Alias count increments but e-mail not received

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Alias count increments but e-mail not received

Postby VanguardLH » Wed Mar 20, 2013 8:31 pm

I have ads at Craigslist.org that use Spamgourmet aliases in the format:

<adname>.<myaccount>@xoxy.net

where,
<adname> is something to remind me for which ad a persons is sending an email inquiry. It only contains alphanumeric characters (always starting with alphabetic and may end with a numeric string, like today's date). No non-alphanumeric characters are used.

<myaccount> is my account (username) at Spamgourmet.

xoxy.net is one of the domains pointing at Spamgourmet (and a lot shorter to enter).

I have 5 ads at Craigslist and tested the Spamgourmet alias at each one. The first 4 worked without incident; that is, I got my test e-mail using the alias. The 5th alias doesn't work: the test e-mail was not received at the real e-mail account. I tried sending another test e-mail to the 5th alias and still never got the test e-mail at my real e-mail account. The usage counter for the alias decremented each time so Spamgourmet got the test e-mail and then tried to send it (forward). Yet my real e-mail account never gets the test e-mails for the 5th alias.

The test e-mail is not getting filtered by a server-side spam filter (i.e., it's not getting dumped into the Spam/Junk folder). I am using the webmail interface to my real e-mail account to avoid any client/proxy on my computer from filtering out the test e-mails. The test e-mails are not going into the Trash folder, either. They aren't showing up in any webmail folders. My server-side rules do not 'discard' any incoming emails but, at most, move them into the Trash folder.

I doubt my real e-mail provider's SMTP server rejected my test e-mails. They were successfully received through the first 4 aliases. My e-mail provider doesn't employ greylisting to force senders to resend their e-mails (valid SMTP servers will retry but spam-controlled SMTP servers will not). If Spamgourmet's SMTP server encounters an error, it should get logged and the server should retry later (but it isn't).

This isn't really a unique or rare event. Many times I've wondered why I didn't not received expected e-mails through an alias. I used to use Sneakemail but they yanked the free service tier and SpamMotel sucks so Spamgourmet is about the only one left for free service. Spamgourmet users cannot access a log showing what happened between Spamgourment and the SMTP server to which it tried to send the e-mails through an alias. I don't know if Spamgourmet itself keeps logs of its SMTP sessions (for sending to the real e-mail address, not for receiving to the alias at Spamgourmet).

I can try using a different alias at Spamgourmet to see if that works. Because Spamgourmet is less than 100% reliable for receiving e-mails sent to Spamgourmet aliases. I've gotten into the habit of sending a test e-mail to make sure it works (well, that it works at least one time). SMTP logging should be employed so Spamgourmet can determine at what point during an SMTP session there was problem. Operating blindly (no logs) means Spamgourmet hasn't a clue why an SMTP session failed and if it is a problem with the other end or on Spamgourmet's end.
VanguardLH
 
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Joined: Sun Oct 11, 2009 10:01 pm

Re: Alias count increments but e-mail not received

Postby VanguardLH » Wed Mar 20, 2013 8:39 pm

After waiting, retesting, and remembering about this forum and the time to post here, and then logging in again to the webmail client to recheck, there were the test e-mails. So they finally got through. That was 24 minutes after they were sent.

Test e-mails sent through the first 4 aliases showed up in less than a minute, often within seconds. For some odd reason, and even after the usage counter had decremented twice for the 5th alias, Spamgourmet took a LONG time to get the test e-mails through the 5th alias. So eventual Spamgourmet's SMTP retried to send the e-mails and eventually they got through.

This make me wonder how the user would ever know there was a problem with an alias always getting rejected by the receiving SMTP server. If Spamgourmet's retry quotas get used up (how long to wait for next retry and how many times to retry), something should get reported in the Spamgourmet's users account for an alias, like a status message saying "SMTP retry count exceeded". Retries can be caused on either end but they are part of the SMTP protocol to account for over busy servers, down for maintenance, the route to the other end is unusable right now, or whatever.

Aliases are great for privacy and to avoid spam but users are currently blindly relying on them to work. When they don't work, users don't know why or what they might do to address the problem.
VanguardLH
 
Posts: 51
Joined: Sun Oct 11, 2009 10:01 pm

Re: Alias count increments but e-mail not received

Postby josh » Fri Apr 05, 2013 3:25 pm

One thing I realized early on - this spamgourmet thing won't work at all if it's as failsafe as a normal email transaction. So I gave up on that pretty much right away - a lot of the error handling, redundancy, re-trying that you normally get, just not there. Hopefully this is clear enough in the FAQ and other communications we make.

There's a magnification effect going on - approx 250k users have 6 million + [active] email addresses. Something's gotta give in order to keep this thing going and keep it free, and in our case it's the robustness we've all come to love and expect from email.

But -- to our credit, we're still going 13 years in, and we haven't had to "retire" any domain names, nor do we plan to.
josh
 
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Re: Alias count increments but e-mail not received

Postby Jim27106 » Sun Apr 14, 2013 6:48 am

I'm seen issues with Criag's List too. I'm not sure what is happening with them, but they do funky things with email too.

I now use my real email address with them. Usually it isn't a problem. I did have some problem with a phony inquiry for a car that I didn't recognize as phony. I replied answering their questions. The silly billies then replied to my message with some dating nonsense like 20-50 times without changing the subject line. It made it easy to spot the silliness. (My ISP caught a lot of them.)

I personally think it isn't just a SG problem but something to do with the interaction of Craig's List and SG. However, I don't have the time, access, or expertise to try to figure it out. And if this was the worse problem in the world I would be a happy camper.

And now 3 minutes later I see this:

I use Spamgourmet.com for craigslist messages. And it's really awful if someone thinks you're spamming them when you're not.
Jim27106
 
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