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I'm developing an application where I would like to be able to send and receive SMS messages, and I'm thinking of using the email to SMS gateways because it's lower cost and one less technology I have to integrate. I've read Limitations on SMS messages sent using free email->SMS gateways and most of those limitations don't apply to me:

  • I'm not that picky about the formatting
  • I don't mind guessing/asking for the actual email address or at least my users' carrier name
  • I am able to process replies by email

The problem I do have is that at least for some carriers (I just tested Verizon in the US), when the recipient replies back there doesn't appear to be any indication of what the message is in reply to. By contrast, AT&T preserves the original SMTP Message-ID and Subject.

Are there any known solutions to this problem? This isn't really a global application (not yet anyway) so I don't mind carrier-specific hacks here and there, as long as there's some way to track the reply.

Edit: here's a stripped down sample of the email reply:

Delivered-To: me@gmail.com
Return-Path: <1234567890@vtext.com>
Received: from njbrspamp5.vtext.com (njbrspamp5.vtext.com [69.78.129.150])
        by mx.google.com with ESMTP id t4si5870253qcs.11.2011.05.05.14.32.20;
        Thu, 05 May 2011 14:32:21 -0700 (PDT)
Date: 05 May 2011 21:32:20 +0000
Received: from unknown (HELO njbb-wigdb2) ([10.134.199.245])
  by njbrspamp5.vtext.com with ESMTP; 05 May 2011 21:32:20 +0000
Message-ID: <16619319.1304631140504.JavaMail.root@njbb-wigdb2>
From: 1234567890@VTEXT.COM
To: me@gmail.com
Subject: This is a reply!
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Community
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Dan
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2 Answers2

4

I realize this may be a less informed answer, but I know at least Gmail supports extensions/aliases so that e.g. account+ext@gmail.com goes to your e-mail inbox. I don't know if this is widely supported, but it seems like it would be clever if you could do account+threadid@email.com.

John Chadwick
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I can't speak for Verison, but I am familiar with SMS emails through ATT's sms gateway. What ATT is doing is re-using the original messageid - IOW, the reply will have the same messageid as the email it is in reply to. While this does preserve a message thread, it is a blatant violation of RFC 2822, which states that every email message must have a unique messageid. Trying to do message tracking on those emails can be a nightmare, because that messageid is supposed to uniquely identify each email in the log.

Have you looked at all of the smtp headers on the Verision emails to see if they're adding anything there that might be a thread reference?

mjolinor
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