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USGS Earthquake notifications

I'm the sysadmin for the United States Geological Survey's Earthquake Notification Service. This is a free service provided by the U.S. Department of the Interior where people can sign up for automated notifications of worldwide earthquakes. The subscription process is opt-in with confirmation of addresses, so there's no way for someone to subscribe another person's address without their knowledge and cooperation.

We have almost 350,000 subscribers, and a fair number of them are Verizon customers who signed up to get short-format alerts sent to their phones via the email-to-SMS gateway at vtext.com. They subscribe by putting in their email address in the form 1234567890@vtext.com. We've been doing this for about five years now.

Starting about two weeks ago, I started getting hundreds and hundreds of failure messages back from postmaster@vtext.com. They all say the same thing:

Error: Invalid user address

Error message below:

550 - Requested action not taken: no such user here

Message details:

Sent date: Fri Jun 08 22:27:51 GMT 2012

MAIL FROM: ens@usgs.gov

RCPT TO: XXXXXXXXXX@vtext.com

From: ens@usgs.gov (USGS ENS)

To: XXXXXXXXXX@vtext.com

Size (in bytes): 144

Number of lines: 1

Anybody know what's going on here?

Comments

Ann154

That looks like the right format for the email address to send a text message to a phone. Have you tried sending the message using the MMS message email address format? I think it is XXXXXXXXXX@vpix.com, but don't quote me on that. I don't send messages in that format.

Try contacting the on this community to get to a Verizon Wireless employee. I would suggest putting it to the attention of either MikeS or Dion. They have helped me in the past and good to work with. The others will help too. I just don't have any experience with them.

This is peer to peer forum and we don't have access to any account information.

stan7826

Thanks for the pointer. But how do I contact them? That link doesn't include any 'contact us' information. Is there some way to tag my post here so that they will see it as a cry for help? Or is there a particular forum here I can post to that they monitor?

Ann154

Their email address wasn't listed on the profile of that user name?

Ann154

It usually takes a few days before they will answer a question to give the regular users of this community a chance to answer. However because your post wasn't marked as a question, I don't know if it will be noticed by them.

stan7826

Nope. No email address.

An I didn't notice the button for 'mark this as a question' until it was too late.

dustinlovell

Did you ever hear back from anybody? I'm the sysadmin at a large financial institution and we've also been getting slammed by emails from verizon. However, ours are coming in from post_master@vtext.com. Aside from that slight difference, the behavior we're seeing is exactly the same.

stan7826

Nope. No response from anybody. And you're right, they're coming from 'post_master' and not 'postmaster'.

I checked, and we have a bit over 5000 vtext.com subscribers, and I've gotten about 400-500 of these bounce messages, but they seem to be tapering off now.

Ann154

I had a thought recently. The large company that I work for has their own dedicated service representative for their company Verizon Wireless account. Would that be similar with a government account? Perhaps you can contact the customer service representative assigned to your company for additional assistance. If tech support is needed, then they would be able to direct you to the right team.

Unless of course, you have already asked them.

jtoddv

Stan,

I know this thread is a little old, but I run a similar alerting service and have been experiencing the same type of issue you had with your USGS alerts. As a result, I am hoping by now you have a contact or address to contact over here at Verizon Wireless by now, do you?

Thanks in advance.

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