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Major European payment processor can't send email to Google Workspace users

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Re: Major European payment processor can't send email to Google Workspace users

#201

Post by looperhacks »

> This experience fits a pattern I keep running into with European business-facing APIs and services. Something is always a little bit broken. Documentation is incomplete, or packaged as a nasty PDF, edge cases are unhandled, error messages are misleading, and when you report issues, the support team doesn't have the technical depth to understand what you're telling them.

I can definitely confirm that this is a common thing. But I think this is a "small org"-problem more than a "European business"-problem. Apparently, the company has somewhere between 500 and 1000 employees (I couldn't find good data, sadly). With a size like this, the "support" is probably outsourced (meaning they don't know anything), there are maybe 100 engineers (probably less) and the mailing is either done via a third-party or set up by an Admin that left three years ago.

Without any basis, I will speculate that you will notice this more in Europe because there is simply no company at the size of Stripe or similar.

Re: Major European payment processor can't send email to Google Workspace users

#202

Post by bojan »

looperhacks wrote: post #201

> This experience fits a pattern I keep running into with European business-facing APIs and services. Something is always a little bit broken. Documentation is incomplete, or packaged as a nasty PDF, edge cases are unhandled, error messages are misleading, and when you report issues, the support team doesn't have the technical depth to understand what you're telling them. I can definitely confirm that this is a commo…

While there is some truth in while you saying, I have to say that from my European perspective all the big American companies feel enormously bloated. For example, I've recently learned thats Atlassian has 13000 employees, and I have to ask myself, what do all those people do?

Re: Major European payment processor can't send email to Google Workspace users

#203

Post by geocar »

st_goliath wrote: post #151
Arnt wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SHOULD is a requirement. It means that you have to do it unless you know some specific reason that the requirement doesn't apply in your case. "I don't want to" is not a valid excuse, "I don't see a reason to" isn't either. IIRC this particular rule is a SHOULD because MUAs often send messages without a Message-ID to their submission server, and the submission server adds one if necessary. https://www.rfc-editor.org/…

> "I don't want to" is not a valid excuse for the client . If you're implementing a server, "the client SHOULD but didn't" isn't a valid excuse to reject a client either. You can do it anyway, you might even have good reasons for it, but then you sure don't get to point at the RFC and call the client broken.

> isn't a valid excuse to reject a client either.

Yes it absolutely is: https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc2119 is quite clear.

    3. SHOULD   This word, or the adjective "RECOMMENDED", mean that there
       may exist valid reasons in particular circumstances to ignore a
       particular item, but the full implications must be understood and
       carefully weighed before choosing a different course.
If the client SHOULD do something and doesn't, and your server does not know why, you SHOULD disconnect and move on.

If the server has considered fully the implications of not having a Message-ID header, then it MAY continue processing.

In general, you will find most of the Internet specifications are labelled MUST if they are required for the protocol's own state-processing (i.e. as documented), while specifications are labelled SHOULD if they are required for application state-processing in some circumstances (i.e. other users of the protocol).

Re: Major European payment processor can't send email to Google Workspace users

#205

Post by 1970-01-01 »

>"We can see your account now has a verified email address, so there doesn't appear to be an issue."

There are still too many edge cases like this one that can't get fixed because of ignorant support not doing it's job. In my life, every company that escalates to an engineer instead of punting the ticket with some asinine 'but it works right now, goodbye' message gets rewarded via keeping my business. The ones that don't are immediately cancelled. Sometimes I even do a chargeback as extra punishment. Maybe I'm just old, but I have near zero tolerance for immature support playing games with my time.

Re: Major European payment processor can't send email to Google Workspace users

#206

Post by renewiltord »

Johnny555 wrote: post #26
that_guy_iain wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My takeaway is there is no bug. My takeaway is that his test email bounced because he didn't have the reputation Viva does. Emails are handled on a reputation basis, this is why we use email service providers like Sendgrid, Mailgun, Postmark, etc.

It always amazes me how people can read a blog post like this one that has a clear description of the problem with a log excerpts demonstrating the problem, and then people will confidently make up a completely different scenario that was not mentioned at all and blame the problem on that.

User is clearly mentally disturbed. Read his other comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46992022

Social network is not good for the poor guy. I already regret replying to him in the first place but I cannot delete.

Re: Major European payment processor can't send email to Google Workspace users

#207

Post by TheAceOfHearts »

bojan wrote: post #202
looperhacks wrote: post #201

> This experience fits a pattern I keep running into with European business-facing APIs and services. Something is always a little bit broken. Documentation is incomplete, or packaged as a nasty PDF, edge cases are unhandled, error messages are misleading, and when you report issues, the support team doesn't have the technical depth to understand what you're telling them. I can definitely confirm that this is a commo…

While there is some truth in while you saying, I have to say that from my European perspective all the big American companies feel enormously bloated. For example, I've recently learned thats Atlassian has 13000 employees, and I have to ask myself, what do all those people do?

A minor correction, but Atlassian was founded in Australia, and their global headquarters is still in Australia.

Re: Major European payment processor can't send email to Google Workspace users

#208

Post by [deleted] »

kotaKat wrote: post #29

Sudden realization that one of my American banks must be having email problems with this too because I use a Google custom email and recently got an in-app notification from my bank saying "we're unable to email you" (and a letter) yet my email works perfectly fine... switching to consumer gmail worked.

[deleted]

Re: Major European payment processor can't send email to Google Workspace users

#209

Post by fweimer »

The Gmail requirement is actually slightly different: the header must be present and unique. Gmail only keeps one copy of a message per user and message ID. Combined with a mail source that uses predictable message IDs (such as Github), you can abuse this to suppress delivery of certain messages to Gmail users.

Re: Major European payment processor can't send email to Google Workspace users

#210

Post by geocar »

atherton94027 wrote: post #192
shadowgovt wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of the time, in my experience, when one encounters a situation like this in Internet tech (i.e. "why is this suggestion treated like a hard requirement?"), this is the answer: "because attackers found a way to exploit the lack of the suggestion's implementation in the wild, so it is now a hard requirement." The standards, to my observation, tend to lag the CVEs. Side-note: If someone has built a reverse-database…

How is not having a message-id a security risk? It seems that Gmail is being pedantic for no reason

> How is not having a message-id a security risk?

CVE classify a lot of things that have nothing to do with security.

Not having a Message-ID can cause problems for loop-detection (especially on busy netnews and mailing lists), and with reliable delivery status notification.

Dealing with these things for clients who can't read the RFC wastes memory and time which can potentially deny legitimate users access to services

> It seems that Gmail is being pedantic for no reason

Now you know that feeling is just ignorance.

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