Spam blacklisting is out of control • Hacker News Board

Re: Spam blacklisting is out of control

#121

Post by derekzhouzhen » Sat, Feb 05, 2022, 8:42 PM UTC

r_hoods_ghost wrote: post #23

boudin wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which other major provider uses this list? Uceprotect is attempting to racket me from time to time. While I'm blocked i try different providers to guess the ones using this, I only found Hotmail blocking me.

Unfortunately we were being blocked by all Microsoft mail services so outlook.com but also anyone using hosted 365, exchange etc. which in our case meant a lot of our enterprise and public sector customers. Also NHS.net mail and a lot of large hospital groups in Europe (APHP etc.)

Ditto here. It is ironic because I actually recommended outlook.com over gmail.com for my non-techie friends, because outlook.com was more lenient, at least 2 years ago. Gmail is using some invisible reputation crap that shovel my emails to the jink folder from time to time. Now outlook.com just did the one-up and start using UCEPROTECTL2/3.

Re: Spam blacklisting is out of control

#122

Post by Silhouette » Sat, Feb 05, 2022, 8:46 PM UTC

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.

Spam has largely been a solved problem for decades IME. You don't need some big-data-crunching mega-mail-host to block it successfully. For my personal mail, I use a small provider that isn't configured to block anything automatically and the built-in tools in my mail software. For my businesses, we have a pretty standard SpamAssassin-style setup. Either way, I see hardly any spam in my inbox despite receiving mail to multiple published contact addresses for those businesses, and I also can't remember the last time a false positive resulted in missing a legitimate mail.

Meanwhile I've seen people miss events because $BIG_MAIL_PROVIDER decided the invitation was spam, I've seen recruitment go wrong because a CV from an excellent candidate was blocked on its way to the designated email address for applications, and countless other examples where bad spam blocking was throwing baby out with bathwater.

Re: Spam blacklisting is out of control

#123

Post by causality0 » Sat, Feb 05, 2022, 8:46 PM UTC

I signed up for random stuff quite liberally

Wait, what? That's like off-handedly mentioning you eat a pine cone for breakfast every day and glossing over it like we're not going to wonder if you're crazy.

Re: Spam blacklisting is out of control

#124

Post by Spooky23 » Sat, Feb 05, 2022, 8:48 PM UTC

berdon wrote: post #112

newaccount74 wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

In 99% of the cases - there is no recourse. In one instance, I tried replying and they asked me to prove my identity as the customer to cancel the emails.

I have a few hundred dollars worth of gift cards for an Australian store received as gifts over several years.

The company won’t talk to me, and the sender sends a lovely message, but no contact information.

Re: Spam blacklisting is out of control

#125

Post by derekzhouzhen » Sat, Feb 05, 2022, 8:51 PM UTC

jeffbee wrote: post #5

This post meanders between complaining about RBLs and vaguely whining about the big email hosts, but I don't see the connection. There is zero useful information contained in the RBLs and the big hosts don't use them.

I believe that outlook.com starts using UCEPROTECTL2/3. However I have no proof so I have to be vague about it.

It is in the interest of big email hosts to shut out small, independent senders to strengthen their position of monopoly. Again, I have no proof.

Re: Spam blacklisting is out of control

#126

Post by dtech » Sat, Feb 05, 2022, 8:51 PM UTC

SturgeonsLaw wrote: post #101

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…

This is the real value of cryptocurrencies. Yes, I know HN doesn't like them, yes there's a bunch of get-rich-quick bros and scammers out there, please try and separate the grift from the tech and consider how vital it is that people are able to control their finances without a third party having the ultimate say as to whether a transaction takes place or not.

The only currently realistic way to acquire cryptocurrency or for non-tech people to use it is through a 3rd party broker. It's about as difficult as running your own SMTP server I'd say.

edit see this current front-page submission about how Bitcoin fails to provide this despite being centralized in exactly the same way as the decentralized SMTP: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30224637

Re: Spam blacklisting is out of control

#127

Post by annoyingnoob » Sat, Feb 05, 2022, 8:51 PM UTC

Blame your ISP, or hosting provider. As an email admin, I deal every-single-day with phishing and malware that comes through email. There is not a single hosting company that does anything more than pass complaints onto the spammer - thus verifying that I'm a good target and causing even more of a problem.

While I do not use any blacklists, I do make my own. I've found that blocking individual IPs is useless, there is always another one. However, if I block the entire IP range I have much more success.

This is your hosting company's fault for allowing spamming and doing nothing about it.

Re: Spam blacklisting is out of control

#128

Post by mjrpes » Sat, Feb 05, 2022, 8:54 PM UTC

js2 wrote: post #97

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?

I can never know for sure if email is avoiding the spam folder, but everything tells me if it does happen, it's quite rare now.

First, I will send emails to test accounts I have set up with major email providers (gmail, yahoo, outlook, etc). I used to do this often, but they have all been going to the inbox on my last few tests, so I haven't done this recently.

Second, is feedback I get from recipients. When I send an email and ask for a reply, I'll get a reply. I also used to hear a few times a month, "sorry for the delay. I found your email in my spam folder!". This has gone away.

Re: Spam blacklisting is out of control

#129

Post by johnklos » Sat, Feb 05, 2022, 8:55 PM UTC

The author has some oversimplifications which would be worth addressing.

First, there actually does exist a strata of spam which is plainly illegal. All the phishing spam and all the messages that claim to be from networks and/or addresses that they are not, for example, are illegal. The problem is that it's not enforceable.

Second, sending unsolicited messages when you do not have the permission of the sender is unambiguously wrong. Large sources of spam get around this by mixing bad messages in with good ones. This is why we get tons and tons of spam from Gmail, from Outlook.com, from Sendgrid, and so on, even though they really should know better.

The point is that your "bad neighborhood" doesn't just have regular spammers - it's almost certain there are illegal and egregious spammers that your ISP is doing nothing about. How do we know this to be the case? Because many of the blocklists also run honeypot email addresses. If email addresses get harvested and someone sends spam to these addresses, you can be 100% certain that no permission was ever given, so the behavior that leads to this is definitely wrong.

ISPs make too much money to punish anyone but the worst of their clients, and that's definitely a factor that contributes to the affordability of the author's ISP.

However, the author left out one big, simple, obvious option: pay significantly less money than the cost of the blocklist extortion to smarthost through an ISP that has good email reputation. You get what you pay for, so when you save on your ISP, don't be surprised if you have to pay a little more to make up for their shortcomings.

Re: Spam blacklisting is out of control

#130

Post by johnklos » Sat, Feb 05, 2022, 8:58 PM UTC

js2 wrote: post #97

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?

Honestly, we usually find out after communication has failed and some other form of communication is used.

It's usually worthwhile to remind businesses that when they use "free" services like privacy-paid outlook.com and Gmail, they'll get what they pay for, and if their communications really matter, they should find proper email providers.