How Hotmail users can recover lost emails.

Hot mail users may not be the only users who fail to get confirmations and newsletters
You should check your junk mail often no matter what service you use.



I use Hotmail every day and appreciate the very strong spam filtering that Miscrosoft uses. However, when I tested the subscription form on my site, sending myself an e-mail to my Hotmail address, I could not find the e-mail.

What I did was this: I went to the junk mail folder and looked for an e-mail with the word "confirmation". When I opened the e-mail I could see that it was the one that I sent to myself. Next, I closed the email and entered a tick mark next to it. Then, I went to the top of the page and clicked "Not Junk". When the screen came up, it allowed me to choose to put the sender (Combat-Aging.com) in the safe list.

Problem Solved?

Not quite. The "Thank you" e-mail also went to the junk box! So I had to repeat the process, as I do every day with other solicited e-mail and even e-mail from friends. This is the price I pay to avoid unsolicited e-mail.

Subscribing to Newsletters

Most web sites use reliable service providers, so most e-mails are sent and received quickly. However, because you are using an MSN or Hotmail address, you will likely not receive some confirmation e-mails.

If you do not receive an order confirmation e-mail within an hour, check your junk mail box. If you still have not received it, please send an email to me at the following e-mail address:

email-address

Please tell me...

1) Microsoft has blocked you from receiving your after-subscribing e-mail.

2) Your first name or nickname.

3) Your new non-Hotmail, non-MSN e-mail address for our database. Double-check for typos. (If you wish to continue to use a free, e-mail address you could use either Yahoo! Mail or Gmail to receive e-mail and newsletter confirmations without problem.)

I will change your e-mail address in my database and re-send your e-mail within 24 hours.

Sorry for this bother. This is not my fault. I value the strong spam filtering I get with Hotmail and I am willing to check my junk mailbox every day to retrieve the good e-mails that have been lost by strong filtering.

Since you may value this feature differently from me, I provide below three options for a backup e-mail address accessible from any computer.

Sign up for a Hotmail account if you want superstrong filtering.

Sign up for a Gmail account (Google Mail) with moderate filtering.

Sign up for a Yahoo Mail account with moderate filtering.

Hint

If you choose a long username, the "hunter robots" of the spammers will not be able to find you. For example: "zardos" is a poor choice, because a spammer using 10 million random attempts will find you. But "wizard_of_oz" is a good choice, because a spammer would need more than 2 billion random attempts to find you.

Fred Colbourne