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

atha.io

381–390 of 443 posts

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

#381

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just don't understand how you get from the text you pasted to "required". Nowhere does it say that anything is effectively required. Words have meaning.

You should wear sunscreen to the beach. Its recommended as a good way to prevent sunburn. However, the beach police aren't going to come get you for not wearing it. You just might get a sunburn if you don't plan accordingly with other sun countermeasures.

So if I send an email that lacks a feature that MUST be there, will the email police come get me? At a certain point, looking for an analogy stops making sense I think.

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

#382
post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe the standards documents you are used to differ from RFCs, but here is the official language: 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. SHOULD is effectively REQUIRED unless it conflicts with another stan…

I just don't understand how you get from the text you pasted to "required". Nowhere does it say that anything is effectively required. Words have meaning.

"there may exist valid reasons in particular circumstances" means effectively required in my common sense understanding of American English.

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

#383

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You should wear sunscreen to the beach. Its recommended as a good way to prevent sunburn. However, the beach police aren't going to come get you for not wearing it. You just might get a sunburn if you don't plan accordingly with other sun countermeasures.

So if I send an email that lacks a feature that MUST be there, will the email police come get me? At a certain point, looking for an analogy stops making sense I think.

It sounds like Google won't deliver your mails. Presumably they read the spec and are aware of the consequences.

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

#384
post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The biggest disappointment in my 30 years of adulting has been how much absolute, shameless incompetence is out there in the workforce. When I was a kid, I naively thought that adults were smart and knew what they are doing. Then I got into industry and saw so many people just outright bluffing for 8 hours a day before going home, day in and day out. It's amazing that society even functions at all.

At least when you realize it, you are cured from any imposter syndrome you might have.

Until you actively start looking for genuine personals from the flood of incompetents

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

#385

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just don't understand how you get from the text you pasted to "required". Nowhere does it say that anything is effectively required. Words have meaning.

> the full implications must be understood and carefully weighed before choosing a different course. In this case, the full implication is that your email might be undeliverable. "Should" indicates that the consequences for this fall on the entity that is deviating from the thing they "should" be doing.

Is that what the spec says? Or is this something that Google decided, by making an optional feature a requirement when interoperating with their systems?

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

#386
post #142

> Viva.com's outgoing verification emails lack a Message-ID header, a requirement that has been part of the Internet Message Format specification (RFC 5322) since 2008 > ... > `Message-ID` is one of the most basic required headers in email. Section 3.6. of the RFC in question ( https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc5322.html ) says: +----------------+--------+------------+----------------------------+ | Field | Min | Max…

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/…

>It means that you have to do it unless you know some specific reason that the requirement doesn't apply in your case.

But that means a valid reason could exist and Google would block those mails too.

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

#387
post #42

I have some level of sympathy with Google here, which isn’t something I often say. I recently switched from Gmail to Fastmail and by and large I’m happy with it. But I’ve been surprised by the amount of spam and (particularly) phishing emails I get in a regular basis. Google might be too strict in its filtering but it does serve a legitimate purpose.

> Google might be too strict in its filtering they are, but not in this case Message-Id being basically required for _automated_ mails (very similar mail send to a lot of people) requiring Message-Id is a de-facto industry standard. Sure some providers don't care and some might make it just more likely that your mail ends up in spam. But this could have happened with pretty much any mail provider widely used by compa…

>basically required

doesn't sound like a hard requirement

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

#388

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just don't understand how you get from the text you pasted to "required". Nowhere does it say that anything is effectively required. Words have meaning.

> the full implications must be understood and carefully weighed before choosing a different course. In this case, the full implication is that your email might be undeliverable. "Should" indicates that the consequences for this fall on the entity that is deviating from the thing they "should" be doing.

But the RFC language clearly anticipates there are situations and good reasons leading to a message that does not include a message-id. Google therefore would be rejecting RFC-compliant emails, and they are the ones who have to justify themselves.

Theoretically, anyway, I expect in practice they'll just ignore the issue or have their own good reason. But they should accept emails with no message-id; there it does strain the imagination to see why lacking an ID would make a message unreadable or undeliverable.

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

#389

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the full implications must be understood and carefully weighed before choosing a different course. In this case, the full implication is that your email might be undeliverable. "Should" indicates that the consequences for this fall on the entity that is deviating from the thing they "should" be doing.

Is that what the spec says? Or is this something that Google decided, by making an optional feature a requirement when interoperating with their systems?

It is something Google decided. SHOULD means the other party should anticipate may not. The party examining a SHOULD and deciding not to do something is obviously not required to consider incompetence of other RFC readers as a reason to global replace SHOULD with SHALL before examining requirements.

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

#390

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just don't understand how you get from the text you pasted to "required". Nowhere does it say that anything is effectively required. Words have meaning.

> the full implications must be understood and carefully weighed before choosing a different course. In this case, the full implication is that your email might be undeliverable. "Should" indicates that the consequences for this fall on the entity that is deviating from the thing they "should" be doing.

if you apply that logic every recommendation becomes mandatory no?

if the alternative to [not doing a recommended thing] is [failure] then what's the difference between "should" and "must"?

"we recommend you leave the keys in the ignition while putting your car in park"

"or what?"

"or your car may blow up, killing everyone inside. just a recommendation though!"

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