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Spam blacklisting is out of control

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Re: Spam blacklisting is out of control

#261

Post by tlogan »

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…

We add link to accounts page to manage notifications - but we clearly say that certain notifications can be disable only by deleting the account.

But even that does not help: some people just do not understand how to manage their email: they will consider as “spam” any email they receive and they cannot act on it immediately. Like storage quota reached, cc expired, or similar. There is some strange feeling that if they ignore the email and mark it as spam that the problem will magically disappear.

We have so many cases like that: and they then contact us with questions like “why my service is not working” etc.

I bet Netflix has same issues…

Re: Spam blacklisting is out of control

#262

Post by withinboredom »

walrus01 wrote: post #162
CPLX wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He didn’t say threaten them. It’s pretty easy to envision a situation where a lawyer sends a quite friendly and factual email to a company, that is literally identical to the one the IT head would have sent, but because it’s coming from a lawyer the recipient uses completely different internal routing to process the request. So someone actually takes the request seriously. Seems both plausible and a reasonable thing…

In the American legal system, if somebody spends the money to take the time to have their lawyer hand craft and send me a letter about something such as this, I'm going to take it as a threat whether or not it specifically contains one. The implication is that if you do not do whatever is demanded in the letter, the next step will be the client of said lawyer escalating the situation to paying their lawyer to actuall…

But lawyers don’t cost nearly as much outside the US. We moved from the US to the NL a few years ago. Legal representation is pennies compared to the US. So just because it’s expensive where you are, doesn’t mean it is everywhere else.

It doesn’t mean they are thinking to sue you. Not even close. When you actually get served, that’s when they’re thinking about it, because actually serving you is a few bits of paper and requires a few brain cells. Sending you what amounts to a form letter? No brain cells required.

Re: Spam blacklisting is out of control

#263

Post by smf »

MauranKilom wrote: post #254
smf wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm the Abusix engineer in question (and actually the architect of the system in question), and you're being somewhat "economical" with what actually happened here. Here's the actual chain of events in question: - You recently switched ISPs and that meant you moved to a new IP block. - The IP block in question is owned by Hurricane Internet and unfortunately contains a host which persistently sends out a lot of junk…

Incredibly insightful, thank you for taking the time to post this! > - Don't send to addresses where you have not contacted them or had any interaction at all for > 1 year. If you haven't kept in touch with your customers, then that is on you. That seems odd though. "Keeping in touch" in regular intervals is exactly the kind of thing customers may want to unsubscribe from, so a working unsubscribe function means ther…

Apologies for not being clearer on this, I'm generally talking about marketing messages when I say "not keeping in touch".

My point here is "consent to send", e.g. I think most people would find that someone importing a years old list of email addresses and then suddenly sending marketing messages is unacceptable and constitutes spam.

If you're "doing it right", then "touching" your customers with a once a year "Hey, we haven't seen you in a while" message is absolutely fine and generally a good thing to do as it maintains consent, because they can unsubscribe if they're no longer interested (as they might have forgotten they signed-up or had an account).

If someone hasn't logged into your "service" for >1 year and now wants to do a password reset several years later, then I would say that is entirely different.

We generally try our hardest to handle this case without it causing a listing if you hit our traps with something like this.

Re: Spam blacklisting is out of control

#264

Post by tgsovlerkhgsel »

chrisseaton wrote: post #214
_0ffh wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just guessing, but maybe threatening to sue for damages might work?

But the companies aren't obligated to accept your email are they? What grounds do you have to ask for damages?

The main benefit of the lawyer here is to break through the bureaucracy on the other end. Your lawyer talks to their lawyer, their lawyer talks to someone on their end who is actually authorized and able to make changes (not necessarily to make them change it - possibly just to figure out what is going on).

This causes a human with authority to actually look at your case and likely go "yeah, this is silly, I've taken care of it". Lawyer is very happy because something that looked like a lot of expensive work just went away.

Re: Spam blacklisting is out of control

#265

Post by withinboredom »

walrus01 wrote: post #213
CPLX wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, not really. In the world of companies talking to other companies lawyers are involved all the time. In some scenarios (real estate transactions, or M&A, for example) it would just be completely routine for two companies on exceedingly good terms to communicate back and forth via attorneys. Your main premise seems to be that the recipient should take all this very personally. But it’s not personal, these are b…

An intentionally initiated transaction where everyone already knows each other, and knows in advance that lawyers will be involved (as you say, m&a, real estate, etc) is a very different thing than receiving a demand letter from a previously unknown party out of the blue. Like I said in my original reply here, we are talking about sending threats to third-party isps, with which the originator of the smtp traffic has…

I would think an attorney wouldn’t get involved until other avenues were exhausted. As alluded to in the comment. If it’s out of the blue, check your spam folder.

Re: Spam blacklisting is out of control

#266

Post by shirro »

derekzhouzhen wrote: post #125
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.

When Exchange hosting which is just about every business in Australia it seems (and possibly outlook.com and 365) blocked a huge range of IPs, a lot of people went to IP blocklist searches and saw the only entry was UCEPROTECT3 and connected the events. It is very possible they are unrelated or it crept in through another provider's product without anyone there explicitly choosing to use it. Unfortunately the whole system is very opaque.

Re: Spam blacklisting is out of control

#267

Post by CliffStoll »

Wronnay wrote: post #157

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_DNS_blacklists That blacklist is listed as "Suspect RBL provider". That says enough about it...

From the Wikipedia article: These RBL providers have demonstrated the potential and willingness to adversely affect vast swaths of internet communications for misguided, reckless or likely fraudulent purposes. Using these RBL providers will likely result in clogging up ISP support channels while negatively affecting legitimate business customers.

Re: Spam blacklisting is out of control

#268

Post by tyingq »

Karrot_Kream wrote: post #239
tyingq wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would think "Tortious interference" is the most likely legal basis to complain about it. "Tortious interference is a common law tort allowing a claim for damages against a defendant who wrongfully interferes with the plaintiff's contractual or business relationships"

IANAL. But you don't have a contract with the receiver for the receiver to receive your mail. You send mail from an IP on a subnet you control to AT&T. ATT has previously received spam from this subnet (maybe before you acquired the subnet), and they've marked it in a spam list. You're not _paying_ ATT to deliver your mail; that's when you can invoke a lawyer and say that ATT is not doing what you're paying them to d…

All reasons why you might lose a lawsuit. However, a lawsuit, or even a cease and desist letter is still a nuisance for whoever you sue. Enough that their legal department might ask their ops department to stop blocking the emails. Since that's probably the cheapest route to make you go away.

Re: Spam blacklisting is out of control

#269

Post by convolvatron »

alar44 wrote: post #201
NelsonMinar wrote: post #176

SMTP is a failed product.

Not so much failed as just outdated. That's like saying NCP is a failed product. It served it purpose for a time and as things changed, it was replaced. That being said, I don't know how SMTP hasn't been replaced yet. It shouldn't have lived much longer than the early 2000s, in my opinion.

its pretty telling the grandparent used the word 'product'. that's why we haven't replaced SMTP, because everyone is off building products. and they all want to own the whole world. SMTP isn't a product. its an open protocol standard.

(I certainly agree that we should have a new one, I just can't see how that would happen)

Re: Spam blacklisting is out of control

#270

Post by djakaitis »

thayne wrote: post #137

If I were to design a replacement messanging system to replace email, I would design it with deny by default, where messages that aren't signed by someone on your contact list are rejected. Maybe with a system to request that someone add you to their contact list (though with a limit on how much text can be in that request). Maybe something like that could be done with email, but without a culture around it, figuring…

So basically how social media platforms handle messaging.
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