Solo Technology

This morning I was at the signup page for Google Apps about to sign-up to the enterprise plan for my company. I personally have been using the free version since last March and have been quite happy with it. Since we definitely need to make some email changes at the office, this seems the way to go.

A couple months ago, I set-up a “sister” company of ours with the free version of Google Apps. Their needs were simple and it seemed like a great time to test it in a more business-like environment (ok, “business-like” might be a stretch, but still…).

So there I am, just about to fill out the form and the marketing director drops in with some weird tale about how Google email is being blocked.

Since I’m a tech guy, I gave her my best disdainful tech guy look (you know the one we save for users…) and opined that I was sure she had to be incorrect. She protested, I just nodded and smirked and asked her to forward me the evidence so that I might have a look.

She did. I had my look. I called her back over and apologized profusely.

Check it out:

Technical details of permanent failure:
PERM_FAILURE:SMTP Error (state 13):550 5.7.1 <client@destaddr.com>… Access denied(O): Unsolicited e-mail from x.x.x.x refused. Request access at http://dnsbl.swh.bellsouth.net

After I finished apologizing, I followed the instructions and requested access via bellsouth’s provided link. Haven’t heard back yet.

I then dropped a note to my friends at Google and asked if the paying enterprise Google Apps customers used the same SMTP servers as the free Google Apps customers. If they don’t, then I figured I wasn’t too concerned. It took a couple tries via email, but it seems they can/might/do indeed share servers.

Somewhere, in someone’s DNS Blacklist (DNSBL), Google mail servers are listed. Now, does that imply that there are some spammers using the hosted service? Or does it mean that the hosted service(s) use the same mail servers as the free gmail and that’s where the spammers are?

Regardless, I need to do some research.

However…

I’ve been a Google Apps customer and run a fair amount of email through the service and personally have never had this issue. I wonder if other folks have?

8 Responses to “Hosted Google Spam!”

1. Snoskred on July 20th, 2007 3:48 am
   

   I’ve had this issue with gmail many times. There was a time when you could not send email from gmail to any of the Australian internet service providers - they all listed it as spam. Many of the spams and scams that I get now all come from gmail - and being a scambaiter I know why that is - I can send out two emails with 495 BCC’d scammer email addresses per day, per gmail account.

   Of course the spammers didn’t take long to figure that out, and a lot of the viagra type stuff is coming directly from gmail accounts these days. The Nigerian 419 guys still prefer Yahoo for the most part but some of them have found gmail, too.

   Even if the google apps servers are different to the gmail ones, it will only be a matter of time before the spammers and scammers start using them. The scammers in particular will use that kind of free service to host their fake banks and email accounts.

   To be honest, I would absolutely steer well clear of them as a host. But that’s just my opinion.

   Snoskred
   http://www.snoskred.org/

2. Rich G. on July 20th, 2007 4:57 am
   

   Yup. Our work servers use some commercial blacklist for our email setup on the network and gmail has to be white-listed every time they update the list.

   I just recently got an e-mail from someone I’d e-mailed that started out “Sorry, your e-mail was in my junk filter for some reason.” They used a webmail client to access their e-mail.

   Gmail is definitely on some list somewhere and that bugs me. It hasn’t been a huge problem yet, but if google can’t address it it will be.

3. Chris on July 20th, 2007 11:30 pm
   

   Ok, you two are totally harshing my mellow.

4. Snoskred on July 20th, 2007 11:43 pm
   

   Well, I could lie to you if that’d help..

   I should also mention that I’ve moved all my personal email accounts away from gmail after it kept putting important emails into the spam folder yet miraculously allowing spam to get through..

   Snoskred
   http://www.snoskred.org/

5. drmike on July 21st, 2007 8:46 am
   

   Actually GMail is usually listed because they do not put the IP address of the sender into their email’s header like is requried. They actually remove it from the email. The only IP address one sees is GMail’s own servers.

   So you don’t have any idea where that spam is coming from and have no way to report it.

   At least that’s the way it used to be. haven’t looked recently.

6. Don@AffiliateWatcher on July 21st, 2007 3:39 pm
   

   You mean people actually try and send email with Gmail?

   I thought it was only to receive email

   Seriously, I’ve had it blocked more than once. It seems more and more these free mail services are being blocked.

   Oh yeah, not to mention how quirky it can be! LOL

   don

7. Matt on November 20th, 2007 9:08 am
   

   So far I’ve tried to send ten messages with my Google Apps Gmail account. Only one has actually made it to the recipient. I was planning on totally switching over to GMail (in spite of the user interface being lame compared to Yahoo), because I’m getting so much more spam at my Yahoo account lately. The idea of sending mail from my domains through GMail is great, but it’s pretty useless if I can’t even send mail consistently. For now, I’ll deal with the spam at Yahoo - at least I’ve never had problems with mail being blocked from there.

8. Chris on November 20th, 2007 4:24 pm
   

   Matt, I’m so glad we’re not having your luck.

   I have about 40 folks using it at work (for a few months now). So far, only one (in addition to the one in this post) has been bounced.

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