Packetizer Forums: Miscellaneous Topics

Google rejecting mail due to bad domain reputation

2020-01-18T02:48:30Z

Folks,

Packetizer has existed now nearly 20 years. It's hard to believe, but next month marks the 20 year old mark! During those years, we've run Google Adsense ads to help support our community-oriented web site. We've been in touch with folks at Google. We're very much known to Google. They probably know more about us than we do ourselves.

Also over those years, we've battled spam endlessly. A large portion of the spam we've received over the years has been sent to us via Google's servers (mostly Gmail abusers). We take that abuse and filter it as best we can. Much of it does get filtered out, but some does still end up in mailboxes.

Given our long history with Google and Google's position as one of the biggest spam sources on the Internet, you'd think they might be somewhat forgiving when one of our users screws up. Nope. No such luck.

Sadly, one of our users had her email password stolen. Spammers took full advantage of her email account to send at least 38,000 email messages through our mail server over the course of a few hours before it was detected and stopped. Once detected, we immediately addressed the problem. No more spam. We hate spam. But, too late. Google's system decided that, due to that occurrence of spam (at the hands of people flagrantly violating the law), our domain was to be listed as having a bad reputation. Gmail users can still send us spam, of course, but we cannot even reply to individuals using gmail if they have a question.

There appears to be absolutely nothing we can do about it, either.

And so we've decided that two can play this game. We're just going to block mail from Gmail (and anyone sending through Google's servers) to our support address and selected other addresses since we can't even reply, anyway. After all, it's better to inform senders that they aren't getting a reply than to leave them wondering!

It's truly sad when a giant like Google can wield so much power. It's even worse when it's abused.

Paul

PS - The new Microsoft Edge browser is out! Go get it.

Re: HTTPS on forum

2016-03-06T01:15:11Z

We have enabled HTTPS via Let's Encrypt. So far, so good!

Re: HTTPS on forum

2015-11-16T02:10:05Z

I see. Thanks for the reply.

Looking forward to Let's Encrypt's new service!

Re: HTTPS on forum

2015-11-15T21:03:23Z

It's on the to-do list, but hasn't been a high priority due to the public nature of the content on the forums.

The biggest issue has just been the cost of a certificate. Yes, there are free certificates out there, but those require more manual effort. And while one can argue that a $6 certificate isn't that expensive, we have lots of domains and sub-domains. It starts to add up after a while.

I'm hoping that Let's Encrypt will solve the cost and administration issues.

HTTPS on forum

2015-11-15T02:51:43Z

Hello!

Really enjoying AESCrypt, and I look forward to meeting the community on here!
Pure curiousity, will the packetizer forums get HTTPS any time soon? It seems most other packetizer services are HTTPS enabled. It would be a nice feature to have on the fourms as well to protect user login information.

Just my suggestion :D And thank you to the community for making a great program like AESCrypt!

Spam and idiotic spam prevention

2009-09-25T02:03:38Z

Folks,

Earlier today, I tried sending a message to the H.323 Announce list to let everybody know about the potential new work in the H.323 Forum on "Open Community Specifications" (or whatever this might be called). I sent out the message and, little did I know, but our server was blacklisted on UCE PROTECT's mail server (full details).

Sadly, about 20 subscribers got kicked off the H.323 Announce list, because of this blacklisting problem.

If your employer or service provider is using UCE PROTECT, may I suggest you encourage them to stop. I've made every effort to try to reason with those folks, but it appears they're not willing to change their policies.

I can only apologize to those who got kicked off the list, but there was absolutely nothing I could do about it.