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Spam blacklisting is out of control

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Re: Spam blacklisting is out of control

#221

Post by jart »

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…

Did you read the whole article? The OP wasn't being blacklisted by an operator. He was being blacklisted by a company that charges you a $25/month fee to not be blacklisted by lazy operators who program their systems to curl their for-profit blacklist.

Re: Spam blacklisting is out of control

#222

Post by derekzhouzhen »

kazinator wrote: post #144

> I run my own email server, and don’t use any blacklist. Yes, I got some amount of SPAMs. However, the vast majority of trashy emails I receive each day are advertisements (I signed up for random stuff quite liberally). You don't run a mail server for other people who are not so careful with their e-mail addresses, let alone for a large organization. You don't run a mail server which hosts public mailing lists.

I don't now; but when I did run a medium sized organization, I used a very lenient interpretation of spamhaus together with greylisting, and my users were happy.

Re: Spam blacklisting is out of control

#223

Post by paulnpace »

For the past five years or so at least 80% of spam that reaches my inbox is from Gmail, Yahoo, or Microsoft.

I've been running my own mail server for 9 years now and I don't use any blacklists.

Blacklists are the red line districts of the web. They are just a large blunt tool used in a very inappropriate way. The system of IP address space ownership assignment where the vast majority of the IP address users will never own an IP address. It's like renting a business suite in a large office building and being accountable for some unscrupulous neighbor.

Re: Spam blacklisting is out of control

#224

Post by pishpash »

nkrisc wrote: post #171
elondaits wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Exactly. "Poisoning" the spam filter is nothing more than sending an alert back to upstream to deal with it when and where it starts to hurt business. Typically it's the only feedback mechanism taken seriously and thus a service to the community.

Re: Spam blacklisting is out of control

#225

Post by onli »

pishpash wrote: post #134
berdon wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This, I've had people receiving bank alerts for an account they don't own and they can't be stopped. What these companies lack are customer-centric processes that they've thought through. Wtf is wrong with putting contact information in the unsubscribe link, or reach out productively on request? Why would you presume somebody clicks it by accident vs. the much more likely case of it being a legitimate request? Are yo…

> Wtf is wrong with putting contact information in the unsubscribe link

By law, depending where you are, a unsubscribe link has to be instant. So there can not be an intermediate screen asking for confirmation or showing contact information. Well, you could show contact information, but then the unsubscribe (of in this case service critical mails, thus the service itself) had already happened.

Re: Spam blacklisting is out of control

#226

Post by walrus01 »

jart wrote: post #221
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…

Did you read the whole article? The OP wasn't being blacklisted by an operator. He was being blacklisted by a company that charges you a $25/month fee to not be blacklisted by lazy operators who program their systems to curl their for-profit blacklist.

People have been making legal threats at, and trying to sue, RBL operators since 1997 or so. It's a well known thing. All I say is "good luck" if you think legally threatening a maintainer of a list of IP CIDR prefixes that are used by a third party is going to solve your problems. It hasn't worked for the last 25 years and I don't see how it'll start working now.

Re: Spam blacklisting is out of control

#227

Post by cdot2 »

thesimon wrote: post #103
mgkimsal wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There is absolutely no need to put an unsubscribe link into a transactional email. Agreed. rsync alluded to it below as well. 'unsubscribe'... from what? If I just bought something from service ABC, and I get an email from ABC saying "you just bought foo from us"... what would an 'unsubscribe' even mean? "Do not ever email me about this purchase again?" "Do not ever email me about future purchases?"

> Do not ever email me about this purchase again Please send me the order, just don't send me the PDF invoice :)

This actually does cause problems with blocked password resets and things

Re: Spam blacklisting is out of control

#228

Post by jart »

Silhouette wrote: post #76
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…

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…

The open internet is dead. Spammers, fraudsters, and abusers have killed it. I can see how you might hate me, but I only speak the truth. Once upon a time the Internet consisted of a bunch of anonymous university students and u.s. government, Bell, IBM, etc. employees doing unfettered research. Today the Internet consists of anonymous grifters trying to squeeze a buck out of you any way they can.

Re: Spam blacklisting is out of control

#229

Post by bryans »

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…

You have this all backward.

> You actually think that the best answer to a network engineering problem is to make legal threats at third party ISPs?

It's not a "network engineering problem" if administrators and managers are the ones making the decisions to provide no reasonable recourse for a ban, on top of actively ignoring or denying legitimate requests for removal. If the third party hasn't broken any rules, then the only resort is getting attorneys involved, because there are literally no other options if the provider refuses to act in good faith.

> Companies with which you don't have a signed service order contract and/or master services agreement?

If you are providing an email service and your customers are not receiving the emails they're expecting, all because you refused to acknowledge a removal request, then it shouldn't matter if you have a relationship with the third party. You've failed your own customers, and for no legitimate, logical or even conceivable reason, other than to assert some personal dominance over another group of engineers that you see as "lesser."

None of this is an engineering problem. It's an asshole problem.

Re: Spam blacklisting is out of control

#230

Post by walrus01 »

bryans wrote: post #229
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…

You have this all backward. > You actually think that the best answer to a network engineering problem is to make legal threats at third party ISPs? It's not a "network engineering problem" if administrators and managers are the ones making the decisions to provide no reasonable recourse for a ban, on top of actively ignoring or denying legitimate requests for removal. If the third party hasn't broken any rules, then…

> If you are providing an email service and your customers are not receiving the emails they're expecting, all because you refused to acknowledge a removal request,

And on this I concur with you, because if the sender of the email is actually sending spam and has ended up on some smtp-receiving deny lists for well founded reasons, they are indeed failing their customers. Failing them through their own lack of procedure and policy, such as not having a click to remove link in the mail, and not removing addresses/putting addresses into a scrub-before-sending list.

If that is the case, they have nobody to blame but themselves for that and should not be sending legal demands to other peoples' ISPs such as at&t or Comcast.

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