Merciless
“Communication” with Gmail services seems anything but a model of good communication!
In the serie “Gmail, your ruthless world…”:
Description
Personally, I own two domain names—one free and one yearly paid.
I manage my DNS zones (on OpenBSD, using nsd); and the MX servers are managed by a friend (on OpenBSD, too, using OpenSMTPD).
DNS zones for both domains contains DKIM, DMARC, and SPF records, such as:
$ grep -E 'dkim|dmarc|spf' /etc/ns/huc.fr.eu.org
dkimpubkey._domainkey IN TXT ( "v=DKIM1; k=rsa; t=s; p=MIIBIjANBgkqhkiG9w0BAQEFAAOCAQ8AMIIBCgKCAQEA8zDa4/c/HZYbd2NwouHXwgWoUVtRnmc89gjH4xYfVICd8n74Ojr7UVHSz80xiqsQEzEq+UM0FLPqt6IMgCb3" "1zZIF2CJqIa1U2esJi50+Kl50aho3e9bOL76uXMiY0VinrjeWbRU1gQ/ZEhYJdMeQZj60CULXXphVeBqOItNXoXGlJ/lBZZZHZ1Fv/PB8aLwU3fG1CsL9xiY9/PGclhOubwXUUbSgrKJQFAawvgpYp6DZIoZnbDun/uJCwR/1Q+jXGJ56ps45XGeRfZbx17B" "X9ldnQ3iliKpWl9jLSWJ/mR/GdqGIuYeLuzZW7CxrNjd+TGEg9j0Poqf+MGzRpwLOwIDAQAB")
_dmarc IN TXT "v=DMARC1; p=reject; sp=reject;"
@ IN TXT "v=spf1 a mx ~all"
$ grep -E 'dkim|dmarc|spf' /etc/ns/stephane-huc.net
dkimpubkey._domainkey IN TXT ( "v=DKIM1; k=rsa; t=s; p=MIIBIjANBgkqhkiG9w0BAQEFAAOCAQ8AMIIBCgKCAQEA8zDa4/c/HZYbd2NwouHXwgWoUVtRnmc89gjH4xYfVICd8n74Ojr7UVHSz80xiqsQEzEq+UM0FLPqt6IMgCb3" "1zZIF2CJqIa1U2esJi50+Kl50aho3e9bOL76uXMiY0VinrjeWbRU1gQ/ZEhYJdMeQZj60CULXXphVeBqOItNXoXGlJ/lBZZZHZ1Fv/PB8aLwU3fG1CsL9xiY9/PGclhOubwXUUbSgrKJQFAawvgpYp6DZIoZnbDun/uJCwR/1Q+jXGJ56ps45XGeRfZbx17B" "X9ldnQ3iliKpWl9jLSWJ/mR/GdqGIuYeLuzZW7CxrNjd+TGEg9j0Poqf+MGzRpwLOwIDAQAB")
_dmarc IN TXT "v=DMARC1; p=reject; sp=reject;"
@ IN TXT "v=spf1 a mx ~all"
Actually, the mail-tester.com website shows a “Perfect” rating. Regarding:
- an email sent from my
huc.fr.eu.orgdomain: https://mail-tester.com/test-loynfonhr - an email sent from my
stephane-huc.netdomain: https://mail-tester.com/test-7b231r0vz
Honestly, it’s hard to do better—not impossible, but…
Running DNS queries to check if the PTR record is valid returns the correct results:
:$ dig mx.huc.fr.eu.org +short
89.234.141.148
:$ dig mx.huc.fr.eu.org AAAA +short
2a00:5881:8110:1e00::2
:$ dig -x 89.234.141.148 +short
mx.vinishor.xyz.
:$ dig -x 2a00:5881:8110:1e00::2 +short
mx.vinishor.xyz.
Same result for the other domain.
I mainly use these email accounts for receiving messages; on average, I send one or two emails, and in rare cases, about ten; and I have NEVER engaged in mass emailing or any similar automated process.
However: as soon as I send an email to a Gmail address from an email address associated with the huc… domain, it’s guaranteed to be rejected and the email blocked!
Hi! This is the MAILER-DAEMON, please DO NOT REPLY to this email. An error has occurred while attempting to deliver a message for the following list of recipients: stephane.huc@gmail.com: 550-5.7.1 [89.234.141.148 12] Gmail has detected that this message is likely unsolicited mail. To reduce the amount of spam sent to Gmail, this message has been blocked. For more information, go to https://support.google.com/mail/?p=UnsolicitedMessage
Error ffacd0b85a97d-4601f38a6f1si30466498f8f.340 - gsmtp Below is a copy of the original message:
Reporting-MTA: dns; mx.vinishor.xyz
Final-Recipient: rfc822; stephane.huc@gmail.com
Action: failed
Status: 5.0.0
There was a time when messages ended up in the spam folder, but now they don’t even do that anymore. It’s a “flat-out” rejection, simply because they’re “unsolicited.” But what gives them the right?!
As you can see, I also have a Gmail account.
In short, it seems to me that there’s no way to communicate with users who have Gmail addresses.
Ehlo
⇒ It’s impossible to speak with an actual professional on the team, even if you’re willing to pay for the service. Why not try contacting them through the support site?
They just pass the buck to the community.
⇒ When you try to describe the issue on the Google Support website, the submission is automatically rejected, with the following message displayed in red: ‘Failed to post. The content violates the Community Guidelines.’
The content I tried to post via the support website is exactly what is written here, in the description section, word for word, but in French. What in that content could possibly violate the rules?!
Gmail, Helo?
In short, it’s a hopeless technical situation…