Would you like to hear my latest bitching about something tech related? Of course you would! Here it is.
When I'm traveling, I can always receive email but I can never send email—at least, not on a regular email client. I can open up Cox Communication's web app and do it that way, but it's a pain in the ass.
Knowing this, I contacted Cox a couple of days before we left. Their chat robot collapsed almost immediately. Then a human took over, but he had no idea what to do and could only give me the number for second level support. The next day I called them.
It didn't go well. The rep wanted my IP address. Fine, but it was my normal local IP address and she wanted to know what my IP address was going to be in France. But how should I know? And anyway, it's going to change every time I move around.
Yes, she said, which means I'll have to contact Cox while in France and open a ticket for my IP address at the time. They will then get back to me within seven business days.
Seven business days? That means you're telling me I can't send email from Europe. No, insisted the rep, I'm just telling you our procedures.
But those procedures mean I can't send email. No, they're just procedures.
I swear I'm not making this up. So I gave up and then had a brainstorm: Why not just set up a TeamViewer remote connection to my home computer and open it whenever I want to read email? I'll just send and receive through my email client at home.
I tried it and it worked great—until we got to Europe. I don't know what happened. Maybe when my home computer goes to sleep, the TeamViewer connection dies.
Then I had another brainstorm: Just use my Gmail account. I tried it, and it worked. Yay!
But then I got suspicious for some reason. I sent a regular old cox.com email to a friend who keeps late hours, and she responded in about a minute. Then I tried someone else. There was no problem at all sending and receiving email through my Cox account.
What the hell? This has never worked in the past, so they must have changed something. But their rep insisted repeatedly and at length that it wouldn't work unless they knew my IP address in France. Why?
In any case, that's it. A technology bitching story that turns out to not only have a happy ending, but was actually happy the entire time. But I still wish I knew what was going on here.
Chrome remote viewer is great, if that's what you did instead of logging into GMail directly, but your PC does have to be on and set up properly. Auto reboots can cause problems if Chrome and/or Teamviewer don't start back up.
Alternately, if the problem returns, you could try setting up a VPN. You'd probably want it set up before traveling.
I'd say this is less a "technology" issue than lame customer support. The wetware is deficient.
ISP's do this (IP address filtering) as a crude way of blocking botnet-driven spam. I suspect someone just needed to check or uncheck the appropriate box to disable it.
I think I would have preemptively skipped the tech support can o' worms, and gone straight to Gmail. This post led me to wonder if my own (small, coop-owned) ISP would allow me to use a desktop client to send email from France, but then fat chance I'll ever be in France.
Yeah, just use an email provider that works around the globe (gmail, yahoo, hotmail, etc) and you’ll be fine.
Unless you’re conducting classified negotiations or large financial transactions that you absolutely do not want hacked, these services will meet your needs.
I've been doing this around the world using desktop email programs with no problems for over twenty years. I live in Europe currently, still use a hosting provider in the US (but it could be anywhere), with my own domain, and their email server software. Took about an hour to set up. Some minor wrinkles with port-numbers that still work from hotels etc, but those are really one-off.
That requires a known static IP, tho.
Well, if so, I have never had any idea what mine is at the server end, and I move around all the time at the client end 🙂
I've been running my own mail server since the 90s. I do this stuff for a living, and back then I more or less had to run it to do the goofy stuff I wanted to.
These days I'm slowly getting forced out. Gmail recently decided... something they won't tell me about means they suddenly decided I'm spam. What? Check the "Postmaster tools!" Ok... I jump their hoops for access to that crap, and learn my mail server has volume too low for them to tell me anything.
Bite me, twerps.
I don't know many Gmail users, but my mother is one. So now I have a Gmail address solely for her. And spam, I get plenty of that there. Somehow Gmail's careful spam filtering is only good for making me use their proprietary junk.
No, really, bite me, Google.
I get spam on Gmail maybe once or twice a month. The rest is filtered pretty efficiently. Of course, I have been training it since the 90's.
I dunno, I think you could split your ire between Google and email spammers, who are the reason we can't have nice things.
You've been caught in statistics. That sucks.
I realize that your preferred option is to run your own mail server, however, you might consider using a service like MailGun. I think at low volume its really cheap. Not as cheap as running a server at home, but still, when the time comes to replace that server ...
Because nobody knows anything any more. Tech support is in Bangalore and the only thing they know how to do is read from the flow chart in the binder. Even if it is in Idaho, that's still all they need to do. The notion of tech support employing people who know things about the specific system is long gone because at the wages they pay they would not be able to retain those people.
But, if anything, Google is worse. They have no support for anything they offer. Your best option is to toss a question into a web forum and hope someone knows the answer.
But in the end, I just stick with Gmail. It works. I get minimal spam. I have two accounts, public and private, and whenever any company asks my email, I give them the public one. My private one stays pretty clean. And since I kind of hate the Gmail interface, I use Thunderbird to access it via POP3.
POP3! Now that's one I've not heard of in a while.
I use POP3. It's the only way we've found to share an inbox. IMAP makes it nearly impossible.
(There are two of us who want to receive all the same email and respond using the same return address, but we have different schemes for filing email. IMAP is really not designed for family use. Then again, that seems to be the tech trend. We keep our land line because conference calls with cell phones are a pain in the ass. With a land line, we just each pick up a phone and we're conferenced. We haven't found a smart phone smart enough to do this. I'm guessing this is because the people who design this stuff were born in cauldrons and didn't have parents or siblings.)
i'd suggest trying a VPN to spoof a US IP. NordVPN has worked well for me and is very cheap.
I use one of those "global providers" (yahoo, gmail, etc), and I'm going overseas next week, so I hope my email continues to work. I've unlocked my supposedly smart phone and I am planning to put in a local SIM card when I get there. And as far as I know, I should be set to go ...
😐
First or so level support folks both deal with a lot of, and don’t know, shit. Once they know shit they are no longer first level support folks.
That said, apart from what I assume were issues of line of sight to a satellite in geostationary orbit, a recent voyage of mine sent and received emails just fine. Using my Apple and/or Gmail accounts…. Not sure if Kevin’s river voyage employs such satellite or not but would expect fewer los issues on a river cruise.
Gripe # 486, eh? Was #386 about how your phone modem no longer works? Can't wait for the Pentium gripe.
But what is Kevin’s Core gripe?
dude switch to a chromebook and use gmail. or ubuntu linux and thunderbird. get rid of anything microsoft. you can do it!!!
I don't get it. What's the value of using a home or local or whatever mail server v. Gmail? I've lived partly in the US, partly overseas for 22 years and have never had an issue with Gmail. Anywhere. On laptop or phone. I suspect it's more susceptible to spamming. Communications which require high security--with financial people, for ex--are done via secure email systems that they provide. If you travel, why on earth would you use anything else?
"What's the value of using a home or local or whatever mail server v. Gmail" You don't want alphabet reading all of your email before you do?
There isn't really enough information here to give a good answer. We don't know what your email client is, nor how it is connecting to Cox, etc.
But I would guess that they (or you) have at some point switched to authentication for sending email, which means that they don't have IP blocks (or you aren't being blocked by them) any longer.
Historical note: originally sending email was entirely unauthenticated: any host could connect to any SMTP server and send a message. With the rise of spam, most ISPs switched to handling mail only for their customers, allowing only known users to send messages. This 'known' could be either via a known IP address (usually an address on the ISPs network), or via authenticating (usually with a username/password), or both.
So, if you are using authenticated SMTP to send your messages via Cox, then Cox can identify you as a customer wherever you happen to be, without needing your IP address.
"What's the value of using a home or local or whatever mail server v. Gmail" You don't want alphabet reading all of your email before you do?
Why did it take 10 paragraph-type-things to get to the extremely obvious "just use my Gmail account", I sincerely doubt that Mr. Drum has any sensitive national security information.
I tried connecting to jabberwocking.com/webmail, and it asked me to log in. It looks pretty vanilla to me. It had the usual port blocking question up front. I assume there is a mail server there. Is that the one that is region restricted?
Why you didn't go with gmail from the beginning is a bit puzzling. Not only does it work everywhere, you may not be with Cox forever even back at home.