Problems sending PN email to Gmail addresses

[#1]

@disfroot 

The MS problem is (was) a different issue.

There is a difference between total refusal of delivery (NDR should be the response) and refusing to accept delivery right now - see 50 shades of spam: Ultimate guide to email greylisting - MailerCheck

"But these valiant spam police are not perfect.

Even when legit senders send out tip-top content to consenting subscribers, valid emails can still sometimes get caught by spam filters. Email greylisting was created to help counteract this (while still keeping out nasty spammers).

Greylisting is when a greylist server automatically filters out suspicious emails from unknown senders. When it does this, it sends back a message to the sending server to say that the message has been temporarily rejected and they can retry sending the email again in a specified timeframe."

I ran tests this morning and the delivery was immediate.

There is more than a degree of arrogance in this disposition in that if Gmail does not know the sender, then they will grey-list the sender.  That is utter nonsense.

It is nearly as though that following the mitigation of the Microsoft draconian measures, Gmail is now treating some Plusnet users as "unknown senders".  Something is clearly not right with Gmail here - some user's emails are accepted more or less instantly whilst others are deferred acceptance of delivery attempts for hours.

[#2]

This analysis, if correct,  makes it sound as if a remedy may be very hard to find as Gmail (presumably?) don't care.

Do you see any light at the end of the tunnel?

[#3]

@PeterB1 

Microsoft Issue:

That somewhat depends on which version of Microsoft's rule book one reads in respect of this issue

• Applies only to bulk senders of email
• For bulk senders (SPF or DKIM) and DMARC are required
• For bulk senders (SPF and DKIM) and DMARC are required
• An opt out link is desirable
• An opt out link is required

First @you.plus.com and @me.plus.com are NOT bulk senders so none of the above should apply at all, however incredulously Microsoft treats @*.plus.com as a single emailing entity.

Accepting that as it may be, *.plus.com has had DKIM and DMARC for a long time and thus ought not to be an issue.  Requiring BOTH SPF and DKIM is overkill.

The general observation is that email is once again being delivered to Microsoft users, albeit in some cases to the JUNK folder if the sender is not explicitly white listed.  Why Microsoft does this to some senders but not all is not understood.

Gmail issue:

This remains under investigation.  Why Gmail should be grey listing Plusnet senders (essentially treating them as 'unknown') is unclear.  That said, mid this morning I ran tests my Gmail account and they were delivered instantly.

We await a formal update on both issues.

[#4]

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@PeterB1 wrote:

Gmail (presumably?) don't care.

Do you see any light at the end of the tunnel?

---

Correct, Gmail do not care about the mass disruption they create; one might note that this is a blight they only visit on their free (loading) accounts.  One guesses that they do not care if those users are impacted, but they do care about those paying for service as they do not apply the same rules to paid for accounts.

Yes I do see light, as I have reported, I have seen instant delivery this morning, so either my Plusnet account is not being grey-listed or something has been done somewhere to alter Gmail's behaviour.

[#5]

Not much light for me so far!

Emails sent to three different (free) Gmail addresses all seem to have disappeared completely.

Earlier, I tried sending two emails to Gmail users using the format @googlemail.com instead of @gmakli.com.

One was delivered instantly, the other has disappeared,

I don't know anyone with a paid-for Gmail account so I can't test that.

[#6]

still not working for me as of the last hour (1pm), so let's assume the problem has not been fixed for every Plusnet customer.

[#7]

@PeterB1 / @disfroot 

I would not use the term "disappeared" until 5 days have passed - that is the typical timeframe a MX will attempt to resend a 'back off' delivery disinclination.

I suspect that we are seeing blind randomness by Gmail, which is exactly what we saw last they played silly sausages!

[#8]

as per

https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc5321#section-4.5.4.1

[#9]

Here's an interesting question raised with me by a friend who (1) has far more tech expertise than me and (2) has no previous knowledge of Plusnet, its services or its practices.

If the cause of the new Gmail problem is as Townman describes and stems from wholly unreasonable 'greylisting' procedures introduced by Google, why isn;t there a hullabaloo of protest from email providers and rthere customers around the world?

There must be thousands of such providers and all will have multiple customers sending emails to Gmail recipients every day.

THis strikes me as a reasonable enough question.

Is it just possible (OK - I'm above my pay grade here!) that there is something about the way Plusnet's SMTP works with multiple MTAs that is unique to Plusnet and makes Plusnet emails especially vulnerable to being identified by Gmail (rightly or wrongly) as suspected spam?

[#10]

All good questions, and ones I'm assuming the Incident Management team are asking whilst analysing the server logs

[#11]

My suspicion is that fixed the (new) Microsoft rules has changed Gmail's perception of the *.plus.com address space.

The 'back-of' space is complex - some users are seeing instant delivery, whilst others are seeing marked delays.

[#12]

Short update in case it's helpful.

(1) Reference one of Townman's posts yesterday about the lapse of time, I definitely now have a number of emails I sent to Gmali recipients that have been missing for more than five days 

(2) Of around half a dozen emails I've sent in the past 24 hours, one arrived eight hours late and the rest have so far vanished.

Some sort of update from the Plusnet technical team would be very much appreciated.

So far there hasn't even been a formal acknowledgement of the Gmall issue online, only a reference to the Microsoft problem which, if I understand Townman corrrectly, has been resolved?

[#13]

I'm having the same problem as @PeterB1. Almost any email sent from my PlusNet account (___@___.plus.com) to a Gmail account either arrives many hours later (record so far: 8½) or usually doesn't arrive at all.

Just to confuse the picture, one or two of my test messages to my own Gmail account have arrived immediately. But I've sent over three dozen tests today, and fewer than ten have arrived. None have returned an NDR, and the headers on those that did get through show that they spent all their time on PlusNet servers.

For me, this began last Friday evening, five days ago. It will be interesting to see if I finally start receiving NDRs in the next few days. Townman's theory sounds plausible.

[#14]

1) Does anybody know if Plusnet emails are getting through normally  to *@btinternet.com addresses?

2) A new variation on my own experience: for the first time yesterday, a couple,of emails sent to my own Gmail addresses were delivered (admittedly late) but ended up in the Spam folder. That hasn't happened before. Previousy, messages that were delivered arrived in the normal Inbox.

[#15]

I am such a long standing and appreciative customer of Plusnet (whose customer service in general I have always found to be first rate that | am always loathe to complain too loudly, That said, I think the deafening silence from the technical team about the failure of PN emails to reach Gmail addresses is hard to excuse. Advice from Townman and other superusers is always hugely appreciated but it shouldn't be a substitute for proper communication by the company. Email is doubtless a nuisance for Plusnet now it's in the process of contracting it out to another provider, but that's no excuse for a lack of even the most basic courtesy towards customers. So come on, Plusnet: what the b****y hell is going on with the Gmail failure? What have you found from the logs? What are the prospects (or not) of a solution? On what timeframe? We need to be clear that an email service that cannot send to Gmail is no email service at all and a broadband/email provider that refuses to communicate with its customers should not be in business.