Random brain drops
Yahoo! embraces Microsoft HotMail practices in preparation to be bought
I run a small Java programming forum that sends mail on registration and, if the user chooses, when a forum topic gets updated. Recently whenever my system tries to send an email to Yahoo! it is deferred with the message:
Apr 10 11:11:34 habanero postfix/smtp[22430]: 940D11027FE: host b.mx.mail.yahoo.com[66.196.97.250] refused to talk to me: 421 Message from (66.197.158.69) temporarily deferred - 4.16.50. Please refer to http://help.yahoo.com/help/us/mail/defer/defer-06.html
Sometimes it goes through, sometimes it waits for a few days. I guess this is slightly better than HotMail though. HotMail claims to accept the mail and then it just disappears - it isn't in the inbox nor the spam folder.
I presume that this new behaviour is Yahoo! preparing to be more like Microsoft so that the merger will go smoother.
Interestingly enough, if you contact Yahoo! "support" about this you get a very helpful email:
This is an automated message regarding your recent request for Yahoo! Postmaster Customer Care Support. We have received your message but due to a temporary problem we wanted to let you know it could take up to a week until you receive a response. We apologize for this inconvenience.
A week, huh? Very useful. Once again, they are preparing to become part of HotMail.
An interesting blog post from Yahoo! seems to indicate that this is self feeding. They changed the spam filters which caused more sites like my own to be blocked. This in turn increased the number of issues they received requesting that the block be lifted for a particular IP. Um, is it just me or wouldn't it be simpler to remove the new blocking? Whatever - the solution is to stop using Yahoo! mail.
Posted at 11:36AM Apr 10, 2008 by Scott Dunbar in General | Comments[0]