Newshot Fixed: Microsoft acknowledges Outlook mistakenly blocked legitimate emails; rejected emails need to be resent
IT Home, November 12 news: The tech media outlet Windows Latest today (November 12) published a blog post reporting that Microsoft has acknowledged that a recent anti-spam rule update mistakenly blocked some legitimate emails, causing some Outlook users to miss incoming messages for several consecutive days. Microsoft has now rolled back the relevant update, and email sending and receiving have returned to normal, but emails that were previously rejected will not be automatically redelivered, and users may need to contact the senders to resend them.
IT Home previously reported that the media outlet's testing found that, at least since November 5, some emails sent to Outlook.com, Hotmail.com, Live.com, and MSN.com addresses had been bouncing.
Some senders received error messages stating "missing SPF, DKIM, or DMARC authentication records," which made it look as though their own email configuration was faulty, but in fact some senders with valid authentication records were affected as well.
Microsoft told the media outlet that the problem stemmed from an update to its anti-spam rules, and that the company discovered the anomaly after user feedback and withdrew the update. The report's author said the email flow he observed recovered at 12:02 Central European Time on November 9; Microsoft said it will continue to monitor delivery conditions.
It should be noted that these emails were not moved to the junk folder; they were rejected before delivery, so they cannot be recovered by searching the mailbox, nor can Microsoft restore them for recipients. Users who suspect they have recently missed important incoming messages need to check with the senders and ask them to resend; if delivery problems persist, they can submit email tracking information to Microsoft support.
- "Microsoft Outlook Mailbox Bug: Emails Lost for No Reason, Some Senders with Correct Authentication Configuration Also Blocked"
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