Microsoft has acknowledged an issue that causes some Outlook.com emails to be incorrectly marked as spam and blocked from reaching Gmail inboxes. The company has shared a temporary workaround while it works to resolve the underlying issue with Google.
In a released support document, Microsoft confirmed that Outlook.com users with country-specific domains are seeing their emails rejected by Gmail’s mail servers with a message stating that the message is ” probably suspicious due to very low reputation of the sending domain “.
This error indicates that Google’s spam detection systems have identified potentially malicious behavior from these Outlook domainswhich resulted in a general blocking of message delivery to Gmail accounts, as a protective measure for its users.
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Gmail and its anti-spam rules are too strict
Although Microsoft did not provide details on what might trigger Gmail’s aggressive filtering, Google has set new, stricter anti-spam rules than Bulk message senders must comply to prevent their messages from being rejected.
According to Google’s guidelines updated in April, the company will begin gradually blocking any non-compliant email traffic that does not meet enhanced authentication requirements and spam thresholds intended to prevent phishing attacks and malware distribution.
To resolve the issue, Microsoft recommends creating and using a new Outlook.com alias as a temporary solution. Outlook aliases are additional email addresses linked to the same inbox and credentials as the user’s primary email address. By creating a new alias using the standard Outlook.com domain (outlook.com), Microsoft hopes to bypass Gmail’s reputation filters triggered by country-specific domains.
Users can add a new alias by signing in to their Microsoft account, clicking “Add Alias” in the account settings, and creating a new outlook.com email address. Once the address is added, they can configure Outlook to send messages from this new alias by following Microsoft’s instructions.