I have around 4-500 sign ups a month and growing. Around 30% of these are using Hotmail or MSN.

The other problem is that when I manually activate these accounts from the admin panel the user does not receive any notification that their account was activated.

Can anyone suggest a way around all this?

Thanks.

david63 · Post by **david63** » Thu Jan 21, 2021 1:45 pm

It has been an issue for many years that hotmail and gmail have treated emails from phpBB boards as spam and deleted them.

thetgc wrote: ↑
Thu Jan 21, 2021 1:37 pm
Can anyone suggest a way around all this?

Not the answer that you want but the only way around this is for your users not to use hotmail to register on your board. Many users that use hotmail use them as "throw away" accounts just to gain access. Not knowing your board but perhaps your permissions are too restrictive for guests.

thetgc · Post by **thetgc** » Thu Jan 21, 2021 1:51 pm

Thanks, David. Yes, that would also be my preference but I don't want to turn people away on the basis of the mail provider they use.

I don't allow guests to post to the forum. It is quite a high profile site and attracts a lot of spammers. I do have a good team of 8 moderators and we have the good old 'Ban Hammer' installed so that helps

I also have most sections restricted so that guests can read the first post but need to register in order to access the rest. This works fine apart from the Hotmail issue.

Perhaps you are right though. Maybe not accepting registrations from people using Hotmail is the only way to sort the problem

david63 · Post by **david63** » Thu Jan 21, 2021 2:53 pm

thetgc wrote: ↑
Thu Jan 21, 2021 1:51 pm
I also have most sections restricted so that guests can read the first post but need to register in order to access the rest.

How many of the hotmail accounts actually post? If it is very few then possibly the problem is that they are only registering to read in which case easing the permissions would be the way to go in my opinion.

janus_zonstraal · Post by **janus_zonstraal** » Thu Jan 21, 2021 4:16 pm

Did your test your emails on https://www.mail-tester.com/ ?

Marek Muc · Post by **Marek Muc** » Thu Jan 21, 2021 5:45 pm

yes definitely test your emails using https://www.mail-tester.com/

what I found being useful in lowering spam score is modifying your activation email so that it is unique - write a short welcome message linked to your board

it is as easy as editing a plain text file in:
\language\en\email\user_welcome_inactive.txt
*(use your language instead of 'en' if applicable)

the downside is that this file will be replaced after each version update and you'll need to reapply this change

I did this and ca. 3-5% of registered users do not activate their accounts (whether due to activation email landing in spam or other reasons)

janus_zonstraal · Post by **janus_zonstraal** » Thu Jan 21, 2021 6:47 pm

Yes indeed, I change the text also and it helped a lot.

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