4 ms·

I've experienced that too.

krageon 6y ago
Then you haven't used it for very long. Besides that, more exists than some tech giant's gambit to gather and exploit as much user information as they can. Nobody should use gmail, unless they are forced to by their job (in which case they should try to change it if they are in a position to).
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- AlchemistCamp 6y ago
  What email service do you recommend?
  - krageon 6y ago
    Any one in a privacy-friendly location. There's a ton of German providers (posteo, tutanota, mailbox.org, etc) which are always safe choices. Emphatically not Protonmail, as it makes promises it doesn't deliver on and has a very strange architecture for it's security besides.
jacoblambda 6y ago
The issue isn't with the user's email. The issue is with the site's email provider. If the email server sending out the one time links is under heavy load or for some reason has a backlog, it may take a while for the links to actually get to the user. This usually happens because whatever service the site is using to handle sending out emails is under heavy load, having issues, or is rate limiting the site due to a sudden spike in logins. If this happens for any reason, it failure cascades because the more people try to log in, the longer it will take for everyone to get a valid link. At least with a standard TOTP token or the like, if the service is under load it will eventually work if you keep trying (versus not working for longer the more people try). Hell this method also runs into the issue of getting flagged as spam or getting blacklisted due to ~~the algorithm~~ for one reason or another. This is doubly likely if a sudden burst of traffic to a site results in them sending out a mass wave of near identical emails. Now non-tech users can't log in at all since they "never get the email at all". Email is a wonderful thing but it is painfully fragile and doesn't handle time sensitive stuff well at scale (due to queuing, routing issues, and spam filters).
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- conductr 6y ago
  > The issue isn't with the user's email As an email layman, I don’t fully buy this, can you explain? I’ve sent emails with multiple CC’s and most get it quick while one or two people have to wait for it to hit their inbox for multiple minutes. I assume they all leave my service at same time and the delay is caused by the receiving mail server.
  - jacoblambda 6y ago
    So I'll preface that I'm by no means an expert. The issue can occasionally be the user's email provider but for the most part issues with implementing one-time links will be the site's responsibility/a problem on their end. As for email occasionally being super slow, Google and Microsoft (to a lesser extent) will tarpit(repeatedly delay the acceptance of emails from a specific address or entire domain) emails arbitrarily. This normally isn't anything meaningfully repeatable and is essentially ~~the algorithm~~ arbitrarily deciding it dislikes some certain email, email address, or server. Those emails will eventually get to their recipient but effectively get frozen in time for a bit before getting delivered. For normal person to person emails, this boils down to bad luck and occasional inconvenience however for any heavily templated email (like say an email containing one-time links), this means something on the site's side is causing the emails to appear as spam or spam-like to the recipient server. So technically it is the user's email server causing the delay but it's usually due to something in particular on the site's side be it a domain or server configuration or something about the email contents.
  - Spooky23 6y ago
    In addition to tarpitting, a variety of transient issues can impact mail delivery. Email is all about queues and you can run into issues where servers crash or get bogged down by large email traffic. On business systems, sometimes DLP rules impact delivery times.
- gog 6y ago
  > The issue isn't with the user's email. The issue is with the site's email provider. If the email server sending out the one time links is under heavy load or for some reason has a backlog, it may take a while for the links to actually get to the user That is not completely true. I've been operating my own mail server for almost a decade, since I am the only person using it the volume of email I send out is almost none. I've observed on more then one occasion that sending an email to my gmail or my fathers gmail account can sometimes take 20 minutes or more to show up in gmail inbox although I know that google accepted the email as soon as it was sent.
sam_lowry_ 6y ago
Gmail does it to external mail servers as one of many mitigation strategies. I mean, when you send batches of mails to gmail, it lets them through first, then depending on its whim it starts throttling or outright blocking them. Once in a while, it changes its handling of DKIM or SPF or god knows what and the only thing you can expect from them is an SMTP error message.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

Then you haven't used it for very long. Besides that, more exists than some tech giant's gambit to gather and exploit as much user information as they can. Nobody should use gmail, unless they are forced to by their job (in which case they should try to change it if they are in a position to).

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
AlchemistCamp 6y ago
What email service do you recommend?
- krageon 6y ago
  Any one in a privacy-friendly location. There's a ton of German providers (posteo, tutanota, mailbox.org, etc) which are always safe choices. Emphatically not Protonmail, as it makes promises it doesn't deliver on and has a very strange architecture for it's security besides.

jacoblambda 6y ago

The issue isn't with the user's email. The issue is with the site's email provider. If the email server sending out the one time links is under heavy load or for some reason has a backlog, it may take a while for the links to actually get to the user. This usually happens because whatever service the site is using to handle sending out emails is under heavy load, having issues, or is rate limiting the site due to a sudden spike in logins. If this happens for any reason, it failure cascades because the more people try to log in, the longer it will take for everyone to get a valid link. At least with a standard TOTP token or the like, if the service is under load it will eventually work if you keep trying (versus not working for longer the more people try). Hell this method also runs into the issue of getting flagged as spam or getting blacklisted due to ~~the algorithm~~ for one reason or another. This is doubly likely if a sudden burst of traffic to a site results in them sending out a mass wave of near identical emails. Now non-tech users can't log in at all since they "never get the email at all". Email is a wonderful thing but it is painfully fragile and doesn't handle time sensitive stuff well at scale (due to queuing, routing issues, and spam filters).

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
conductr 6y ago
> The issue isn't with the user's email As an email layman, I don’t fully buy this, can you explain? I’ve sent emails with multiple CC’s and most get it quick while one or two people have to wait for it to hit their inbox for multiple minutes. I assume they all leave my service at same time and the delay is caused by the receiving mail server.
- jacoblambda 6y ago
  So I'll preface that I'm by no means an expert. The issue can occasionally be the user's email provider but for the most part issues with implementing one-time links will be the site's responsibility/a problem on their end. As for email occasionally being super slow, Google and Microsoft (to a lesser extent) will tarpit(repeatedly delay the acceptance of emails from a specific address or entire domain) emails arbitrarily. This normally isn't anything meaningfully repeatable and is essentially ~~the algorithm~~ arbitrarily deciding it dislikes some certain email, email address, or server. Those emails will eventually get to their recipient but effectively get frozen in time for a bit before getting delivered. For normal person to person emails, this boils down to bad luck and occasional inconvenience however for any heavily templated email (like say an email containing one-time links), this means something on the site's side is causing the emails to appear as spam or spam-like to the recipient server. So technically it is the user's email server causing the delay but it's usually due to something in particular on the site's side be it a domain or server configuration or something about the email contents.
- Spooky23 6y ago
  In addition to tarpitting, a variety of transient issues can impact mail delivery. Email is all about queues and you can run into issues where servers crash or get bogged down by large email traffic. On business systems, sometimes DLP rules impact delivery times.
gog 6y ago
> The issue isn't with the user's email. The issue is with the site's email provider. If the email server sending out the one time links is under heavy load or for some reason has a backlog, it may take a while for the links to actually get to the user That is not completely true. I've been operating my own mail server for almost a decade, since I am the only person using it the volume of email I send out is almost none. I've observed on more then one occasion that sending an email to my gmail or my fathers gmail account can sometimes take 20 minutes or more to show up in gmail inbox although I know that google accepted the email as soon as it was sent.

sam_lowry_ 6y ago

Gmail does it to external mail servers as one of many mitigation strategies. I mean, when you send batches of mails to gmail, it lets them through first, then depending on its whim it starts throttling or outright blocking them. Once in a while, it changes its handling of DKIM or SPF or god knows what and the only thing you can expect from them is an SMTP error message.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]