Hotmail bouncing email

Has anyone else noticed a huge increase in bounced email from Hotmail?

[wsjordan]

One of the sites that I run verifies the email addresses of people who register by sending out a verification code to the address that the user provides. In the past couple of weeks, I’ve noticed that roughly 4 out of 5 emails sent to Hotmail has been bouncing with a 554 message. I wanted to make sure that people weren’t just entering dead addresses, so I set up a Hotmail account and found that I had to send seven emails from my site before one finally got through.

I’m sure that some of you out there verify email addresses for your sites too. Has anyone else noticed this problem with Hotmail recently, or has my site been added to some kind of blacklist on Hotmail? (Well, some emails are getting through, so I guess it would be a brownlist). I’m becoming very frustrated with this problem, because I’m losing users due to the fact that they are unable to finish the registration process. So now I’m wondering if I should contact Hotmail or just wait it out.

[rcjordan]

Welcome to WebmasterWorld, WS.

There's been lots of recent press about Hotmail going to Brightmail [europemedia.net] filtering, though I don't think its been deployed yet. Coincidence?

[steveb]

Hotmail accounts have a fairly small 2mb (I think) size limit. Once the accounts reach that size, inbound email bounces.

It should be no surprise that this happens a lot now. I sign up for stuff with my garbage hotmail accounts that just get spam. They reach the limit if I don't check them for a couple days, and the inbound spam bounces.