VPN Frustration

mountainsoft

Thinks s/he gets paid by the post
Joined
Nov 14, 2016
Messages
2,540
Location
Washington State
Last month I noticed many of my emails were being blocked by Cloudflare based on the IP address of my internet provider (comcast). After much wasted time trying to resolve the problem, I gave up and got a VPN. I tried Surf Shark first, but I was running into all kinds of odd problems connecting to web sites (Google and others), and still had email problems. So I switched to Private Internet Access. Unfortunately, I'm not having much luck with it either. I choose a location and there's a 50/50 chance my email goes through successfully. Usually I have to send the email, wait a few minutes to see if it bounced, and often have to choose another location or two and resend until I find one that works. The worst part is once I find a working IP address it only works for a day or two before that too starts bouncing and I have to find another IP location. I feel like I'm constantly playing "whack a mole" with IP locations. Sending email shouldn't be this difficult.

Then there's the location issue. Even when I find a working IP location, web sites think I'm at that location. So I either get the "not available in your country" message, or I get a store/weather report/etc. for a location half way around the world. I know that's the purpose of a VPN but it's really annoying.
 
Assuming your doing SMTP here? Do you have a hard requirement for an SMTP email connection/client or could you just move to something like gmail? Or find an email provider that has some sort of http hop to their SMTP service? Worse case scenario you could run a VM in the cloud to send email, or use a cloud machine to relay the email.
 
The other thread has many suggestions.

Your IP you send from, and/or your domain, is getting attention as spam. If you switch your IP that doesn't get a domain or IP off the block list.

By now it seems to me that you may have alo entered a special status with some receiving domains. When I look at your description of what you're doing (resending in succession until some mail gets through) it feels like spammer behavior.

Running mail service, especially from a shared server, requires a lot of attention.
 
Yeah, I'm using SMTP with Thunderbird. I was surprised by the IP block with my internet provider as all my email accounts are hosted with Hostgator. I have multiple email accounts to manage (personal and business), and I need to be notified when new emails arrive. I'm not sure how that would work with web based email, short of logging in and checking regularly.
 
Your IP you send from, and/or your domain, is getting attention as spam. If you switch your IP that doesn't get a domain or IP off the block list.

Yes, but I couldn't find any way to get the IP removed from the block list. In the past blocks like these would time out after a period of time, or I could file a removal request, but this one doesn't provide either option. Using a VPN was the only solution I could find.

When I look at your description of what you're doing (resending in succession until some mail gets through) it feels like spammer behavior.

First, I didn't need to resend messages until my IP was blocked, and second, I'm only talking 3-4 messages a day that I need to resend. Not exactly spammer behavior. Customers contact me and I need my replies to reach them.

I tried SMTP email relays and whatnot, but those still got blocked by the IP block.

At most I might send 20-30 emails a day. These are legitimate emails, not spam. The vast majority are replies to incoming questions.
 
The worst part is once I find a working IP address it only works for a day or two before that too starts bouncing and I have to find another IP location. I feel like I'm constantly playing "whack a mole" with IP locations.

Are you certain that HostGator isn't the culprit?
 
I think I finally have a working solution with my VPN. I chose "Private Internet Access" after having several issues with Surfshark, but was still having problems with various IP addresses being blocked after a day or two. So I upgraded to a dedicated IP which seems to have solved the daily whack-a-mole search for a working VPN IP address.

Because VPN addresses are located somewhere else by design, I was having issues with sites like maps or stores that rely on my real location. I also ran across a few sites (i.e. Safeway grocery store and Reddit) that wouldn't work at all with the VPN enabled. Since I really only needed the VPN for email, I was able to use the split tunneling feature of PIA to use my dedicated IP for email, and use my ISP's IP for everything else.

I'm a bit over a week in now and everything seems to be working without issue. Naturally the dedicated IP costs even more money, but you gotta do what you gotta do...
 
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