SMS/MMS gateway using gmail servers getting bounced (blacklisted ip)

[erkme73]

I'm using the Verizon SMS/MMS gateway option as a quick and dirty way to send neighbors notifications when someone comes down our dead end street. I have several on my alert list and all of them get the same alerts. Consistency has been problematic, as Verizon's email to text gateway can have multi-hour delays sometimes.



That issue aside, recently, one of the neighbor's notifications are getting kicked back by Verizon:



What's interesting is that with each notification sent by the BI server, and subsequent failure for that neighbor (all the others on verizon are working w/o the bounc) is that the refused IP address is slightly different on each of the bounce notifications.

I don't understand why one Verizon customer is getting bounced, while others aren't. I would think that if the a given set of gmail mail server IPs are blacklisted, they'd be so for more than just one Verizon text number.

Even worse, there doesn't seem to be an end-user method to rectify the blacklist issue. I've now disabled notifications to that specific neighbor so it doesn't generate any additional bounce emails. Unfortunately, it'll take 48 hours for those in the pipe to finally stop nagging me to death.

Has anyone seen this issue? Is there a fix?

 

[wittaj]

It has been happening awhile with every mobile provider and there are many threads started with someone experiencing what you are.

See this thread from this week. It appears Verizon in particular is rolling out blocking these types of messages on a permanent basis.

Best is to follow advice in thread and move to Pushover ($5) as every mobile provider is tightening their spam algorithm.

You could try another email provider, but it will happen with them as well.

Gmail disabled MMS to vzwpix.com

I have been having trouble lately getting alerts on my phone using GMAIL by sending it to my number@vzwpix.com. I just got off the phone and Verizon disabled the ability for that to happen to fight spam. Anyone have any other way to accomplish it?

ipcamtalk.com

 

[erkme73]

Yeah, I should have searched... That's too bad. Pushover just isn't a good fit because it involves convincing neighbors to install yet another app. Texting is just so much less invasive.

I wonder if configuring another (non-gmail) server would circumvent the blacklisting. Or is the consensus that no matter what server is used, it will eventually be blacklisted as well? What's odd is that you'd think that the outbound gmail servers are using specific IP addresses - so if they're getting banned on one verizon customer, the same IPs would be banned on all. Seems too isolated to be a systemic blacklist.

 

[wittaj]

I was initially doing the SMS method and experienced the same issues, so I have been following this closely here as people post experiencing same issues.

Experience here is changing email servers resulted in a temporary fix, but it seems every mobile provider is tightening their spam algorithms and it will catch up eventually. Is it a year from now or 2 weeks? Nobody knows.

I think what you are experiencing where it works for some and not your other neighbors is that Verizon is so large that it is being implemented in stages and not all at once, so soon it will stop working.

Another option is to host your own email server, but that comes with costs more expensive than just buying a Pushover license for your neighbors. And probably as soon as you set the email server up, the mobile provider algorithm changes again and then you are stuck again. You would probably have to invest in a system that would be able to get past the algorithms like banks do. An actual text number than coming from an email.

 

[Mike A.]

Mobile/mail providers bring various filters up/down all the time and as @wittaj says it's kind of the nature of the beast. All of them will tell you that their email-to-text gateways are not guaranteed delivery.

You can try another server. When I had problems getting things through to TMobile with Gmail, I could switch to Apple's servers and it would work fine. Then Gmail came back working again at a later point with no changes on my end and I got a flood of texts that had been stuck there for a month. My own email server has always been kind of hit or miss. Will work fine for a while and then no go for no apparent reason.

 

[erkme73]

My biggest grip are the queued emails that gmail keeps sending back to me every couple of hours letting me know there are XX hours more it will continue to try. There must be 100 queued up before I finally realized it and turned off the notification. So now I'm getting a dozen every hour. I wish there was a way to purge them so it doesn't clutter up my inbox.