On: Google Workspace thinks my domain is an email provider (2025)

[mpalczewski]

I wonder how this list ended up being created anyway. Was it a long standing issue, or just some ai slop? web.com, web.org, web.net don't look like an email provider.

[layer8 → mpalczewski]

The rationale probably was that end users primarily identify the email provider by the subdomain, not the TLD, and therefore to prevent spoofing they block all domains where the subdomain corresponds to an email provider, regardless of the TLD. Like, they don’t want to allow gmail.<anything>, and the same for all other email providers they know of.

[mh- → mpalczewski]

web.net, at least, absolutely is an email provider.

[0x073 → mh-]

web.de is also a big email provider in Germany.

[brewmarche → 0x073]

Yes and gmx (listed next to it) as well, and I’m pretty sure that gmx offered/offers multiples TLDs (gmx.net, gmx.de, gmx.at, …)

I think the same goes for Alice (big ISP, offering mail addresses, in multiple countries)

It looks like some of these wildcards are for mail providers who use multiple TLDs.

[mpalczewski → mh-]

fair enough. at least not primarily an email provider. so if they offer any email.

[nom → mpalczewski]

scroll through a list of known email providers and you will notice they registered tlds for the countries they operate in, very typical for the old ones like yahoo yandex Freemail Hotmail etcpp

web.de is an oldschool German provider, as is gmx.de (and .at, .fr, .com, ...)

the regex smells like an inexperienced developer trying to be clever

[croes → nom]

Or an pretty old regex from before all those new TLDs