Spamgourmet mail not being received

[gclose]

Hi,

I have used spamgourmet for about five years, without a hitch. It's the greatest service ever, and I recommend to all my friends.

This month, while in the middle of a job search, I am failing to receive mail. Sometimes it comes through, sometimes not. This is very disconcerting, because the senders don't even get a bounce. This started happening in late April.

At first, I thought one of my disposable addresses had run down to zero, and indeed, one had. The problem does not appear to be limited to this one address, however. I've had two job leads being unable to get mail to me, and had to resend to my gmail account (directly), instead. It doesn't look good, you know?

Is anyone else having trouble getting their email? Any suggestions to debug?

I emailed 4 friends yesterday, and all of their mail came through. So the problem appears to be either intermittant or only from some addresses. I don't know much else.

Thanks,
Gregory

[goodidea]

Strange things happen to me, too:

STEP 1:
I had the same problem, noticed it today when I tried to register to another forum with a spamgourmet email adress (and waiting tor an activation email from he forum which did not came!!!). 3 test mails from my email software with a spamgourmet mail of mine did not reach me, too.

STEP 2:
I tried to register to this forum with the same "real" mail address I have entered in my Spamgourmet account.
Superprise: I got the answer: "Sorry, but this email adress has been banned". ????? Why ?????

STEP 3:
I changed my "real" mail address in my spamgourmet account.
=> Then at once 2 of my test mails reached me, but the first one not and none from the forum registration before. No bounce for the first sended test mail. Very bad.

STEP 4:
I registered to this forum with a spamgourmet email address => it reached me.

STEP 5 (verification test):
sended a test mail from my email software to a spamgourmet mail address => it reached me

STEP 6:
I changed my "real" mail address back to the old one (which was diplayed as "banned" after forum registration).

Step 7 (verfication test):
sended a test mail from my email software to a spamgourmet mail address => it reached me

STEP 8:
Tried to register again at the forum where the problems began. => email did not reach me, but the seem not to accept spamgourmet addresses.

I don't know, but this f***d me up ...

best regards, Patrick

[SysKoll]

Yes, when we are under attack, remote email servers have trouble contacting us, which creates delays going from hours to days for some messages.

When we are trying to contact other servers suffering from spambots, we also see that they sometimes stop answering for a while. Aggressive filtering is in place everywhere these days, and that can cause legit emails to be delayed or even lost.

There are valuable lessons here:
* Anything that can be abused will be
* Any infrastructure or facility that is constructed without protection against abuse will be rendered useless by mooches
* Mooches don't care if they cause billions of damage and annoy millions if they can make a quick buck or satisfy some urge
* A large free-for-all, unprotected system like the SMTP infrastructure is doomed

Not that it will stop politicians from proposing large, abuse-prone, free-for-all systems for taking care of various problems, mind you.

[gclose]

Hi,

Thanks for the reply. Wow, this is unfortunate. Please let us know if there is anything, as users, we can do to help.

Cheers,
Gregory

[SysKoll]

Hi,

Thanks for the reply. Wow, this is unfortunate. Please let us know if there is anything, as users, we can do to help.

Cheers,
Gregory

There is very little you can do, except educate people (especially Internet newbies) about spam and Windows spambots. Don't reply to spam, avoid running Windows, and if you must run Windows, don't browse the web with Internet Explorer, and don't use Outlook. If your grandma wants email, get her a Mac or put Ubuntu on a PC for her.

On a more general basis, System Theory says spam was unavoidable because SMTP -- and TCP/IP in a large measure -- are not designed to resist abuse. Never rely on big, complex systems lacking decentralized safeguards, because they will be abused.The British NHS and the French healthcare system are two nice example of megastructure with a design failing to account for abuse -- in this case, enormous fraud (they have other problems, but that's another story).

[gclose]

Hi,

I just received several messages that were sent a month ago. Can you contact me offline, so I can forward these messages? They appear to have sat on a spamgourmet server for almost a month, if I am reading the headers correctly.

[gourmet]

Nothing new. I also got about 20 messages that have been sitting on spamgourmet servers for about one month.

There is one note... All of those had attachments.

[nick4mony]

Please let us know if there is anything, as users, we can do to help.

Don't use a greylisting server as the protected address.

That is to say, if your protected address is someone@someserver.adr, make sure the server that handles someserver.adr email is not a greylisting server.

This, and other rules, are in the Terms&Conditions.

Nick.

[Mailstop101]

OK, some things are making sense now.

One, last night a message popped up in my "real" inbox...which was originally sent to one of my disposable addresses almost 2 months ago, on 15 April.

Two, in the past week I've been unable to activate my account in another forum, because both activation messages failed to arrive. I was using a xoxy.net domain disposable address. I'll have to either register a new account, or contact the admins directly to get this fixed. Using a different disposable address domain may also work.

I've also had a smattering of order confirmation emails from various merchants simply never arrive. I had one order which was never filled, and I suspect it's because the order confirmation email bounced. I re-did the order, and the confirmation email arrived this time. Now I have to call them to make sure I don't get charged for and shipped two orders.

Also of note: Occasionally, a forum will not let one register using a spamgourmet disposable address. In particular, www.smith-wesson-forum.com won't let you use an address with the @spamgourmet.com domain, so I had to use a xoxy.net address. What do you suppose they're afraid of?