CODEWITHSUNDEEP
google-app-enginemailchimp
probably at the beach
probably at the beach

Reputation: 15197

Some Google Appengine IP addresses are blocked by MailChimp

We run a Google Appengine service so our applications share an address range with other applications. We post to the MailChimp API on behalf of our customers using their API key. We recently started having occasional posts to MailChimp rejected with a 403 returned and the message

You don't have permission to access https://mailchimp...

We have confirmed with MailChimp support they have blocked the specific IP this was posting from because of prior bad behavior but we have no control over which IP appengine uses to post messages and they can post from a large range. Anyone have any suggestions for how to work around this, obviously migrating the service is one possibility

Thanks

Upvotes: 0

Views: 79

Answers (1)

TooMuchPete
TooMuchPete

Reputation: 4643

I agree that this isn't necessarily a programming problem, but there are potential programming solutions: one is to institute limited retries for 403 errors. Maybe retry those subscribe again in 5 minutes (hoping for a new IP). Another would be to proxy those requests through a small, cheap VPS.

Unfortunately, cloud IPs are really attractive to bad actors because they're really tough to block without causing a lot of collateral damage.

Upvotes: 1

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