Gmail blocking Hotmail/Outlook emails from parents

[JustPaul89]

Good afternoon,

 

I'm sysadmin at a primary school, which primarily uses the Google suite. We have generic emails (info@, etc) for parents to email, these then get forwarded to certain members of staff, so as not to release the email structure to parents, allowing parents to email specific teachers etc directly.

 

We're having an issue, where sometimes, parents emails get marked as spam by Gmail, and eventually get archived at the generic inbox, meaning they never make it to the members of staff that need to be seeing them.

 

Has anyone experienced this kind of problem before, and how did you resolve it please?

 

TIA

 

Paul

[pete]

Is it all / most Hotmail/Outlook emails or just some?

 

If it's just some, do they (ignoring the subject under discussion) share similarities with spam emails?

[JustPaul89]

Hi Pete,

Thanks for your reply, there doesnt seem to be any obvious answer to this one.

First of all, its not every hotmail/outlook email.

when I look at subjects, and content, there doesn't seem to be anything that might look 'spammy.'

One example is 'Decline offered place at (redacted)' and it does have a second recipient (i.e. the other parent.) and the email address is just '[email protected]'

I really am stumped!

Thanks again

[TechMonkey]

Do you have all your email security set up correctly? SFP, DKIM, MTA-STS, etc?

Can you get the headers of the message and run it through the MXToolbox header analyser? That may give you a better idea of what is going on.

Are the emails definitely showing from Hotmail/Outlook or are they using vanity domains but really from Hotmail/Outlook accounts? We have lots of problems with parents setting up domains, either to use their own names or for their company, but not setting up the security and then blaming us for not receiving their emails.

[robintech]

Not on Gmail but do the email logs show anything under ELS spam classifications https://support.google.com/a/answer/2623280?sjid=15303230534433946882-EU#spam-defs

Maybe someone is marking it as spam internally

[JustPaul89]

Not on Gmail but do the email logs show anything under ELS spam classifications https://support.google.com/a/answer/2623280?sjid=15303230534433946882-EU#spam-defs

Maybe someone is marking it as spam internally

Thank you, I have reason to believe no one is marking it as spam, as the one particular inbox I'm testing on only forwards to one person, and she does not see the messages at all.

 

The reason it is showing is this: It is similar to messages that were identified as spam in the past.

Edited June 3, 2024 by JustPaul89

[JustPaul89]

Do you have all your email security set up correctly? SFP, DKIM, MTA-STS, etc?

Can you get the headers of the message and run it through the MXToolbox header analyser? That may give you a better idea of what is going on.

Are the emails definitely showing from Hotmail/Outlook or are they using vanity domains but really from Hotmail/Outlook accounts? We have lots of problems with parents setting up domains, either to use their own names or for their company, but not setting up the security and then blaming us for not receiving their emails.

 

Hi, thanks for this.

They are just normal outlook.com/hotmail.com addresses. It passes SPF, DKIM, and DMARC, however, it displays as DKIM 'Body Hash Did Not Verify' when I run it through the analyser.

 

I guess this isn't much I can fix from our end?

 

Thanks

 

Paul

[psydii]

We sometimes see similar in 365. For us the trigger is the email from a parent (or colleague who is also a parent acting in their parental role), that because it references internal data (student names, job titles, other colleagues etc) and comes from an email address that is similar to internal addresses (Jo Smith the Head Teacher's private email is "Jo Smith" which is somewhat Close to "Jo Smith" their 365 email) it gets flagged either as potential unsolicited commercial email, and other times as a phishing/first-contact event.

 

I just have to trawl quarantine twice a day and release incorrectly caught mail. 365 does appear to be quite good at adapting, and we've had fewer emails getting blocked recently.