(not for sale - it's public domain/free download)

The things that make fax unreliable:

• some idiot in the office dumped the faxes and took out the garbage before reading them. (source)
• the fax runs out of paper, reports a "success" ack to the sender, and then neglects to continue the job when paper is refilled (source: https://mirror.us.oneandone.net/projects/media.ccc.de/congress/2018/webm-sd/35c3-9462-eng-deu-fra-What_The_Fax_webm-sd.webm)

The things that make e-mail unreliable:

• the recipient's client tools decide incorrectly that the message is spam and stores the message where it will never be seen
• the receiving mail server uses a DNSBL to...
  • ..block connections from the sender
  • ..accept and blackhole messages from the sender (ref outlook)
  • ..accept and deliver messages to a place that is never visited
• the recipient's mail service decides for any flawed reason that the message is spam and delivers it to a folder that will never be seen
• the recipient uses a spamgourmet.com address and forgot to update the counter thus causing the message to be blackholed or the service provider of the protected address blocks the spamgourmet.com server specifically
• recipient's mail server may reject the message if the domain name appearing in the From: field does not correspond with the IP address of the transmitting server (e.g. MUA allows freetyping the From: field and sender uses a spamgourmet.com address)
• the recipient uses a forwarding service like Namesilo, who refuses to forward messages from unrecognized senders because the forwarding service considers their own IP reputation more important than the actual delivery of a single message
• the recipient's mail server uses graylisting with unreasonable delay. Time-sensitive messages can miss the deadline or sending servers can give up before the time lapse.
• recipient's e-mail server blocks the attachment (and possibly the whole email) incorrectly flagging it as malware.
• recipient's e-mail address is unknown because a webmaster's anti-spam effort...
  • ..is to not publish any email addresses. Senders are forced to use a contact form that's blocked by a sometimes broken CAPTCHA. And when the webform does work, PDF attachments are not possible.
  • ..is to block e-mail address disclosure until a CAPTCHA is solved, and the CAPTCHA is broken or the sender rejects the effort required
  • ..entails hiding e-mail addresses until some javascript renders them, but javascript is either unsupported or disabled by the visitor's secure browser. There is also no indication to the visitor that an e-mail address is even available if j/s were to execute.
• recipient's e-mail address is unknown because the webpage publishing it blocks Tor and the visitor will be damned if they must give up their security to view the page
• the sender simply cannot send the message because the corporation who handles the recipient's email (e.g. is a PRISM corp like Google or Microsoft) is not sufficiently trustworthy for the content of the message
• large corporations use DNSBLs to force email senders to relay their mail through a static IP, and the sender with dynamic IP may not consider any third party sufficiently trustworthy to see all their emails
• sender boycotts the recipients e-mail provider
• recipient does not have an S/MIME cert. or PGP public key, thus failing to achieve the level of confidentiality required by the sender (some sys admins even refuse to accommodate encrypted e-mail in fear that a malicious payload will get past the organizations malware scanner)
• recipient uses an EU-based e-mail service provider, where law obligates collection of metadata (a collection that may jeopardize the level of confidentiality required by the sender), and the recipient or sender are not using a Memory Hole-capable MUA to protect their metadata
• recipient abandons their mailbox because they have other accounts and can't be bothered to manage all of them, and unread mail piles up
• sender is a technologically-challenged bank or brokerage who sends multipart MIME messages and puts in the plaintext part:
  • a message saying "Upgrade your mail client" instead of the actual message
  • a large dump of unreadable machine-generated HTML indistinguishable from garbage
• sender attaches a file in a non-standard proprietary format like MS Word and the recipient cannot view it (or does not trust it to open it for viewing).
• the email service requires users to solve a CAPTCHA, which may be broken, might refuse to send the puzzle to certain IP addresses, or the puzzle might not be understandable. Protonmail is an example of an email service that pushes CAPTCHAs.

Sometimes an SMS msg reaches me a ½ day or full day late. Sometimes an SMS doesn’t reach me at all. I don’t use SMS often yet there are two recent instances where a friend sent an SMS that somewhat required a reply from me. When we met in person, they told me in detail what the SMS said and I said with 100% confidence that I did not receive the message. My friend was baffled in disbelief.. how can this be?

All my friends use smartphones for SMS but I will not. I use a feature phone (aka dumb phone). Smartphones can be updated for bug fixes but also because of that possibility I think there is a culture of writing sloppy code in the first place. The makers also want you to be forced to buy upgrades so bugs are good for that business. Smartphones are also a hell of a lot more complex and complexity is proportional to bugs. My dumb phone cannot be updated but it’s extremely simple & the tech is old thus proven.

Regardless, I did a brief dig & it seems the GSM network is to blame, not the phones. According to tech writer Adam Fendelman, “It's been shown that around 1-5 percent of all SMS messages are actually lost even when nothing is seemingly wrong”. Yikes. That is terrible.

This article is oriented toward the assholes who spam you with SMS ads. I almost closed the page but then saw a gem therein which gives this reason for some msgs being dropped:

“Flagged as Spam: Sometimes, carriers of recipients may flag your SMS as spam because of the use of certain language, words, or symbols that trigger spam filters.”

Shit; that sucks. So the same thing that makes email less reliable than fax is making SMS less reliable too. I know from my spam boxes with various email providers how crappy the spam/ham separators can be so I actually seek out & favor email providers who have no spam filtering. I had no idea that my SMS msgs would be subject to this. In principle, I might like SMS to be spam-filtered but only if the positives for spam are still made available either by emailing them or giving me a web portal.

Of course SMS can also fail for obvious reasons:

• your phone is off or out of range
• your phone lacks storage (dumb phones run out of memory)

but there is some machinery at work to ensure reattempts.

I am certain that my phone was not out of memory when my friend tried to SMS me. My phone shows me a msg: “incoming msg but memory full” when that happens.

Fendelman’s article also says “SMS is usually lower on the priority list than other traffic like voice.” And worse, there is often no error detection in place so apparently some networks don’t even know when a SMS msg is lost.

The lack of SMS reliability is why the old radio pagers from the 80s have not been completely mothballed. Some cities are wise enough to keep them around for ER docs and firefighters. What about the cities that have not? They just decided SMS is reliable enough for lives to depend on?

I want my 1980s pager back.

My phone carrier gives me a use-it-or-lose-it monthly allowance of 1000 #SMS txts within #Belgium. I only use ~50 or so. Any ideas on how I can use them and be less wasteful?

I’m not really looking for a big project. Just numbers that give free services. E.g. there are probably numbers I can SMS and get back the weather. Or even better, I would love to be able to SMS a Belgian phone number that would forward my SMS to an international number. Not sure if gateways like that exist.

If I were looking for a project, I could probably sell a SMS service. So for example I could proxy SMS messages for people outside of Belgium for a fee. It would be interesting but more effort than I want.

#askFedi

Now here is a phone for you…

Okay, so for a long time now I’ve wanted to put together an actual telephone and connect it with the ATA I bought when SDF rolled out its’ telephony VOIP service.

Has anyone here done this with a WE 302, specifically? It’s the model I’d love to have on my desk (I’d settle for a WE 500 if I had to…) The sets can be found on eBay (maybe questionable quality) fairly inexpensively right now and I have a bit of time to do something like this.

For those who have done a project like this: is there anything to watch out for? Will this model work with existing the VOIP service? (My ATA will work with rotary phones supposedly)

Hey there! I am currently looking for a replacement of my 2018 Huawei p20 (which works fine but operates on Android 9 and has a broken screen).

I am considering getting either a Pixel7a (seems like the best option in my price range) or a Fairphone 4 (I would love to support the cause but I am afraid that a new model might come out soon).

So here I am looking to discuss these options! Thanks everyone!

A FaceTime for a more civilized age.