Spamgourmet eating emails with CV attached.

[Lancer]

Contacted by people wanting my CV for jobs. They wanted it before lunch.
Sent CV as PDF attachment. (349.5kb attachment). I used the "forward from this address" feature to do this (the one that makes an email address with lots of + signs to look like it comes from your spamgourmet account).

They never got it.

I sent several times... to different addresses they own.
They don't get those either.

Finally, in frustration... I do what I *never* wanted to do. I send through my ISP direct. They get that one in seconds. They still don't have the ones I sent earlier. Oh well, they have it at least. Only because I bypassed SG.

I decided to send test emails to myself.

Short message to me => gets there.
Message to me with 349.5 pdf CV => fails to arrive
Short message to me => gets there.

Still waiting on my "useful" emails to get to me (the ones with PDF CV attached). Think they have been quietly gourmet'd.


I ring ISP, explain how SG works etc and get them to check logs etc and troubleshoot with me in case they have spam filters. All filters disabled on my account (earlier request from me). They claim no log of sent / received emails. They say nothing would have been filtered from them with my settings.

So then: it appears that SG lets me send small letters but not ones with my CV attached as a 349.5kb PDF file.

Is there some kind of filtering going on here based on size of attached file type?

Looks like I have to bypass SG if I want my important emails to arrive at destination. They job I am applying for is as a 3D animator. They will have 200-300 people applying for 4 positions, so I really need my email to work.

Can we please figure out what's going on?

(Edited for misspelled title)

[Lancer]

I'm wondering if...

...because I'm on dialup and the 300kb message takes a few minutes to send...

...perhaps SG runs on a forwarding chain where the middle computers are timing out waiting for the full message?

...could that be possible?

[nick4mony]

One way to handle attachments is to use http://www.yousendit.com/

It works by letting you upload a file to their server, and it asks for sender's email address and recipient's email address/es, and it sends them a link to download the file.

You don't even need to hassle with SG's Send-an-email-from-a-disposable page. When YSI sends something to the (sender's) address, it will auto-create.

Limit is 100MB (which is plenty enough for a dialup!!).

[Lancer]

Thanks nick4mony.

I might bookmark that one, although it's not really practical for me in sending out job applications files. You see, no matter HOW MANY CAPITALS I put in the initial email, the sectretary would simply bundle everyones job seeking emails along with their attachments and forward them on. Future jobs are often picked up much later by employers when they need a lot of animators in a hurry, and decide it's now time to go through all those collected emails & attachments. But by this time, the download ticket would have expired.

I think as far as SpamGourmet is concerned I'm going to just have to email clients etc directly from my ISP, hoping that the "reply to" is enough to protect my real address from being harvested.

[nick4mony]

UPDATE: The following doesn't help; See later post:

Another way to handle attachments is to get a web-based account (like Gmail, Yahoo, but not ColdMail), use the "Send Mail From Disposable Address" feature, and use the web-based account to send a message with an attachment.

This way, the web-mail service will pull the file over your dialup connection at its own pace, and when you press Send, it will deliver it to the SpamGourmet server at high speed, eliminating any timeout issues.

If that works, then it's a timeout issue, either between you and your ISP's SMTP server, or between you and SpamGourmet's SMTP server (depending on whether the ISP's SMTP server tries to stream the message through in realtime).

Now, this won't work with ColdMail or with SquirrelMail, because they don't allow the plus symbol ("+") in email addresses. SquirrelMail implementations are not that common, and the one I have is not publicly available, but I wouldn't want anyone to fall for it.

Another suggestion: Test it with a 500kb file (you probably need a little headroom for when you edit your CV for the next job).

Nick.

[nick4mony]

I've just tried to send a large attachment through the Send a message from a disposable address feature, from a Yahoo account.

This is in line with my suggestion in the post above, but even that doesn't work.

I know that attachments in the 20kB range work, but this zipped code sample was 582kB and there was a second file of 15kB (two attachments on one email). There was no sign of it at the recruiter's end.

Unlike the other guy, I was able to use YouSendIt, because they're recruiting NOW, and seem to be happy.

Nick.
ps. I can't understand the culture of "Get a bunch of names and CVs for later" - by the time later comes, most candidates would have found a position, no?

[Lancer]

ps. I can't understand the culture of "Get a bunch of names and CVs for later" - by the time later comes, most candidates would have found a position, no?

Not if you understand the industry. Often it is true that animators are "taken", but that's frequently "short term but [hopefully] paid well" so they'll soon be out looking all over again, possibly soon. It's a matter of meeting up demand and supply from both camps. They even keep databases of job seeking reels for when they need to source a crew for their next big project. Ever wonder why they have such long and boring lists of credits on the end of movies?

Were you saying that sending direct from your ISP but with SpamGourmet as "reply to" didn't work? If so, that would have nothing to do with SG, but your own ISP which must have its own over-the-top traffic shaping options.
Edit: Oh I see, you meant sending through a different but faster account than dialup. Was going to try that, as it seemed like a good work around if bottlenecking dialup was the issue. Pity.

[mysticturner]

I'm beginning to wonder if I have the same problem. I sent a word document out to a group of church folks and no one seems to have gotten it. This is a list I've used successfully for over 2 years. The one I sent memorial day no one got. I resent it last night, this time with return receipt set, but no responses yet (but that may be because people didn't check email last night). I've added myself to my own list so I can verify processing and am about to attempt a send of the same document to myself. And this doc is only 97K.

[mysticturner]

Sure enough. An email with a 97K document is not getting through.

Edit: I also just tried a test email with no attachment and it's not getting through either so the Denial of Service attacks may be going on right now.

[nick4mony]

Oh I see, you meant sending through a different but faster account than dialup. Was going to try that, as it seemed like a good work around if bottlenecking dialup was the issue. Pity.

What I'm saying is that when you use Yahoo to send the message, it will be sent from Yahoo's ISP (which hopefully operates at a gazillion bps). This effectively takes your ISP out of the equation (because your ISP is no longer involved after you press Yahoo's Send button).

The point I'm making now is that it doesn't matter - a large attachment still fails either way. It's now a case of finding out how large is large, and also persuading Josh & Syskoll to have a look.

Nick.

[SysKoll]

Today I did a few quick tests. I sent messages with attachments from gmail to my sg account. Here are the resutls. "Arrived" means the spamgourmet server gets the message, "arrived" means the message is delevered to the forwarding address (I can tell the difference by looking at the logs)

*9K text attachment -- Message arrived and delivered within seconds

* 830 Kb binary attachment (a tar.gz file) -- Gmail complained that it couldn't scan file for viruses. Message received by spamgourmet, forwarded after 2 minutes, but never received in the forwarding mailbox.

* 1.6 Mb text attachment -- Message received by spamgourmet, forwarded after 15 minutes, but never received in the forwarding mailbox.

So there seem to be some very aggressive virus filtering going on that might discard any "suspicious" attachment. This filtering does not occur at the spamgourmet server but in third party ISPs (here, my sending and receiving ISPs).

The best I can do is to track messages in the logs to see if we at least received it.

[Lancer]

Thanks for looking into it. Nice to see something confirmed.

When sent through SpamGourmet as "redirection" address: nothing arrives.
When sent straight from my ISP to the same email target but with "Reply To" disguised as the SG sender: Arrives in seconds.

Something is eating the emails, only when using the +redirection email service of SpamGourmet.

[gourmet]

I really wonder why people are using temporary spamgourmet addresses for critical use like that.

How often you have received spam from your employer? I really hope that answer is never ever.

Naturally it gives great impression from applicant too.

shittyjob321..... etc...

[nick4mony]

How often you have received spam from your employer? I really hope that answer is never ever.

Yes I have, two instances.

1) It's a little border-line, and it's only one piece of spam, once only, but it still counts.

When the company I worked at went broke, the old boss set up a new web site (yetanotherjobhuntingwebsite.com.au), and sent a message advertising it to the emails addresses that he had.

2) I had given out an "ordinary address" to two job boards, a phone/internet company, and a travel agency, all Australian based. I suspect one of the job boards was responsible. They're not quite an employer, but employers/recruiters do get to know the address. Boy did that address get slammed. I could take action under Australia's spam act, but having the same address issued out to four separate organisations makes proving anything a little hard.

Until then, I had only given SG addresses to foreign companies, (relying on Australia's spam act being a deterrent for Aussie companies) but I really had to tighten up after being dumped on like that. That's the point at which I gave everybody an SG address.

These days, Yahoo has AddressGuard (create disposable addresses in advance), so I sometimes use that, and there's always YouSendIt (or DIY variations).

Nick.

[mysticturner]

I really wonder why people are using temporary spamgourmet addresses for critical use like that.

How often you have received spam from your employer? I really hope that answer is never ever.

Naturally it gives great impression from applicant too.

shittyjob321..... etc...

I don't give out my real address. All my addresses out there in the world are SG addresses. If it's critcal - don't email it. Send it via snail mail. Email is getting so overloaded and so swamped that it is rapidly loosing any resemblance to a reliable communications method. If you really want my attention, it's gonna cost you 42 cents.