Spam blacklisting is out of control • Hacker News Board

Re: Spam blacklisting is out of control

#171

Post by nkrisc » Sat, Feb 05, 2022, 10:22 PM UTC

elondaits wrote: post #105

berdon wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You can create a Gmail filter to delete or archive them automatically and avoid poisoning the spam filter.

If I get continuously get emails sent to me that I did not request and I can't unsubscribe to, then it's spam. Maybe companies should make sure they're not sending emails to the wrong person, because I'm just going to keep marking it as spam when it comes my way.

Re: Spam blacklisting is out of control

#172

Post by LinuxBender » Sat, Feb 05, 2022, 10:24 PM UTC

collegeburner wrote: post #24

r_hoods_ghost wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah except we've had this recently with Linode's IP range landing on that exact blacklist and being blocked by Microsoft and other major mail providers, knocking out our ability to send to huge chunks of our customers. I've had to get the mail server moved off Linode to another hosting company as paying the ransom fee did nothing. UceProtect does seem at least as morally dubious if not more so that the spammers it a…

What hosts are best for running a mail server? I have the same issue.

That's a tough question to answer. This is very much a moving target. I suppose if I were to generalize an answer it would be something to the effect of

- A dedicated server provider that has been around for a while and has a strict AUP and is known to enforce it.

- A hosting provider that is not entry-level in cost. Spammers gravitate towards cheap throw-away ephemeral solutions.

- A hosting provider that verifies identity of its customers. e.g. Dunn and Bradstreet lookup for commercial customers. Video conference meeting for individual customers and commercial customers and that have mutually signed contracts.

Short of that if you just want to use a VPS provider then I would look up their AS number of a prospective provider, get all their CIDR blocks and start validating their IP addresses against the numerous RBL/RSL sites. AFAIK there is not a good database of this. Good RBL/RSL sites will remove listings after a week or two. One could even open a ticket with a VPS provider and state your intentions to run a mail server, explain your process to deal with spam and ask for an IP from a clean subnet.

Re: Spam blacklisting is out of control

#173

Post by superasn » Sat, Feb 05, 2022, 10:28 PM UTC

walrus01 wrote: post #132

noduerme wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I manage an outbound mail server for a mid-sized company. I happen to also use it for my own personal mail. We have had on and off deliverability issues for years (AT&T and Comcast being the worst). As head of IT it fell to me to post whitelisting requests and try to get mail delivering again. I decided after awhile that this really isn't my job, and made a suggestion to the CEO which he took to heart: There is anoth…

Not everyone can spend $500 on lawyer billable hours per SMTP destination multiplied by N number of destinations. I also think that the likelihood of success in sending legal threats to somebody that demand they accept your SMTP traffic will not stand up in court, if you ever escalated it that far. As somebody who runs postfix MX on the receiving side of things, I can guarantee you that the day I receive a legal thre…

So what's the advice for an avg Joe for getting a reply from ATT, Comcast, etc when they unjustly blacklist you and ignore all correspondence?

Re: Spam blacklisting is out of control

#174

Post by lytefm » Sat, Feb 05, 2022, 10:28 PM UTC

kbenson wrote: post #140

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 just the internet moving to match the real world. In the real world, reputation matters and some people don't want to talk to you unless someone can vouch for you. For areas where the general public needs to interact, third party intermediary services spring up to fill this need. This is why for any store over the size of a mom and pop operation in a neighborhood, you can't just tell the owner who you know by…

> and that seemed to work "warming them up" to the likes of Gmail and yahoo, etc

Yes, warming up a "fresh" IP definely works. If you suddenly send thousands of mails from a new server - sure, you'll be labeled as Spam. If you slowly increase the volume over time, have a good domain and recipients that interact with the email, things should be fine. GMail has quite helpful guidelines [1].

1: https://support.google.com/mail/answer/81126?hl=en

Re: Spam blacklisting is out of control

#175

Post by walrus01 » Sat, Feb 05, 2022, 10:32 PM UTC

superasn wrote: post #173

walrus01 wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not everyone can spend $500 on lawyer billable hours per SMTP destination multiplied by N number of destinations. I also think that the likelihood of success in sending legal threats to somebody that demand they accept your SMTP traffic will not stand up in court, if you ever escalated it that far. As somebody who runs postfix MX on the receiving side of things, I can guarantee you that the day I receive a legal thre…

So what's the advice for an avg Joe for getting a reply from ATT, Comcast, etc when they unjustly blacklist you and ignore all correspondence?

1. Host your mx somewhere that isn't on any blacklists. This means a small to medium sized isp, where you can directly contact the people who run the core network operations there, and who truly do care about kicking off abusive other customers very quickly. Ideally I would go with an ISP in your own region and home business area. Best chances of success if it's a hosting ISP where random customers cannot sign up online with just a name and a credit card, but it's more of a "contact us for a custom price quotation for your colocation needs" type of hosting operation.

2. Possibly run all your outbound smtp through a trusted third party service that you pay for such relay. Leaves a bad taste in my mouth but that's where we are at in 2022.

3. Be absolutely certain that your own smtp, spf, dkim, dmarc configuration is flawless and you've never been a source of spam.

Re: Spam blacklisting is out of control

#176

Post by NelsonMinar » Sat, Feb 05, 2022, 10:34 PM UTC

SMTP is a failed product.

Re: Spam blacklisting is out of control

#177

Post by sam_goody » Sat, Feb 05, 2022, 10:38 PM UTC

I agree with your plea, and view the current blacklists as Mafia style "protection" (that also conveniently helps the big players maintain their monopoly).

Practically though, if you want to get your mail delivered, you should use Amazon SES or the like to send it - setup is really simple, and they have the clout to not be blacklisted EVEN THOUGH they are definitely being used to send spam. At $1 per 1,000 mails, it is unlikely you will even feel the cost.

(I commented on this a few weeks ago at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29713030.)

Re: Spam blacklisting is out of control

#178

Post by lucb1e » Sat, Feb 05, 2022, 10:40 PM UTC

What would be nice is if there could be whitelists as well, or a blacklist that additionally keeps count of positive interactions.

I've had an IP for about a decade that never once sent spam, but has ended up on blacklists from time to time (hosting EICAR on a web server apparently gets your mail server banned, 15-year-old me found out). SPF nicely says that this IP is supposed to be sending email for this domain. I don't think I'm on blacklists anymore, but email still ends up in spam folders nine out of ten times. People are giving off signals that my messages aren't spam all the time (it's my personal email server).

Years of non-spam emails count for nothing whereas a single spam mail from an adjacent IP can get you on such a list. Somehow it's a bit imbalanced.

Re: Spam blacklisting is out of control

#179

Post by Brian_K_White » Sat, Feb 05, 2022, 10:40 PM UTC

walrus01 wrote: post #132

noduerme wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I manage an outbound mail server for a mid-sized company. I happen to also use it for my own personal mail. We have had on and off deliverability issues for years (AT&T and Comcast being the worst). As head of IT it fell to me to post whitelisting requests and try to get mail delivering again. I decided after awhile that this really isn't my job, and made a suggestion to the CEO which he took to heart: There is anoth…

Not everyone can spend $500 on lawyer billable hours per SMTP destination multiplied by N number of destinations. I also think that the likelihood of success in sending legal threats to somebody that demand they accept your SMTP traffic will not stand up in court, if you ever escalated it that far. As somebody who runs postfix MX on the receiving side of things, I can guarantee you that the day I receive a legal thre…

The rationale for involving legal is to place some accountability and consequences where they belong.

Currently, countless people essentially commit countless abuses for free because the actor is hidden behind a machine or a process. But somewhere it's a humans decision to institute an abusive protocol, and it seems pretty fair fo me to make that human accountable for their action. Not just email but all kinds of things.

You are probably merely a dick but still a legal dick if you wantonly block email for yourself. But the second you are responsible for even one other person's correspondence reaching them, I say you should be legally culpable for any failure to deliver.

Re: Spam blacklisting is out of control

#180

Post by boudin » Sat, Feb 05, 2022, 10:41 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.)

That's good to know. I never thought about exchange/365, that's a really good point.