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"Denial of Service" attack from Groundspeak?


Miragee

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Since last Friday sometime after noon, after I requested two PQs, including the "All Finds" PQ, which I don't request very often because of its size, my ISP has been blocking all the email from Groundspeak, including Geocaching.com and Waymarking.com.

 

I finally got a response from them and this is what the technician said:

They have to have a misconfigured mail server or a problem because they are pounding our mail servers at a rate that exceeds our bandwidth, if we did not block them, they would overload us and shut down our mail servers. In internet terms this is called a 'denial of service attack' Geocaching will have to look into that. Waymarking.com uses the same mail servers, the result is the same issue.

I get quite a bit of email from Groundspeak, including owner emails, Bookmark emails, Watchlist emails, New cache notifications, and Archived cache notifications. I don't know if in a week's time it averages out to twenty, or thirty a day, but it might -- which means there are now many, many messages that have not been delivered . . . :P

 

I just thought you might find it interesting that this could happen to someone. I have been with this ISP for more than three years and, until now, their service has been excellent.

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Elias sent me a .txt file of all the attempts to send mail and, since there has been a huge backup of mail now, the list is very long. I have asked him to delete all the mail that is sitting on the server . . . hope no one contacted me through my Profile about something important . . . and I'll have to resend the message to the Category owner at Waymarking when this gets sorted out.

 

This is the next thing I received from one of their Technical Support people.

Apparently, this geocaching.com website might be gaining popularity among our users. That is the only reason I can think of that would have affected your ability to receive the e-mails. As more and more people have begun using the service, we must be getting hit by an incredibly large number of messages. Normally this would be fine, however, when an e-mail server such as theirs is not configured properly, it will cause all kinds of problems for the recipient's internet provider. Again, I apologize about the inconvenience.

If I didn't have such a slow dialup connection, I would just change my email address . . . but I like getting my mail without having to visit a web site like Yahoo! or G-mail.

 

I've been getting PQs through Yahoo!, but, sheesh, that sure takes a lot of mouse clicks, and slow page reloads . . . faint.gif

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Poor little ISP.

 

Just imagine how many emails GC sends out in total. If this one ISP is being overwhelmed by GC email, that doesn't say much for them. Imagine what the ISP that sends out GC's email must have to handle. It seems that what RK said really rings true...

Your ISP is confusing their lack of bandwidth for a Denial of Service attack. The former can be fixed if they were willing to invest the money. The latter involves intent and Groundspeak is not trying to overwhealm your ISP to shut them down.
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Your ISP is confusing their lack of bandwidth for a Denial of Service attack. The former can be fixed if they were willing to invest the money. The latter involves intent and Groundspeak is not trying to overwhealm your ISP to shut them down.

Well . . . they claim to be the largest ISP in the Houston area since 1995. Isn't everything in Texas big . . .

With five offices from Maine to Texas, Net1 prides itself on superior customer service.

However, the problem is that now there is a huge backlog of mail on the server. If they keep trying to send all that mail, I can see why my ISP is blocking it. :P

 

At this point, I guess I could change my email address, and have all that mail come into G-mail, and then start over. I wish I could get my Bookmark, Watchlist, New Cache, and Archived cache notifications, and Owner emails at one email address and get my PQs and messages sent through my Profile at my regular email address.

 

Does anyone else average 20 to 30 emails per day from Groundspeak? Is that too many?

Edited by Miragee
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Does anyone else average 20 to 30 emails per day from Groundspeak? Is that too many?

No way is that too many! I surely dont understand why they would be blocked by them.

 

On another note i have wished that there was a way to view all recent mail sent from Groundspeak on your profile.

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Does anyone else average 20 to 30 emails per day from Groundspeak? Is that too many?

:D:D:D:D:DB):drama::drama::drama::drama::drama::drama::P:D:D

 

You have no idea. I turned off my computer at home today at 9 AM. At 2:30 PM, I already have 33 geocaching.com emails in my webmail box. That is only after 5.5 hours. No problems with my ISP so far, and the weekends are higher in volume.

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I wish I could get my Bookmark, Watchlist, New Cache, and Archived cache notifications, and Owner emails at one email address and get my PQs and messages sent through my Profile at my regular email address.

Couldn't you do this?

 

Just change your email address on your account info and have your PQ sent to a different address. Wouldn't that work?

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Between my player account and my volunteer account I average well over 100 messages per day through the Groundspeak e-mail server (geocaching and Waymarking). It all arrives just fine in GMail and Yahoo.

 

I think your ISP's response is laughable.

 

Your area is very popular for geocaching. So of course there will be tons of simultaneous notifications when a new cache is published, or if a popular cache is logged. This is e-mail which we signed up for and WANT to receive.

 

It amazes me that ISP's go to the extreme of blocking Groundspeak, but the true spam for various miracle drugs and free trials is still able to get through to me.

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Well, I just changed my email address to my Yahoo! one. I wonder if all those messages sitting on the server will be sent to the Yahoo! account now?

 

I don't want that to be a permanent fix however because it takes way too much time to view my mail over the web with my 24K connection speed . . . waiting.gif

 

I will send the URL to this thread to my ISP to see what they have to say about it.

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I understand you want to keep your original email address. One work-around would be to send your geocaching mail to a gmail address, and have that address auto-forward the email to your original address. Since the email in now from gmail, and not gc.com, it should make it thru your ISP's blacklist.

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Between my player account and my volunteer account I average well over 100 messages per day through the Groundspeak e-mail server (geocaching and Waymarking). It all arrives just fine in GMail and Yahoo.

 

I think your ISP's response is laughable.

 

Your area is very popular for geocaching. So of course there will be tons of simultaneous notifications when a new cache is published, or if a popular cache is logged. This is e-mail which we signed up for and WANT to receive.

 

It amazes me that ISP's go to the extreme of blocking Groundspeak, but the true spam for various miracle drugs and free trials is still able to get through to me.

I am in California, but I imagine there are lots of cachers in the Houston area that chose this company because it was their "local" ISP. I cannot believe there is no other cacher experiencing this problem, unless we just aren't hearing about it because those others are not visiting the Forums, only writing to contact@Groundspeak.com.

 

After I sent them contact information, I received this reply:

Hello,

 

I am sorry but the problem is on their side. Our mail administrators will not contact another company to help them correct issues they are having.

Edited by Miragee
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I understand you want to keep your original email address. One work-around would be to send your geocaching mail to a gmail address, and have that address auto-forward the email to your original address. Since the email in now from gmail, and not gc.com, it should make it thru your ISP's blacklist.

Good idea.

 

But then the ISP will ban gmail (google) because google has their servers set up wrong also. :P

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I understand you want to keep your original email address. One work-around would be to send your geocaching mail to a gmail address, and have that address auto-forward the email to your original address. Since the email in now from gmail, and not gc.com, it should make it thru your ISP's blacklist.

Okay, can you help me figure that out. :P

 

If I do that, what if they "blacklist" g-mail . . . ? :D

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I understand you want to keep your original email address. One work-around would be to send your geocaching mail to a gmail address, and have that address auto-forward the email to your original address. Since the email in now from gmail, and not gc.com, it should make it thru your ISP's blacklist.

Okay, can you help me figure that out. :P

 

Easy...in Gmail, click SETTINGS and then FORWARDING & POP

 

574cfa00-e9f8-4d8d-b5fc-a5561ff557e2.jpg

 

Click the radio button to forward all mail and enter your email address.

 

You can get really fancy and use the FILTER function to selectively forward email based on subject line (for example: so your contact emails get forwarded, but your PQ's stay on gmail's servers)

 

If I do that, what if they "blacklist" g-mail . . . ? :D

 

Then you're back where you started...but since not everyone using your ISP will do this workaround, chances are it will keep working.

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It seems highly unlikely they would block gmail, that would be like blocking AOL or Yahoo. They would get a boatload of complaints.

Yeah. I was being facetious. It seems to me that it would be like me taking my car to the mechanic.

 

They will say:

 

"Its your crank rotator on your GRE valve. The lubrication failed and the now the blades need re-spun."

 

And because i dont know about how cars work i say:

 

"How much is that?"

 

-----

I am no PC whiz but it seems to me the ISP has a problem and they are making excuses rather than fixing it. Maybe someone with more knowledge of email can comment.

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I will send the URL to this thread to my ISP to see what they have to say about it.

This forum is only available for view if you are logged in to the forums with an account on GC.com.

Okay . . . then I'll just "creatively select" pertinent comments and send those in my next angry email to them . . . :P

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I will send the URL to this thread to my ISP to see what they have to say about it.

This forum is only available for view if you are logged in to the forums with an account on GC.com.

Okay . . . then I'll just "creatively select" pertinent comments and send those in my next angry email to them . . . :P

 

Have you written to Contact@geocaching.com about this problem? if you do please supply them with all the information you have. if they are blocking you they are blocking others as well.

Edited by Michael
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I'll set up a free account on one of my servers for you - no blocking gauranteed as I run the machine!!! - let me know.....

Thanks for the offer. :D I managed to get the forwarding thing sorted out and just received two messages from geocaching.com, forwarded from G-mail.

 

I just requested a PQ and it is very slowly arriving in my InBox.

 

Thanks for everyone's help. :P

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After almost 10 years with Yahoo i started having trouble with my gc email. It stopped coming.

 

:D

 

I checked my blocked addresses and apparently i inadvertently marked one of the emails as spam and all of their emails never came anymore and were automatically deleted i guess. :P Doh!

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Just a guess, but probably so that only members can suggest ideas for the web site and see the inner workings of the web site related discussions. Like I say, just a guess. It has always been that way.

But other forums are blocked too...

 

I just dont see the reasoning on it, thats all. :P

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Have you written to Contact@geocaching.com about this problem? if you do please supply them with all the information you have. if they are blocking you they are blocking others as well.

Several times . . . :P

 

Only after I emailed an individual with Groundspeak did I receive a reply . . . I believe he is still working on the problem, but I haven't heard anything back yet . . .

 

Maybe he is very busy because there are others in the Houston area, and around the country, who use this ISP and they are all having the same problem . . .

 

For now, the forwarding solution is working great. I got the PQ -- after 10 minutes -- and just received an "Archived" cache notification. It also appears there are many, many other messages arriving from the looks of the status bar in Eudora.

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Just a guess, but probably so that only members can suggest ideas for the web site and see the inner workings of the web site related discussions. Like I say, just a guess. It has always been that way.

But other forums are blocked too...

 

I just dont see the reasoning on it, thats all. :angry:

Actually, most of the forums here can be read without being logged in. The website forum and (obviously) Off Topic disappear when you log out.

Edited by FamilyDNA
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Your ISP is confusing their lack of bandwidth for a Denial of Service attack. The former can be fixed if they were willing to invest the money. The latter involves intent and Groundspeak is not trying to overwhealm your ISP to shut them down.

 

This is perfect summary.

 

Glad you got your issue worked out.

Edited by kealia
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Have you written to Contact@geocaching.com about this problem? if you do please supply them with all the information you have. if they are blocking you they are blocking others as well.

Several times . . . ;)

 

Only after I emailed an individual with Groundspeak did I receive a reply . . . I believe he is still working on the problem, but I haven't heard anything back yet . . .

 

Maybe he is very busy because there are others in the Houston area, and around the country, who use this ISP and they are all having the same problem . . .

 

For now, the forwarding solution is working great. I got the PQ -- after 10 minutes -- and just received an "Archived" cache notification. It also appears there are many, many other messages arriving from the looks of the status bar in Eudora.

 

Something to be considered. If your Groundspeak's emails are being blocked then the responses from the Contact@ address might be blocked to you also. I had this happen the other day. I finally had to write the person from my personal account because their ISP was blocking my attempts at help. I looked at your tickets and it is still open and being worked on. You haven't heard back from the person working on it because as of yet there is nothing new to report. Please feel free to email me from my profile if you have questions or need more information.

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Thanks, Michael. I included my Yahoo! address in one of the emails. Now I am getting my mail because it is being forwarded through gmail to my email client. ;)

 

I am still working on this with my ISP and trying to get them to understand they need to unblock the Groundspeak domains. A few messages sent to me last weekend were important. Those are stuck on Groundspeak's server and cannot be redirected to my new email address. :)

 

Part of what they said to me today was this:

Unfortunately, there is nothing we can do about this, since the server automatically blocked those servers. It did this in order to protect itself essentially.
That makes it sound like "the server" did this all by itself, and now it cannot be undone . . .

 

"Open the pod bay doors, Hal." :laughing:

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I understand you want to keep your original email address. One work-around would be to send your geocaching mail to a gmail address, and have that address auto-forward the email to your original address. Since the email in now from gmail, and not gc.com, it should make it thru your ISP's blacklist.

 

 

You can also set up your gmail as a pop service account and just download the messages to your desktop at your leisure. You can choose to keep a copy on gmail or have it deleted after you download it. Pretty nice, and it is still -- FREE.

 

I think it is laughable though that they are blocking gc.com. I run an itsy bitsy mail server for 3 companies and 5 domains with a few thousands users without problems like this. We process around a gb of mail per day, but since my mail server is correctly configured, it actually just works.

Edited by martinell
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I understand you want to keep your original email address. One work-around would be to send your geocaching mail to a gmail address, and have that address auto-forward the email to your original address. Since the email in now from gmail, and not gc.com, it should make it thru your ISP's blacklist.
This is a good idea. Plus you can make a gmail account that uses your GC name and keep all your GC mail separate from your regular mail. ;)
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Well, I just changed my email address to my Yahoo! one. I wonder if all those messages sitting on the server will be sent to the Yahoo! account now?

 

I don't want that to be a permanent fix however because it takes way too much time to view my mail over the web with my 24K connection speed . . . waiting.gif

It shouldn't take any longer than downloading your email from your ISP. Actually it should be faster because photos and other attachments stay on the Yahoo server unless you download them. ;) Edited by TrailGators
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I'll set up a free account on one of my servers for you - no blocking gauranteed as I run the machine!!! - let me know.....

Thanks for the offer. :laughing: I managed to get the forwarding thing sorted out and just received two messages from geocaching.com, forwarded from G-mail.

 

I just requested a PQ and it is very slowly arriving in my InBox.

 

Thanks for everyone's help. :blink:

 

AOL had this issue a little while back and there's no telling how much mail i missed getting. I ended up using the gmail workaround (having it forwarded to my aol account from gmail) and it seems to have been working fine. I have also set up a couple of test pocket queries to come straight to my AOL address and they are coming in the way they are supposed to now, but i'm not going to revert back yet, as i figure this can happen again.

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AOL had this issue a little while back and there's no telling how much mail i missed getting. I ended up using the gmail workaround (having it forwarded to my aol account from gmail) and it seems to have been working fine. I have also set up a couple of test pocket queries to come straight to my AOL address and they are coming in the way they are supposed to now, but i'm not going to revert back yet, as i figure this can happen again.

Whoooo Hoo! B):o Old mail is slowly coming in this morning, and I got a message from Annie from GC.com who wrote this:

 

Some ISP's will blacklist geocaching.com and label us as a 'bulk

sender." This is true and false. While we do send emails in bulk,

these filters do not distinguish between solicited and unsolicited

bulk email. If this is the case you will need to contact your ISP and

ask them to allow email from these IP addresses:

 

66.150.167.133

66.150.167.157

 

These are the originating IPs for all mail from Geocaching.com.

So, I will send that message on to my ISP and hope they don't do this again. In the meantime, gmail forwarding works, so I will continue to use that. :blink:

 

Well, I just changed my email address to my Yahoo! one. I wonder if all those messages sitting on the server will be sent to the Yahoo! account now?

 

I don't want that to be a permanent fix however because it takes way too much time to view my mail over the web with my 24K connection speed . . . waiting.gif

It shouldn't take any longer than downloading your email from your ISP. Actually it should be faster because photos and other attachments stay on the Yahoo server unless you download them. :blink:

Since I changed my GC.com address to one at gmail, I don't have to deal with Yahoo!, but the reason it is so slow is waiting for page reloads. It takes more than 30 seconds for page reloads with a connection this slow . . . :laughing: And, to get a PQ through Yahoo! takes three page reloads . . . before I can finally start the three to four minute download of the PQ. faint.gif

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AOL had this issue a little while back and there's no telling how much mail i missed getting. I ended up using the gmail workaround (having it forwarded to my aol account from gmail) and it seems to have been working fine. I have also set up a couple of test pocket queries to come straight to my AOL address and they are coming in the way they are supposed to now, but i'm not going to revert back yet, as i figure this can happen again.

Whoooo Hoo! :ph34r::yikes: Old mail is slowly coming in this morning, and I got a message from Annie from GC.com who wrote this:

 

Some ISP's will blacklist geocaching.com and label us as a 'bulk

sender." This is true and false. While we do send emails in bulk,

these filters do not distinguish between solicited and unsolicited

bulk email. If this is the case you will need to contact your ISP and

ask them to allow email from these IP addresses:

 

66.150.167.133

66.150.167.157

 

These are the originating IPs for all mail from Geocaching.com.

So, I will send that message on to my ISP and hope they don't do this again. In the meantime, gmail forwarding works, so I will continue to use that. :)

 

Well, I just changed my email address to my Yahoo! one. I wonder if all those messages sitting on the server will be sent to the Yahoo! account now?

 

I don't want that to be a permanent fix however because it takes way too much time to view my mail over the web with my 24K connection speed . . . waiting.gif

It shouldn't take any longer than downloading your email from your ISP. Actually it should be faster because photos and other attachments stay on the Yahoo server unless you download them. :o

Since I changed my GC.com address to one at gmail, I don't have to deal with Yahoo!, but the reason it is so slow is waiting for page reloads. It takes more than 30 seconds for page reloads with a connection this slow . . . :) And, to get a PQ through Yahoo! takes three page reloads . . . before I can finally start the three to four minute download of the PQ. faint.gif

 

Ever Considered ADSL, HSDPA or 3G?

I was always under the impression that you folks in the USA and other First World Countries had massive bandwidth (in excess of 2mb) to your houses for a very small cost? :grin:

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I live in a very rural area. I am too far away from a telephone building for DSL and there is no cable way out here. Satellite Internet is possible for people who can afford it, but I cannot afford the equipment and the $60.00/mo fee. This ISP, which until last Friday, has been very reliable (I never get a busy signal), only costs $100.00 per year.

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I live in a very rural area. I am too far away from a telephone building for DSL and there is no cable way out here. Satellite Internet is possible for people who can afford it, but I cannot afford the equipment and the $60.00/mo fee. This ISP, which until last Friday, has been very reliable (I never get a busy signal), only costs $100.00 per year.

Doesn't DSL run on your home phone line? Do you have to be close to a building for that?

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Ever Considered ADSL, HSDPA or 3G?

I was always under the impression that you folks in the USA and other First World Countries had massive bandwidth (in excess of 2mb) to your houses for a very small cost? ^_^

I wish. Unfortunately we are spread out pretty well here, except inside cities. The costs to run fiber (heck, even copper) lines generally doesn't give the companies any real returns. It is expensive to lay, and if only a few people on each street use it, the line won't pay for itself (it actually loses money for the company).

 

At least, that is what they (ISP's/cable companies/telcos) tell us.

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I live in a very rural area. I am too far away from a telephone building for DSL and there is no cable way out here. Satellite Internet is possible for people who can afford it, but I cannot afford the equipment and the $60.00/mo fee. This ISP, which until last Friday, has been very reliable (I never get a busy signal), only costs $100.00 per year.

Doesn't DSL run on your home phone line? Do you have to be close to a building for that?

I looked into that before we got cable. You need to be no more than a certain distance from the nearest telco substation in order for DSL to work on your line. We were out of luck.

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I live in a very rural area. I am too far away from a telephone building for DSL and there is no cable way out here. Satellite Internet is possible for people who can afford it, but I cannot afford the equipment and the $60.00/mo fee. This ISP, which until last Friday, has been very reliable (I never get a busy signal), only costs $100.00 per year.

Doesn't DSL run on your home phone line? Do you have to be close to a building for that?

I looked into that before we got cable. You need to be no more than a certain distance from the nearest telco substation in order for DSL to work on your line. We were out of luck.

 

My understanding is that you need to be on a Digital Telco Exchange and not an old Analogue one. So most Exchanges here have both because of the upgrading happening, so if you need DSL then they can move you to the Digital switches in most cases. So we can get up to 4mbps lines now... But they cost plenty. So I got a 512k ADSL line that costs an equivalent of $142 /month. Way more than the world standard. But it is getting better.

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How about cellular broadband? That one is getting expanded coverage these days, since it's a lot cheaper to build or upgrade cell towers than to run all new lines. I live in a substantial city, so my options are pretty good. I had DSL for awhile that worked well for me, and switched to cable since I got rid of my land line phone service (only using cells for that now), and the cost was comparable. 6mb/sec right now, which is nice.

 

Either way, I'd say you ought to find a new ISP. The one you've got sounds awful lame, to be honest.

 

I get all my gc messages delivered to my yahoo mail account, anyway. I've had that one for years and years, and Yahoo has better spam filters than any other e-mail service I've used (admittedly, I have not tried gmail). My permanent account got compromised by the spam folks a long time ago, and I'm getting 20-30 spams per day sent to that account. Thankfully, with a bit of diligence, only one or two per day makes it through my spam filters anymore. Never had a problem with them freaking out and blocking mail because they thought someone was launching a denial of service attack. They just would realize their bandwidth sucked and they'd upgrade.

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AOL had this issue a little while back and there's no telling how much mail i missed getting. I ended up using the gmail workaround (having it forwarded to my aol account from gmail) and it seems to have been working fine. I have also set up a couple of test pocket queries to come straight to my AOL address and they are coming in the way they are supposed to now, but i'm not going to revert back yet, as i figure this can happen again.

Whoooo Hoo! :D^_^ Old mail is slowly coming in this morning, and I got a message from Annie from GC.com who wrote this:

 

Some ISP's will blacklist geocaching.com and label us as a 'bulk

sender." This is true and false. While we do send emails in bulk,

these filters do not distinguish between solicited and unsolicited

bulk email. If this is the case you will need to contact your ISP and

ask them to allow email from these IP addresses:

 

66.150.167.133

66.150.167.157

 

These are the originating IPs for all mail from Geocaching.com.

So, I will send that message on to my ISP and hope they don't do this again. In the meantime, gmail forwarding works, so I will continue to use that. :)

 

Well, I just changed my email address to my Yahoo! one. I wonder if all those messages sitting on the server will be sent to the Yahoo! account now?

 

I don't want that to be a permanent fix however because it takes way too much time to view my mail over the web with my 24K connection speed . . . waiting.gif

It shouldn't take any longer than downloading your email from your ISP. Actually it should be faster because photos and other attachments stay on the Yahoo server unless you download them. :D

Since I changed my GC.com address to one at gmail, I don't have to deal with Yahoo!, but the reason it is so slow is waiting for page reloads. It takes more than 30 seconds for page reloads with a connection this slow . . . :D And, to get a PQ through Yahoo! takes three page reloads . . . before I can finally start the three to four minute download of the PQ. faint.gif

I might miss something here, but why don't you just POP your gmail account, and don't worry about the web interface?
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This ISP, which until last Friday, has been very reliable (I never get a busy signal), only costs $100.00 per year.

100/yr is pretty cheap.. sounds like ya get what you pay for eh.

 

gmail. Free POP access to all. Use your regular email client (outlook, eudora, whatever) and totally bypasses your ISP. No 'page reloads' at all.

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Everything is working now. :D Some of the old mail is still dribbling in and the mail being forwarded through my gmail account is arriving in Eudora just the way I want it to.

 

The reason I didn't go through gmail before this is because -- in more than three years with this ISP -- I have never had a problem. I never get a busy signal and never get disconnected. You can't ask for better service than that . . . :D The slow speed is because of the phone lines out here. It is not the ISP.

 

I think getting the large "All Finds" PQ that Friday morning, which took a long time to arrive over my slow connection, automatically triggered something on the server that caused it to block GC.com mail. I rarely request that PQ because it takes such a long time to download . . .

 

As New England n00b states, you have to be a certain distance away "from the nearest telco substation in order for DSL to work on your line." Out here, DSL is not an option . . . nor is cable . . . :tired:

 

Thanks for all the help. :huh:

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