Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Spam blacklisting is out of control

blog.roastidio.us

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 430 posts

Re: Spam blacklisting is out of control

#91

Post by netr0ute »

YPCrumble wrote: post #84
Silhouette wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I am happy for you that you have found a solution, the solution you found is symptomatic of a very dangerous situation: it is increasingly impossible for individuals or SMEs to use essential online facilities like sending messages or transferring money reliably unless they use a broker service as an intermediary. We are allowing small numbers of tech firms to take control of vital functionality that should be u…

I agree completely with this, but the one problem is that you haven’t addressed how we control spam without these “trusted” intermediaries. “Trusted” here meaning that they aren’t spammers.

The solution is to eliminate spam filters because that is the only good choice.

Re: Spam blacklisting is out of control

#92

Post by [deleted] »

scarface74 wrote: post #81
derefr wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a (very legitimate and important) reason to do double opt-in unilaterally for all email communications. Companies should make 100% sure that the person who signed up, and the person receiving the email, are the same person, before they associate the email with the account. Otherwise, malicious people can sign up arbitrary third parties for tons of random crap. But it's not a good reason for adding unsubscribe…

For my power to be cut off, I would have to… 1. Forget I had a monthly power bill for a couple of months. 2. Ignore the e-bill that gets sent to my bank bill payment service - ebills have been a thing for almost two decades. I worked on some of the early implementations. 3. Ignore the physical snail mail warnings for a couple of months.

[deleted]

Re: Spam blacklisting is out of control

#93

Post by berdon »

newaccount74 wrote: post #82
dredmorbius wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those unsubscribe links should be there, for several reasons. - The service-based economy means that entities (individuals and businesses) have numerous relationships. For the typical individual the number of password-based accounts crossed the 100 threshold years ago, at a doubling rate of every 2--3 years. - Responsibilities can be transferred. The person who signed up for your service 5 years ago may no longer be…

I strongly disagree. There is absolutely no need to put an unsubscribe link into a transactional email. All emails should of course contain enough information to make it clear who the message is from, why the message is being sent, and who it was sent to. But there is no point in adding unsubscribe links to messages and notifications that are essential to the service. I mean, what are you going to do if the user acci…

What about situations where your email somehow (mistype) gets set up for someone else's account? I have 2-3 people with similar emails to my previous email address that would mistype and I'd receive their emails. These weren't spam but the companies wouldn't offer _any_ way to fix this.

My recourse is to just flag them as spam in gmail.

Re: Spam blacklisting is out of control

#94

Post by cmroanirgo »

From the article:

> If my understanding of the law is correct, spamming is legal, albeit immoral

But the FTC takes a rather clear stance (at least in my eyes) [0]:

> Despite its name, the CAN-SPAM Act doesn’t apply just to bulk email. It covers all commercial messages, which the law defines as “any electronic mail message the primary purpose of which is the commercial advertisement or promotion of a commercial product or service,” including email that promotes content on commercial websites. The law makes no exception for business-to-business email. That means all email – for example, a message to former customers announcing a new product line – must comply with the law.

> Each separate email in violation of the CAN-SPAM Act is subject to penalties of up to $46,517, so non-compliance can be costly. But following the law isn’t complicated*

On top of that there's GDPR [1]:

> After the GDPR passed, some people said it would be “the end of email marketing” or “the end of spam.” But it will be neither. Spam has always been outlawed or against the terms of use of most email providers. Those who send unsolicited or malicious mass emails will probably continue to send them. Did your spam folder dry up after May 25, 2018, when the GDPR took effect?

So, it seems the laws are in place, it's just that the jungle of unwanted & unsolicited email continues. It sucks when it's your server that get's blocked in a dragnet because you've a noisy neighbour. But like others have stated, move neighbourhoods.

[0] https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/business-center/guidance/can...

[1] https://gdpr.eu/email-encryption/

Re: Spam blacklisting is out of control

#96

Post by ratww »

wl wrote: post #39
rsync wrote: post #31

I'm dealing with this right now. Both my personal domain and rsync.net are on a distinct subnet, but that subnet is smaller than a /24 and someone on a different subnet has, apparently, behaved badly. Enter "abusix" ... One of my engineers had an enlightening webchat with one of their engineers where we were shown the "offending" IP and it was explained that they have no ability to distinguish subnets (and no interes…

> We were also informed that our normal, business communications with paying customers should have unsubscribe notices appended to them. Which is to say, you're a paying customer of a service and we send you some kind of alert or critical announcement ... and it should have an unsubscribe link. You absolutely should. The amount of junk I get because someone else signed up for something and fat fingered their email ad…

Yep. I had to file a GDPR complaint to get an airline to stop sending me "letters from the CEO" and other COVID-related reports that never mattered to me.

I never flew with them but somehow they still sent ads disguised as reassuring messages every other week.

Support constantly denied help, since I was never a customer. Only a GDPR complaint solved it.

Re: Spam blacklisting is out of control

#97

Post by js2 »

mjrpes wrote: post #34

I fought the battle to keep my SMTP server IP off blacklists, and lost. You can do everything possible, have a perfectly clean IP, have a good amount of outbound email traffic, only send transactional email, etc. Still, there will be edge cases where email does not go through. AT&T email servers would constantly blacklist me and not respond to requests to remove me, gmail/yahoo/outlook would silently put emails in th…

How do you know whether your mail is going through? I can understand for messages that bounce, but how about mails that are silently dropped or end up in spam folders?

Re: Spam blacklisting is out of control

#98

Post by uoaei »

netr0ute wrote: post #91
YPCrumble wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree completely with this, but the one problem is that you haven’t addressed how we control spam without these “trusted” intermediaries. “Trusted” here meaning that they aren’t spammers.

The solution is to eliminate spam filters because that is the only good choice.

No one is free until we are all free to send spam.

Re: Spam blacklisting is out of control

#99

Post by derekzhouzhen »

kazinator wrote: post #19

> My hosting company is competitively priced, is fast, and has served me well for many years. ... attributes which they achieve by (1) selling services to anyone and anyone and (2) not dedicating any resources to fighting spam. So you got what you pay for.

I don't want my hosting company to dictate what I can do and what I can't do. I don't spam, but I won't hold my moral standard to everyone else.

Re: Spam blacklisting is out of control

#100

Post by newaccount74 »

berdon wrote: post #93
newaccount74 wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I strongly disagree. There is absolutely no need to put an unsubscribe link into a transactional email. All emails should of course contain enough information to make it clear who the message is from, why the message is being sent, and who it was sent to. But there is no point in adding unsubscribe links to messages and notifications that are essential to the service. I mean, what are you going to do if the user acci…

What about situations where your email somehow (mistype) gets set up for someone else's account? I have 2-3 people with similar emails to my previous email address that would mistype and I'd receive their emails. These weren't spam but the companies wouldn't offer _any_ way to fix this. My recourse is to just flag them as spam in gmail.

That's why I said the email should contain info about the sender -- there should of course be a way to contact them. Ideally you should just be able to reply to the message and tell them about the error. If there's no way to contact a company, that's a whole different problem, and not really one that would be fixed with unsubscribe links in important email messages.
Post reply on HN