White-listing IP addresses? C'mon!!!
Like many others, I've been having trouble accessing Cox Email (specifically its SMTP server) while traveling. Cox personnel keep telling me Cox has to "whitelist" the IP address I'm using. But to m...
Forum Discussion
Lots of Cox representatives have sent me emails, but when they say something STUPID and I question them about it, they often don't reply. I did get one response from an agent who identifies himself as "Dustin" but he still won't explain how it can possibly be practical for Cox to white list IP addresses. Instead, he asks me to provide the following information every time my IP address changes: Country, Cox.net user ID, IP address (he doen't say public or private), is the IP address static or via DHCP (Earlier I told Cox than anyone traveling necessarily is using DHCP, so just assume DHCP all the time. But apparently reading is not one of the skills Cox requires for its tech support.)
But based on my recent side-trip to Tibet I came up with the following calculations. I realize a DHCP server may assign the same IP address more than once, so in some sense these calculations are a worst-case scenario. But because the user has no way to know if they have the same IP address as before until after the DHCP server has reassigned the address, the customer still has to do the same amount of work
Here's what I wrote back to Dustin:
Just take my recent experience in Tibet as an example. I flew from Nepal to Tibet on an airplane -- this was IP address 1. Then from the airport it was 1 hour drive to Lhasa. If I could have gotten a SIM card, this would have been IP Address 2. Then at the hotel there was one WiFi network for my room and one for the dining room. These were IP addresses 3 & 4. But then when I came back to my room after eating dinner, the DHCP server for the network in my room would have assigned a new IP address, as would the dining room when I went to eat breakfast the next morning. These are IP addresses 5 & 6. Going back to my room would add IP address 7. If we assume breakfast, lunch, and dinner every day, we'd be adding 7 IP addresses daily. We spent four consecutive days in Lhasa, so we're up to 35 IP addresses. Then, as a side trip, we went to the city of Shigatse. Along the way going we stopped for lunch. Add 1 IP address for the restaurant where we ate lunch, one for the hotel room, and one for the hotel's dining room where we ate breakfast the next morning. So we're up to 38 IP addresses. Then it's back to Lhasa, and another IP address at the restaurant for lunch. Then it's back to the original hotel: add one IP address for the hotel room, one for the dining room, and another for the hotel room after dinner. So now it's 42 addresses. We stayed at the hotel another two days, so add 14 IP addresses, and we're up to 56. Then it's back on a plane, and we have 57 different IP addresses. Multiply this by 2 for my wife and me, and you have 114 different IP addresses. Now multiply this resulting product by 3 -- for laptop, tablet, and mobile phone -- and you have a possible 342 separate IP addresses. And we haven't even begun to count dynamic IP addresses that the DHCP server decides to reassign. And this is for just nine days in Tibet. I'm traveling for almost two months! So multiply this number by 6: that's 2,052 distinct IP addresses!
ARE YOU KIDDING ME? DO YOU REALLY EXPECT CUSTOMERS TO CONTACT YOU OVER TWO THOUSAND TIMES SIMPLY BECAUSE COX CAN'T FIGURE OUT HOW TO WHITE-LIST INDIRECT ADDRESSES, LIKE EMAIL ADDRESSES, INSTEAD OF IP ADDRESSES?
ALSO, WHY ARE OTHER COMPANIES LIKE GOOGLE AND YAHOO ABLE TO HANDLE CUSTOMERS ROAMING OUTSIDE THE U.S. WITHOUT KNOWING INDIVIDUAL IP ADDRESSES, BUT COX CAN'T FIGURE OUT HOW TO DO THIS?
YOU'RE JOKING, RIGHT?
And I should have added, but didn't think of it at the time:
AND HOW IS A CUSTOMER SUPPOSED TO CONTACT YOU WHENEVER AN IP ADDRESS CHANGES IF YOU BREAK THEIR EMAIL EVERY TIME IT DOES?
I think the above clearly demonstrates either that this Cox technician and others who have also said Cox has to white list individual IP addresses don't know what they're talking about, or that Cox really hasn't thought this through.
Cox is a United States company that provides email addresses to US based customers. It does not provide this service in other countries. It blocks all foreign IP addresses for security reasons. Unless you are using a VPN you are using unsecured wireless hotspots from foreign countries to login to Cox to retrieve your email whether it be an email client or through Webmail. You should never be doing this as your information can easily be intercepted and stolen. Whitelisting IP addresses from foreign countries is dangerous for Cox and the consumer. When using cellular data (changed sim card) then your IP will be based out of a foreign country which won't work.
This is what I suggest. You purchase an ExpressVPN monthly subscription and then install the application on your devices. ExpressVPN is a very reputable company. You might need to make configuration changes to your email. When you connect to ExpressVPN select a location in the United States such as San Jose Texas. They have numerous locations around the world you chose from but it's important you select a US based location. This will provide you with an IP address based out of the US. Try using your email client or Cox Webmail. This is your solution.
Open,
Unfortunately, what you say is not what Cox says. It says it does provide the service in foreign countries, and it does so by white-listing. Some Cox representatives say Cox white-lists email addresses, but most say it white-lists individual IP addresses, something I find absurd. Instead, I think representatives in the latter group, all of whom have lower technical status than the ones who say email addresses, don't really understand what IP addresses are or how they're assigned.
I agree with you about using a VPN. In fact, if you look at some other threads, you will see I made the same recommendation for the same reason as you. The VPN I usually use, IP-Vanish, is installed on all my computers. But even when I select a U.S. location for the server (Chicago, Seattle, etc.), usually I still can't access the Cox SMTP server.
If I use a foreign SIM card in my dual-SIM mobile phone, I can still get a U.S. IP address because I have IP-Vanish installed on the phone. But I doubt this alone will solve the SMTP server problem, because it doesn't solve it on my laptop or tablet.
I've been very happy with IP-Vanish, and think adding another VPN to the mix at this point will only make things more complex and make the real problem harder to isolate.
I think the next step is to get someone at Cox with a technical education and who really understands TCP/IP either to explain how it's practical for Cox to white-list individual IP addresses or to admit that the lower-level support personnel are confusing IP addresses with email addresses, which are an indirect form of addressing through mail servers, and therefore are indifferent to IP addresses changing frequently.
I just read your other posts reference Cox email. It appears you attempted to sort out any possible Cox email issues before you left the country. White-listing your email address would seem like the most effective solution. Cox forum moderator Becky seems to think this is possible and that the Tier 1 agent you spoke with did not have the proper training. Becky also mentioned that other Cox users traveling abroad have not been experiencing any issues. Becky did not indicate she would look into the matter to fix the issue which leads me to believe you are out of luck. I highly doubt you will get reimbursed for any of your email problems. I did notice you said you could login and access Cox Webmail. Can't you use just use Webmail until your trip is over?
Open,
You sound like a realist. And you're probably right: I'm just out of luck. But from a customer-service standpoint or justice-for-paying-customer standpoint, IMHO the whole situation is deplorable. I do intend to complain to Cox when I return to the US, not only for the lack of service, but also for the stonewalling -- for example, not being able to get a straight answer how Cox thinks white-listing individual IP addresses is even close to being practical.
For me it would have been far better for Cox to tell me it doesn't support email from outside the US, when I first called before I left (and as you said a short time ago). Then I could have thought about alternative solutions and set them in place. Instead, I was told everything would be fine, only to find after I was outside the US that sending email does not work, and now I have to try to troubleshoot from places like Tibet or Bhutan.
I don't know how Becky or anyone else from Cox can say other travelers are not having issues. There's a whole thread on this forum regarding problems with Cox email when traveling in Europe.
As for using WebMail, there are many reasons why I don't use it. Thunderbird lets me program filters, so some incoming mail is automatically sorted into folders ("Family," "Financial," "Solicitations," etc.). These folders are located on a Google Drive, where I have free storage many times larger than Cox's measly 2GB. Moreover, the five different email accounts I use are easily integrated, so I can look at them all at once or individually. Because Thunderbird is FOSS, I also can use many helpful extensions, that do things like synchronizing address books across all my devices, integrate calendars and emails, remove duplicate messages, save and schedule messages for sending later, convert emails to tasks or events, let me use LaTeX in emails, etc.
In particular, I have systems for keeping track of sent emails, emails used for Internet commerce sites I share with family members (e.g., Amazon), urgent to-do's, etc. Because my Cox account is the one I mainly use for personal affairs, having it broken is a major headache. When I get back to the US I'll have to track down and write to all correspondents who received emails from one of my Gmail accounts and have them switch to my Cox account. Good luck with that.
Because I had to come up with workarounds on the fly, the substitute systems were kludges and unreliable. An excellent example is that yesterday was my granddaughter's second birthday, and I had (thought I had) written my son about setting up a Skype or Whatsup video session. Ordinarily I would have sent this from my Cox account, but because it is broken I tried to work around using a different account. My son never even acknowledged receiving the message, and now I can't even find it. You sound like someone who's been around computers for a while, so you know that untested quick kludges are often error-prone. If Cox had been honest with me before I left, or if Cox had provide good customer service and actually fixed things when I called on 22-Sep., kludging would have not been necessary. Happy Birthday, Cox. Thanks a lot!
Maybe you're right. One way or the other, using Cox WebMail or using other accounts as substitute for Cox, would cause problems. If Cox had told me my regular email would not work, maybe I would have considered WebMail more seriously. But Cox told me it just had to white-list my wife's and my email addresses, after which everything would be hunky-dory. So I didn't consider WebMail. In the meantime, Cox did not white-list my wife's account because "there was a typo," and Cox still hasn't explained how there could be an undetected typo in its data-entry system, who made the typo, or why it took Cox over 3 weeks even to tell me about it.
