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Gmail having issues

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Re: Gmail having issues

#211

Post by teddyh »

EarthIsHome wrote: post #200
snazz wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's so easy to configure and run your own mail server Is it? Is dealing with IP reputation, getting your emails accepted by major providers, and being on the hook for fixing everything yourself very easy? I haven't tried, so I don't have personal experience, but I've heard enough horror stories to think that it's not a good use of my time.

I had an IP reputation issue and managed to resolve it after some time. TLDR: Before you spin up a mail server, check if your IP address is on any of the blacklists [0]-[1] as well as Proof Point's list [2]. If it is, then try and get a different IP address. I spun up a hosted server on Digital Ocean and received an IP address. I checked several black lists from a few email testing/troubleshooting sites [0] and [1] a…

Used by Microsoft: https://sendersupport.olc.protection.outlook.com/snds/index....

Re: Gmail having issues

#212

Post by octoberfranklin »

com2kid wrote: post #13
wenbin wrote: post #9

"Type: Permanent; SubType: General; Code: smtp; 550-5.1.1 The email account that you tried to reach does not exist. Please try 550-5.1.1 double-checking the recipient's email address for typos or 550-5.1.1 unnecessary spaces. Learn more at 550 5.1.1 https://support.google.com/mail/?p=NoSuchUser y128si147264pfg.177 - gsmtp"

This is pretty much the worst response possible. Hard bounces mean that email delivery services are going to start automatically removing, or at least stopping delivery to, entire slews of email addresses. A lot of clean up is going to be needed as a result of this. To add some more details, when using a 3rd party email delivery service, those services will either black-list or just outright remove email addresses wh…

I really cannot believe they did not immediately hack in a new rule to their SMTP server: never return a 5xx (permanent failure), instead return a 421 (temporary failure try again later).

That simple fix buys them 24-72 hours to solve this properly.

Yeah, it burdens servers sending mail to them because now they have to hold on to all mail (including mail that really is permanently undeliverable) for another day or so, but that's still better than what's happening right now.

Re: Gmail having issues

#213

Post by mikehollinger »

x86_64Ubuntu wrote: post #173
cowkingdeluxe wrote: post #3

Any email sent to my gmail is getting permanently bounced. Says my email does not exist at gmail.

Now think about if some gmail accounts got Thanos snapped out of existence. What kind of digital death would that be as you would NEVER be able to recover your accounts, at least for most people who don't have 2FA.

> Now think about if some gmail accounts got Thanos snapped out of existence. What kind of digital death would that be as you would NEVER be able to recover your accounts, at least for most people who don't have 2FA.

An interesting problem - I have a gmail address, and also one on my personal domain (which uses g-suite for email). The personal domain's backup is a gmail address, and the gmail's backup is my personal domain. When I set that up ages ago, I genuinely never thought about what happens if gmail itself implodes.

I guess I'm setting up a... icloud??? backup email for a bunch of stuff shortly.

Re: Gmail having issues

#214

Post by dathinab »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #201
systemvoltage wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This feels like a cheap shot at Google. Shit happens, and they're not immune to it even if the servers are located in Zurich. Running a datacenter is no easy task.

Being down is okay. Returning an error message that results in the data being thrown away instead of being requeued is not. Block incoming smtp connections until your app layer is fixed.

> Block incoming smtp connections until you app layer is fixed.

Or returning one of the 4xx status codes which indicate less-permanent failure state like:

- 451 Requested action aborted: local error in processing

Which is kinda like a HTTP internal server error as it can mean anything.

Re: Gmail having issues

#215

Post by jeffbee »

jrockway wrote: post #197
megous wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought SMTP was specifically designed for this (with support for multiple MX entries, queuing at the sender MTA side, etc.) and there's an easy hard boundary at the user mailbox level you can use to partition your system. It should not be a problem that gmail is "down". Unless this would be happening for more than a few days, noone would lose e-mail. It's a problem that it's not returning a temporary error code, b…

It is pretty clear that accepting a TCP connection and reading the bytes of the email from the sender is not the problem. Google is bouncing messages with an error like "that user doesn't exist". This would lead one to believe that some instances are having trouble looking up users, and that doesn't scale super easily. If the product guarantees that it will reject invalid email addresses (which is nice of them, not r…

I doubt that the delivery stack would 550 for mere trouble looking up an account. This smells more like the identity system was incorrectly returning authoritative denials.

Re: Gmail having issues

#216

Post by octoberfranklin »

Jap2-0 wrote: post #69
petercooper wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, we're unusual in not relying on third parties for list management. We can rollback. Or I might just comment out the 'unsub on hard bounce' code for the rest of the week..! :)

Unsub on two consecutive bounces seems more reasonable to catch flukes (or Gmail going down)?

Their SMTP server being unreachable is a 4xx temporary error. The sender MUST keep trying for at least 24 hours, and 72 hours is recommended.

"Gmail going down" would not have caused this problem. Even if all their SMTP servers went offline.

Re: Gmail having issues

#217

Post by octoberfranklin »

petercooper wrote: post #132
Jap2-0 wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unsub on two consecutive bounces seems more reasonable to catch flukes (or Gmail going down)?

Yes, most likely! That is a common approach for 'soft bounces' in most list management systems (e.g. MailChimp). The problem here is Gmail has been throwing out "NoSuchUser" errors which are an instant unsub in most systems because Gmail takes repeated delivery to non-existing addresses into account for deliverability purposes. I'm extremely paranoid about email hygiene, tiny bounce rates and high delivery rates, so…

> Gmail takes repeated delivery to non-existing addresses into account for deliverability purposes.

I think you mean "reputation purposes"?

If so, wow, that sucks. Their opaque rules have conditioned their counterparties to punish Google as hard as possible for a screwup.

Re: Gmail having issues

#218

Post by dannyw »

blibble wrote: post #142

workspace (gsuite) customers: remember to claim under the SLA, cos they don't award it automatically under 99.9% is a 3 day credit, and they're currently at 99.4%

I sent in a support ticket. Is that the right way to claim SLA?

Re: Gmail having issues

#219

Post by zadokshi »

ab8 wrote: post #86
rat9988 wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would advice anyone to not share any information that his company hasn't agreed explicitely to share.

Your username is rat9988. Been burned in the past?

Management at google are poking in to check up on their staff, to make sure nothing leaks.

Re: Gmail having issues

#220

Post by octoberfranklin »

mlyle wrote: post #130
LinuxBender wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They should be returning 421 for backend outages so that sending servers queue and retry the emails. 550 can be interpreted by some as deleted [1] or even banned accounts in some cases. Maybe someone here could convince them to change the logic that occurs during an outage. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_SMTP_server_return_cod...

Yah. Maybe there's an unexpected way that things can fail resulting in 550's. But maybe at Google's scale you should have some kind of kill switch to stop answering SMTP or to not send permanent errors at all, so that you could flip a switch and prevent the worst consequences of this rather than let it go on for a couple of hours.

Absolutely this.

I am astonished that either (a) this switch has not been flipped yet or (b) this switch does not exist.

Somebody is incompetent here.

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