Friday, February 14, 2014

Emailing via GMail from a device that does not support SSL

Pretty obscure stuff this. Best explained by example.

My home automation system (an OmniLT by HAI) is able to send emails when certain triggers occur, anything from the intruder alarm sounding to temperature variations etc. However it is a little old fashioned and it can only speak good ole' SMTP over port 25. None of this modern SSL/TLS stuff :-)

Well for sometime now, most ISPs, including Google's GMail will only accept secure connections and thus this is a problem... or is it...

It turns out that Google provides a legacy connection point, I am avoiding the term 'back-door'.

They will relay SMTP on port 25 providing you satisfy the following criteria:
  • You have (and use) an account.
  • You only send to another GMail user
In other words, it is a service they provide for their customers and the traffic remains within their eco-system.

Here are the details:

Host Name: gmail-smtp-in.l.google.com
Port: 25
Gmail account credentials are required.

Shhhhhhh... Don't tell anyone...

Cheers!


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