Hotmail accounts not receiving self-registration emails

Re: Hotmail accounts not receiving self-registration emails

by Ken Task -
Number of replies: 2
Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers

http://www.theverge.com/2016/6/1/11827310/microsoft-outlook-hotmail-email-spam-june-2016

http://www.cbronline.com/news/enterprise-it/software/microsoft-claims-to-have-fixed-issue-which-saw-outlook-and-hotmail-flooded-by-spam-4911717

So, in your case, it sounds like improvements in hotmail/outlook is now affecting what used to be borderline "legitimate Email".

Is your Moodle is using an STMP server which has appropriate MX, SPF, DMARC, etc. type records in DNS to verify the sending mail server is a valid sender?

If you are **not** using an SMTP server, Moodle uses it's built in PHPMailer.
So the mail leaving Moodle shows in Email headers that the mail originated
from your Moodle server - which probably doesn't have MX, SPF, DMARC records etc. in DNS.   Thus mail from your Moodle doesn't pass whatever checks hotmail,etc. is doing using to decide if it should accept the mail from your server.

Your options at this point:
1. route mail though a valid SMTP server that will relay mail from your Moodle.
2. ask users to use other Email addresses.

SMTP server setup:
https://docs.moodle.org/31/en/Messaging_settings

Need an SMTP service?
SendGrind is one that offers a fREE 12.000 messages a month service.

Don't work for them ... don't use ... just trying to anticpate the next question related to setting up an STMP server.

https://sendgrid.com/marketing/smtp-server/

'spirit of sharing', Ken


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In reply to Ken Task

Re: Hotmail accounts not receiving self-registration emails

by Ricardo Dias Campos -

Hi, Ken.

I'm not a moodle user. I give support to Linux, instead. That said, let's go to the problem.

Moodle people asked me about a problem related to the subject of this thread. Maybe you can help me.

They say that Moodle users send mail through the forum they participate using their personal email accounts which have several domains like yahoo, gmail etc. Since they send those mails from a local Postfix in the Moodle machine (mail server in Moodle is configured to localhost), their IP is not an mx for those domains and the mails are rejected by recipients mail servers.

If I understand what Moodle people is saying, Moodle gets personal user accounts and uses them as senders ("From") addresses in mails sent from a local server.  If this is true how can this work without clashing with the mail delivery standards like spf and dmarc? Is there another way to configure mail in Moodle?

By the way, Moodle version is 2.8.6.

Thanks for your help.

Ricardo

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In reply to Ricardo Dias Campos

Re: Hotmail accounts not receiving self-registration emails

by Ken Task -
Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers

If one doesn't setup an SMTP relay, Moodle will use it's own PHPMailer .. if you look at PHP info settings you'll see a reference to a sendmail command that allows the sending of mail from web server user via sendmail client.   On your server might be postfix.

What folks do is enter the no-reply to address as they desire ...

http://site.domain/admin/settings.php?section=messagesettingemail

Something like info@other.site.domain.

which is part of the problem.    Moodle server site.domain might not even part of that other.site.domain's network.

So let's say the server is sos.tcea.org (that's a real server BTW).

In the no-reply to address of that server I use ktask@sos.tcea.org.   Server isn't set up to receive EMail from outside itself (ie, localhost).   But one of the items checked by email gateways/spam checkers is the address from which the message comes.    IF server is sos.tcea.org and it's not relaying to/through an SMTP server that has MX records, SPF records, DKIM records and even DMARC records all of which ID's IP addresses as valid sending or recieving mail servers for a domain at least the first check is passed OK.

The best way to solve the issue really is to setup an SMTP relay ... SMTP servers have all those DNS records.   If one cannot do that for some reason, then one can only do minimal - such as described above ... and that will be blocked by some ... hopefully not all .. aol.com however, will regardless of what you do.

The other way is to cheat with DNS ... but you have to be in charge of the domain or have the cooperation of the DNS admin to pull it off ...

Add the IP address of your Moodle server to the SPF record, add an MX record for your Moodle server.  Etc.    Remember ... your  Moodle server *doesn't have to receive EMail* ... it just has to be ID'd as a valid sending mail server (that's all).

BTW, some providers of services actually enter their *own* entire range of IP addresses used for hosting by customers in SBL.  They don't want their customers to be spam kings - either by intent or poor server admin (site got hacked with a spam bot).   Google Apps Engine server, as an example, block any traffic on port 25 ... out or in ... even to the gmail.com account one might have used to setup the server instance.

Confusing, huh?

'spirit of sharing', Ken

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