Posted by thatha7777 15 hours ago
We added this feature at my $dayjob and I was quite surprised there is no authentication. But thinking about it, this is how mailing lists work (you aren't explicitly specified in "To:") so it makes sense you can do this.
So they send me an email, send me another email saying they can't reach me by email, then mail me a letter with the same content as the original letter, and mail me an additional letter saying they can't reach me by email.
Sadly I doubt their system is xkcd806 compatible ether.
This isn't an engineering problem, it's an ITIL problem. To be fair 99% of these complaints will be dealt with by the flow chart. Sadly people on the front line are either not knowledgable enough or not empowered enough to bust out of that straightjacket.
The other day, I literally had trouble signing into a website... then I tried filling the contact us form, about the bug... only to have that fail... call in, have the person on the other end schedule my appointment, then almost drop the call without actually logging my bug report/complaint about the whole issue that had me calling in the first place.
Email was here long before Gmail and will be here long after Google abandons it.
This is why I don’t use Gmail.
Also, get off my lawn.
With Telegram you send a message via the Bot API and it arrives. 100% deliverability. No spam filters. No authentication chain. The message just shows up with a notification on their phone.
Obviously Telegram has its own limitations (smaller user base in the US, less formal). But for anything where you need reliable message delivery to people who opted in, messaging platforms have a massive advantage over email in 2026.
Domain and IP reputation and all the other quirks of deliverability are much more of a headache. DMARC is setup, test and done. But deliverability in praxis is something you cannot just test and can break at any time. The second worst are email providers that do whitelisting for email and require you to go through their process to even be allowed to send emails to their customers. The worst are providers that randomly decide to drop your emails without informing you or giving you a proper way to appeal as a small sender. If you're not a large email provider they have no problem just dropping you and the fault is on you because your service is the only one that is not working.
And then there are so many more intricacies of the ancient email protocol. Compatibility with horrendously outdated and misconfigured mail infrastructure is particular frustrating to me. I'm running a modern, properly configured, state of the art email server, but get ghosted by large email providers, yet have to deal with the broken mess, much bigger providers than myself are, which of course have no trouble delivering their broken spoofable email just because they are large enough.
In my case, it was reportedly (for MS) an IP associated with mine (same hosting provider) had previously been used to send spam.
My domain is decades old, never sent any spam, and I whitelisted it .. but nope, my host wasn't perfect.
This was some time ago now, but it looks like they've still not adopted proper whitelisting.
It is a pain in the ass though, coming from someone that had to dig their domain out of "low" reputation with Google Postmaster.
Their emails do arrive tho? It was your email that didn't arrive? I find it unbelievable that a payment provider ignored customer complaining about no emails being delivered since it would breach their SLAs with their customers and their customers' customers would have complained. Especially since at the top you say Google says you got the verified email.
Dude, you may be liable for damages on this. This is an extremely serious allegation to be making in my opinion. I would delete this asap.
Edit: I think Ycombinator needs to realise they're liable for spreading this too. Holy crap, it's bad. They're lying through their teeth saying an email bounced but ended up in their logs. That's not now emails bounce is it? They bounce because it wasn't found. How was he able to verify his email if he didn't get the code?
If you choose to host your email with Google, it's up to you to fix your email delivery settings (or find a better provider) for your domain.
Social network is not good for the poor guy. I already regret replying to him in the first place but I cannot delete.
Comments like this are why he's just landed himself with a major liability and I bet he'll be getting sued over this.
TFA shows an excerpt from the email log for his google workspace account, showing the bounce of email sent from viva.com.
Then, TFA states that he switched "the account" (his viva.com account) from using his GWorkspace address to a personal @gmail.com address, and asked viva to send another verification email. That one arrived.
At no point does TFA describe the author themselves sending a test email.
It amazes me that you can read an article and draw the exact wrong conclusions
What test email? I see no mention of a test email in the blog post. The mail that bounced was the one with the verification link from Viva.
https://atha.io/_next/image?url=%2Fstatic%2Fblog%2F2026%2Fvi...
Of course, they do have leverage over “marketing email” senders since they can block it and no one will complain, so those senders always have impeccable compliance with every year’s new “anti-spam standard.”
> To unblock myself, I switched to a personal @gmail.com address for the account. Gmail's own receiving infrastructure is apparently more lenient with messages, or perhaps routes them differently. The verification email came through.
2. He checked workspace email logs (with admin you can do this on gsuite)
3. It showed the intentional non-accept
4. Comprehending the problem, he switched to personal Gmail
5. The email arrived
6. He informed the sender of the original problem which he worked around
7. Sender is tech-illiterate and did not realize what the problem is. This is common with first line customer support so that happens.
The question to ask is whether you are literate in English or you skimmed too fast. Because I did a 30 s read of the article and got that.
I wonder what google workspace support said.
What's truly iffy is that GMail doesn't have the same strict requirements, and there's no way (at least that I found) to turn it off for my Google Workspace domain.
It seems unlikely you're the first company using viva.com and using google workspace.
Clearly the problem here is that viva.com emails aren't arriving on your google workspace, despite what their support process says.
viva.com emails do arrive on other email providers, so seems unlikely to be problem with your viva.com account
It seems unlikely workplace blocks all viva.com emails otherwise more than you would have complained.
Whether that's viva's problem or google's problem is a separate problem.
And I think Viva is going to be pissed that I'm being stopped from pointing out the absolute lie here.
Lovingly yours that_guy_iain.
Dang, honestly, this is going to blow back big time because someone has clearly decided to stop me from editing my comments which means you're liable for damages and in breach of EU laws. YC is big enough and has enough interests in the EU to qualify. And it's the fact you've removed my ability to redress if your lawyers want to deal with it. And I'm pretty sure someone at YC is going to know how much money I'm going to get and who I'm getting it from which is the most impressive thing. And what my tagline is in certain circles.
And nobody "decided to stop you" if you just hit the end of the 2 hour edit window.
But go on, what's your tagline.
It's a if you know you, you know. If you don't you're not in the know. :D
You don't have the right to complain to random websites without punishment. And nobody punished you. And "ability to redress" is something you still have. And there are no damages.
> It's a if you know you, you know.
You brought it up. Though it's pretty obvious you're a liar.
I suspect viva.com didn't consider the full implications, and I suspect Google did some hard math on hours saved for their customers
