Users not receiving verification emails

[JoeCohen]

Some users report that they are not receiving account verification emails.
As far as I can tell, we think we have sent those emails.

IDK why they aren't received. Did we in fact not send them? Is gmail not sending them? is gmail blocking them? Something else?

I reproduced this by creating an account with login jdctest and email jdcohenesq+jdctest@gmail.com.
user.id == 199590

mushroom-observer(prod)> User.find_by(login: "jdctest").id
=> 199590

In production.log:

I, [2026-01-13T17:44:38.010608 #702285]  INFO -- : Started GET "/account/signup" for 76.14.20.113 at 2026-01-13 17:44:38 +0000
W, [2026-01-13T17:44:38.014248 #702285]  WARN -- : user=0 robot=N ip=76.14.20.113
W, [2026-01-13T17:44:38.038636 #702285]  WARN -- : TIME: 0.027022625 200 account new user 76.14.20.113	https://mushroomobserver.org/account/signup ...

In email-debug.log

mo@mushroomobserver:/var/web/mo$ grep "199590" log/email-debug.log
2026-01-13 09:43:36 -0800 MAIL user_question to=199590 email=jdcohenesq+jdctest@gmail.com

[JoeCohen]

PS: Another possible bug.
(Could be user operator error.)
A user was not even able to create an unverified account.

webmaster mushroomobserver.org
9:49 AM (59 minutes ago)
to Comcast

Thanks so much.
We'll look into the problem and get back to you.
We might not be able to fix it right away.

On Tue, Jan 13, 2026 at 9:18 AM Comcast meg570@comcast.net wrote:
98.35.206.11. No on my laptop
Sent from my iPhone

On Jan 13, 2026, at 9:05 AM, webmaster mushroomobserver.org <webmaster@mushroomobserver.org> wrote:


Thanks.
Could you let us know your ip address? (One way to find is here: https://nordvpn.com/what-is-my-ip.)
Are you using the MO Mobile application? 

On Tue, Jan 13, 2026 at 8:42 AM Comcast <meg570@comcast.net> wrote:

    I tried creating again still no verification email
    Sent from my iPhone

    On Jan 13, 2026, at 7:59 AM, webmaster mushroomobserver.org <webmaster@mushroomobserver.org> wrote:

    
    Meg:
    I can't find any record of an account with the email "meg570@comcast.net".
    I suggest: create a new account,wait until you receive a verification email, then follow hte link in that email.
    If that doesn't work, please let us know.
    - Joe

    On Sun, Jan 11, 2026 at 6:24 PM <webmaster@mushroomobserver.org> wrote:

        I tried to create an account, but my login/password is not recognized. I never received a verification email either 

No user with that email:

mushroom-observer(prod)> User.find_by(email: "meg570@comcast.net")
=> nil

Email string doesn't appear in production log

mo@mushroomobserver:/var/web/mo$ zgrep -E "meg570@comcast.net" log/production.log
mo@mushroomobserver:/var/web/mo$

User did hit the Create Account form:

mo@mushroomobserver:/var/web/mo$ ip="98.35.206.11"; zgrep -E "Started .* $ip" log/production.log; grep "WARN .* $ip" log/production.log | tail -1
I, [2026-01-13T16:32:18.118544 #702272]  INFO -- : Started GET "/" for 98.35.206.11 at 2026-01-13 16:32:18 +0000
I, [2026-01-13T16:32:22.992904 #702272]  INFO -- : Started GET "/account/signup" for 98.35.206.11 at 2026-01-13 16:32:22 +0000
I, [2026-01-13T16:33:16.470581 #702285]  INFO -- : Started GET "/account/signup" for 98.35.206.11 at 2026-01-13 16:33:16 +0000
W, [2026-01-13T16:33:16.498054 #702285]  WARN -- : TIME: 0.026464137 200 account new user 98.35.206.11	https://mushroomobserver.org/account/signup	Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_15_7) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/143.0.0.0 Safari/537.36

Email address is not in email-debug.log

mo@mushroomobserver:/var/web/mo$ zgrep -E "meg570@comcast.net" log/email-debug.log
mo@mushroomobserver:/var/web/mo$