It is hit and miss, depending on the ISPs involved.
Instant e-mail notifications have stopped being sent
- Thread starter Sun Tzu Wu
- Start date
Different ISPs, email services, or others in the pipeline have different email filters.
PlutonianEmpire
King of the Plutonian Empire
I got a pm earlier today or overnight, but never got a notification email, and I have pm notifications on. Is that good or bad?
Are you trying to tell me to go after the phone company? (that's who I get my internet service from)
Or do you mean it's Gmail's fault? (that's the email provider I use here)
Either way, I'm not getting my notifications, and I've been noticing how easy it is to forget to come back here when not receiving notifications of replies in the threads I'm subscribed to.
Honestly, it's ridiculous how long this has been going on. Doesn't anyone on the vBulletin support forum have any insights on this problem? You really cannot blame my ISP or Gmail, since the other sites I belong to work normally as regards email notifications.
Wouldn't gmail be responsible for filtering 'spam'? Or is the ISP deleting it before gmail even sees it.
gmail would be under "email services", not ISPs, in that statement. Filters can be at various levels, including at the outgoing end. All the outgoing CFC domain mail was blocked temporarily earlier this year of this while we dealt with an VBB exploit sending out spam. Now we are scattered on various spam lists and trying to clear that, but the persons managing spam lists are notoriously deaf. Large web mail services like gmail and yahoo will have their own spam filters, as well as the filters that individuals put on their account. Web mail will usually not pass through an ISPs filters even when they are downloaded to a an email client. Some members have their email based at their ISP rather than web mail. Some carriers will block all traffic, email or other, originating at certain domains.
Filters may be concealed at various levels. Not that I understand it all, or even the majority of what filters email traffic.
Not to do with email specifically, but most web traffic in the western world is filtered for known child porn images. Once a circulated child porn image is identified by authorities, that code small parts, several pixels by several pixels, of that image in specific locations in the image into the the filter. Images going through the filters are scanned at those locations for 'fingerprint' matches, then sent on and the data provided to police. The systems exploits on the fact that there is a limited inventory of child porn that is widely traded. I believe the majority of child porn traders prosecuted this decade were first identified this way. No telling what else is filtering your traffic.
Filters may be concealed at various levels. Not that I understand it all, or even the majority of what filters email traffic.
Not to do with email specifically, but most web traffic in the western world is filtered for known child porn images. Once a circulated child porn image is identified by authorities, that code small parts, several pixels by several pixels, of that image in specific locations in the image into the the filter. Images going through the filters are scanned at those locations for 'fingerprint' matches, then sent on and the data provided to police. The systems exploits on the fact that there is a limited inventory of child porn that is widely traded. I believe the majority of child porn traders prosecuted this decade were first identified this way. No telling what else is filtering your traffic.
- Joined
- Mar 26, 2007
- Messages
- 7,920
I'm now getting probably a very small fraction of my instant e-mail notifications as opposed to none. Thus, instant e-mail notification isn't working well enough to be useable.
As a work-around, I go to My Account and view the subscribed threads. There is a link that allows one to view the last message posted. What I really want is a link to the oldest unread message; To get this I click on the link that takes one to post #1 (page #1) of the thread and add "&goto=newpost" to the URL manually. Is there an easier way to accomblish this?
Thanks!
Sun Tzu Wu
As a work-around, I go to My Account and view the subscribed threads. There is a link that allows one to view the last message posted. What I really want is a link to the oldest unread message; To get this I click on the link that takes one to post #1 (page #1) of the thread and add "&goto=newpost" to the URL manually. Is there an easier way to accomblish this?
Thanks!
Sun Tzu Wu
It's really bizarre how long this is taking to resolve. None of the other vBulletin forums I belong to are having any problems.
- Joined
- Oct 5, 2001
- Messages
- 30,080
Gmail have blacklisted us. There 'solution' to getting off their blacklist is to
1.) Resolve the issue that caused you to get blacklisted (which in our case was a vulnerability that let spammers hijack our email function to send out spam). We have done this.
2.) Wait.
We are currently in the process of waiting.
It would appear that the other forums you belong to haven't been blacklisted.
Nightinggale
Deity
- Joined
- Feb 2, 2009
- Messages
- 5,378
Have you tried contacting gmail? Telling them that you fixed your issue might speed things up (if we are lucky). The waiting game is annoying if there is a timeout of say a year or more. For all we know the timeout timestamp is corrupted and have set a 20 year ban. That is a bit longer than my patience.
The mail started working for me a while back (I posted that) and then all of a sudden 99% are blocked. No spam, just gone. The few mails, which gets though aren't marked as spam and they look more or less identical to those, which are blocked (I assume). Now I assume I will not get the email notifications and I periodically check the forum. It's a waste of both time and bandwidth considering a lot of checks result in no new posts found.
Couldn't find one; will this do?
Then why would it stop working in late January, then start working in mid-February, and then stop working again in early March?
There were a few weeks in the middle where the emails were going to spam again as opposed to being blocked entirely.
Nightinggale
Deity
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- Feb 2, 2009
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- 5,378
That is a very good question. It is also a good question why a few mails slip through even though the majority is blocked. If they added the domain or IP as a blocked one, then ALL should be blocked at all time.Then why would it stop working in late January, then start working in mid-February, and then stop working again in early March?
To be honest I'm not convinced waiting will solve this issue.
I tried this with a broken email server (not forum related). After that I received a mail telling that the email server "jammed" meaning all emails ended up in some buffer. When they manually forced the server to send everything from the buffers, it really sent everything it could find.
I wonder if the problem is the hacked server. It was cleaned and then started up again, but what if it has some queue somewhere, which wasn't cleaned completely? Worst case scenario it would have had buffered spam, which all of a sudden released like Gojira54 experienced. That could explain the server not working, and then it all of a sudden released everything, it was blacklisted as gmail once again detected spam, or just unusual high activity.
I don't know what is going on, but I fear nobody either knows. Just waiting sounds dangerous if at least part of the problem is in the sending end.
Gojira54
The folly of Man
FWIW, I got no notifications for months, then I started getting just a couple - and those were months late. Then I got that flood of 700, some recent, some ancient. Now it seems to be MOSTLY working, I am getting notifications 90-95% of the time.
Which email service do you use?
Naokaukodem
Millenary King
- Joined
- Aug 8, 2003
- Messages
- 4,287
I'm on Hotmail and stopped to receive notifications for about 1-2 weeks. Nothing Civfanatics related is in my spam box.
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