Ask HN: Why is spam email still a thing? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: Why is spam email still a thing?

#191

Post by throwawayvibes » Thu, Jan 20, 2022, 10:58 PM UTC

ColinWright wrote: post #186

thraxil wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A couple things I can think of: * What's your DKIM/SPF/DMARC setup like? That all needs to be on point to get delivery to gmail to be reliable. * Are you using a provider like Sendgrid, Mailchimp, etc. to send mail? Are you on a plan that gives you a dedicated IP address or is it part of their shared pool? The "it happens in waves" sounds a lot like a common problem with the shared pools where spammers send a bunch o…

* I am assured by my ISP provider that the settings are as squeaky clean as they can be. * No, I'm sending email from my domain on my domain host. That has a single IP address shared among all their customers, but it's a very small ISP, and there are no spammers, and the IP address is not on any blocklists. * No, I send standard email "by hand", and I know that people are not marking them as spam. It's nice to see yo…

Ah, so you are self hosting your email! That's where the trouble lies then. I wouldn't do that myself, too much headache. Just use Gandi's webmail.

Re: Ask HN: Why is spam email still a thing?

#192

Post by ColinWright » Thu, Jan 20, 2022, 11:27 PM UTC

throwawayvibes wrote: post #191

ColinWright wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

* I am assured by my ISP provider that the settings are as squeaky clean as they can be. * No, I'm sending email from my domain on my domain host. That has a single IP address shared among all their customers, but it's a very small ISP, and there are no spammers, and the IP address is not on any blocklists. * No, I send standard email "by hand", and I know that people are not marking them as spam. It's nice to see yo…

Ah, so you are self hosting your email! That's where the trouble lies then. I wouldn't do that myself, too much headache. Just use Gandi's webmail.

I suspect you are using terms that to you are obvious, but to me are technical terms that don't mean what they seem to mean based on the words involved.

Based on what you've said here I don't know what you mean by "self-hosting". I have a package that I purchase from a company that provides me with my email and web hosting. I pay them, I configure my web client to connect using the details they provided, they deal with the configuration.

They are qualified in this field, they have certifications.

Everyone here seems to be using terms that obviously mean something to them than is different to what the terms imply to me. I have machines that connect to my email, hosted by the ISP with whom I have the contract. To me, that doesn't mean "self-hosted" ... I don't do any configuration of DKIM/SPF/DMARC/etc. That's all done by the people I pay.

So ... I really don't know what you're talking about. I suspect you know too much to be able to communicate effectively with me, who knows nothing. It's plausible that the field of discourse is simply too technical.

Re: Ask HN: Why is spam email still a thing?

#193

Post by thraxil » Fri, Jan 21, 2022, 10:23 AM UTC

ColinWright wrote: post #190

thraxil wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, the thing is that if you have your own domain and want to send mail from it, that's really no longer the sort of thing where you can just connect to port 25, send mail and expect it to work. Spammers ruined that a long time ago and now you need to understand a lot about DNS and those mail related standards and do a significant amount of work to stay on top of the configuration to have a snowball's chance in hel…

I have passed this conversation to them, and they say that all the records and settings are correct. They say that the problem is the recipients' servers are marking the emails as spam, even though all the settings are correct, and the emails are clearly legitimate. > ... now you need to understand a lot about DNS and those mail related standards and do a significant amount of work to stay on top of the configuration…

You seem pretty set on staying with your ISP and I'm not going to try to convince you otherwise, but "we're doing things right and Gmail is wrong about how to process email" wouldn't carry much weight for me. I'm 100% sure that the Gmail devs know more about email delivery to Gmail addresses than I do and 99.99% sure that they know more about it than your ISP. If you want to keep believing that your ISP knows better than them, then I guess you're going to.

Is solipsys.co.uk your domain (from an earlier comment)? If so, I can see right away that there's no DMARC entry for it. That means that it's vulnerable to spoofing (I or any attacker could easily send an email to someone making it look like it came from your domain, eg, as part of a phishing attack). Gmail definitely penalizes domains without DMARC, making emails more likely to be classified as spam.

Re: Ask HN: Why is spam email still a thing?

#194

Post by ColinWright » Fri, Jan 21, 2022, 10:53 AM UTC

thraxil wrote: post #193

ColinWright wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have passed this conversation to them, and they say that all the records and settings are correct. They say that the problem is the recipients' servers are marking the emails as spam, even though all the settings are correct, and the emails are clearly legitimate. > ... now you need to understand a lot about DNS and those mail related standards and do a significant amount of work to stay on top of the configuration…

You seem pretty set on staying with your ISP and I'm not going to try to convince you otherwise, but "we're doing things right and Gmail is wrong about how to process email" wouldn't carry much weight for me. I'm 100% sure that the Gmail devs know more about email delivery to Gmail addresses than I do and 99.99% sure that they know more about it than your ISP. If you want to keep believing that your ISP knows better…

> You seem pretty set on staying with your ISP ...

I am, for many reasons, so thank you for understanding that.

> If you want to keep believing that your ISP knows better than them, then I guess you're going to.

It's not that I believe my ISP knows better than Google, it's that I believe they are doing what they have been told is necessary.

> ... solipsys.co.uk ... no DMARC entry for it.

I will raise a ticket and get it dealt with, and as a part of that I can get the entire issue looked at more closely.

Thank you.