Is auth.simperium.com still supported?

  • Unknown's avatar
    skiped37ac247f8 · Member ·

    I ask because api.simperium.com and simperium.com both respond normally, but auth.simperium.com times out on HTTPS:

    • auth.simperium.com resolves to 192.0.84.248
    • ping auth.simperium.com succeeds
    • tracert auth.simperium.com reaches Automattic’s network
    • curl.exe -I https://auth.simperium.com times out connecting to port 443
    • Browser also times out
    • Tested on both home Internet and a mobile hotspot

    This appears to affect clients that rely on Simperium auth. Is this endpoint retired, temporarily down, or replaced by a newer Simplenote authentication flow?

    For reference, Simplenote Web, the official Simplenote Windows app, and nvPY work for me, while ResophNotes and AlephNote do not.

  • Unknown's avatar
    arebelspy · Member ·

    Throwing in a comment that I hope auth.simperium.com is fixed, since I use ResophNotes which attempts to sync through this. :)

  • Unknown's avatar
    photis66 · Member ·

    I have the same problem. Resophnotes on windows cannot sync anymore with Simplenote. I think it is a simplenote problem more than anything else. However, I do not know how it can be solved. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

  • Unknown's avatar
    chamakers · Member ·

    I use Resoph Notes on Windows, syncing with Simplenote, which has stopped working. I would greatly appreciate any help or suggestions.

  • staff-bluejay · Staff ·

    Hi @skiped37ac247f8, @photis66, and @chamakers,

    As far as we know, auth.simperium.com should be working, but you may be experiencing specific network block.

    Would you mind further assisting us by providing some details about your connection? Specifically, if you could please provide a traceroute, it would be very helpful!

    • On Windows, open a command shell (Command Prompt) and run:tracert simperium.com
    • On macOS/Linux, open a terminal and run:traceroute -I simperium.com

    Please be aware that we have received several reports indicating that some Internet Service Providers (ISPs) in certain countries are blocking our sites, so I recommend checking any blocked sites at the ISP level as well.

  • Unknown's avatar
    photis66 · Member ·

    I have run tracert simperium.com twice, and both times request timed out without success. Any more help would be greatly appreciated. Many thanks.

  • Unknown's avatar
    chamakers · Member ·

    I ran tracert simperium.com with the following result. I would greatly appreciate any further help. Thank you very much.

    Traza a la dirección simperium.com [192.0.84.247]
    sobre un máximo de 30 saltos:

    1 2 ms 1 ms 2 ms 192.168.0.1
    2 14 ms 9 ms 14 ms host129.190-52-38.wirenet.com.ar [190.52.38.129]
    3 18 ms 3 ms 2 ms 10.250.0.2
    4 3 ms 3 ms 3 ms host241.181-88-167.telecom.net.ar [181.88.167.241]
    5 32 ms 30 ms 30 ms host198.181-96-22.telecom.net.ar [181.96.22.198]
    6 * * * Tiempo de espera agotado para esta solicitud.
    7 * * 43 ms host234.181-96-113.telecom.net.ar [181.96.113.234]
    8 41 ms 29 ms 28 ms host181.181-96-120.telecom.net.ar [181.96.120.181]
    9 39 ms 31 ms 28 ms 213.140.39.116
    10 289 ms 187 ms 149 ms 176.52.249.39
    11 257 ms 205 ms 199 ms 213.140.33.55
    12 * 231 ms * 213.140.43.206
    13 145 ms 145 ms 144 ms be-206-pe12.nota.fl.ibone.comcast.net [96.87.11.177]
    14 214 ms 244 ms 201 ms be-3312-pe12.1950stemmons.tx.ibone.comcast.net [96.110.34.106]
    15 231 ms 243 ms 264 ms 96-87-11-22-static.hfc.comcastbusiness.net [96.87.11.22]
    16 268 ms 307 ms 187 ms as2635.network [198.181.119.83]
    17 * * * Tiempo de espera agotado para esta solicitud.
    18 190 ms 190 ms 188 ms 192.0.84.247

    Traza completa.

  • Unknown's avatar
    arebelspy · Member ·

    Here is my tracert to simperium.com

    C:WindowsSystem32>tracert simperium.com

    Tracing route to simperium.com [192.0.84.247]
    over a maximum of 30 hops:

    1 2 ms 2 ms 2 ms RT-AC88U-0F20 [192.168.1.1]
    2 12 ms 4 ms 6 ms fdr1-hllkwaxx-lo-0.bb.as20055.net [50.35.96.1]
    3 12 ms 7 ms 6 ms lr1-hllkwaxx-b-be-19.bb.as20055.net [204.11.67.210]
    4 7 ms 8 ms 7 ms cr2-sttowajm-b-be-17.bb.as20055.net [209.46.6.111]
    5 10 ms 6 ms 5 ms cr2-sttowajm-a-be-11.bb.as20055.net [137.83.81.92]
    6 7 ms 8 ms 7 ms agg2-tkwlwank-be-10.bb.as20055.net [209.46.5.179]
    7 7 ms 11 ms 9 ms pr1-tkwlwana-be-13.bb.as20055.net [204.11.67.165]
    8 9 ms 9 ms 11 ms sea-b4-link.ip.twelve99.net [213.248.74.144]
    9 6 ms 4 ms 6 ms sea-b1-link.ip.twelve99.net [62.115.132.157]
    10 26 ms 27 ms 32 ms sjo-bb3-link.ip.twelve99.net [62.115.132.152]
    11 38 ms 34 ms 33 ms lax-bb1-link.ip.twelve99.net [62.115.139.150]
    12 67 ms 66 ms 69 ms dls-bb1-link.ip.twelve99.net [62.115.140.237]
    13 64 ms 65 ms 65 ms dls-b5-link.ip.twelve99.net [62.115.136.183]
    14 86 ms 68 ms 65 ms automattic-ic-307705.ip.twelve99-cust.net [62.115.46.234]
    15 67 ms 64 ms 65 ms as2635.network [198.181.119.77]
    16 * * * Request timed out.
    17 65 ms 64 ms 65 ms 192.0.84.247

    Trace complete.

    ———————————–

    Ran it twice, the second time was identical up to step 14, then:

    14 79 ms 77 ms 78 ms automattic-ic-307706.ip.twelve99-cust.net [62.115.46.238]
    15 70 ms 71 ms 69 ms as2635.network [198.181.119.83]
    16 * * * Request timed out.
    17 68 ms 94 ms 68 ms 192.0.84.248

  • stefmattana · Staff ·

    Hi everyone,

    Thank you for your patience, and a big thanks for sharing the traceroute data — it’s been very helpful!

    We can confirm that auth.simperium.com is still a supported and active endpoint.

    We’ve escalated this issue to our infrastructure team to investigate and resolve. We’ll post an update here as soon as we have progress to share.

    In the meantime:

    • Official Simplenote apps (web, Windows, Mac, iOS, Android) should continue to work normally as they use a different authentication path
    • Third-party clients that authenticate directly via Simperium (such as ResophNotes and AlephNote) may remain affected until the block is resolved

    We’re sorry for the disruption and appreciate your help in tracking this down!

  • stefmattana · Staff ·

    Hi everyone,

    Thanks for your patience and for sharing all the diagnostic info.

    After investigating with our infrastructure team, we found that the service has temporary rate-limiting in place to protect against credential stuffing attacks. If an IP has multiple authentication failures in a short window, it gets blocked temporarily, as it’s not permanent and lifts on its own. This also explains why traceroute works fine but HTTPS connections on port 443 time out.

    (Also wanted to correct something I mentioned earlier: the authentication flow isn’t actually different for third-party clients vs. the official Simplenote app.)

    AlephNote: our team identified its request pattern and applied an exemption, so AlephNote users should be good now.

    ResophNotes: unfortunately our team wasn’t able to identify its requests on the backend, and the app also appears to no longer be actively maintained, so there’s limited options there. If you’re still hitting issues, switching to an actively supported client like AlephNote may be the best path forward.

    If you’re experiencing this with a different third-party client, let us know!

  • Unknown's avatar
    arebelspy · Member ·

    Thanks for looking into it!

    I’m not fully understanding why it would matter what the client is, if it’s blocking our personal IPs (or unblocking them). If I sync with ResophNotes, it’s not going through any of their servers, just going from my computer to auth.simperium.com, right?

    Alternatively, would there be a way to coordinate with someone on your team to try to sync resophnotes at a particular time (and have it fail), so they could identify those attempts at that timestamp on the backend? (For reference, I’m trying now at 11:35am PDT 7/7/26)

    Cheers, and thanks again for trying to resolve this! :)

  • stefmattana · Staff ·

    Hi @arebelspy,

    Thanks for your patience while we looked into this, and thanks for taking the time to share your experiences, and asking the right questions :)

    After checking with the team, I can confirm that we don’t currently have plans to make changes that would restore this authentication flow. The behaviour you’re seeing is the result of protections we have in place, and we’re not able to share details about how those protections work or make exceptions for individual third-party applications.

    While we strive to keep Simplenote open and interoperable where we can, we aren’t able to guarantee 100% compatibility with third-party clients, nor can we commit engineering resources to supporting this particular integration.

    I realise that’s disappointing news, but I wanted to provide a clear update rather than leave everyone wondering whether a fix was still on the horizon.

    Hope that helps! Thank you all for your understanding.

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