How to use Gmail to destroy your relationship with your investors and customers • Hacker News Board

Re: How to use Gmail to destroy your relationship with your investors and customers

#111

Post by overbroad » Sun, Oct 07, 2012, 9:00 AM UTC

doesnt_know wrote: post #100

overbroad wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I understand your sentiment, I respectfully disagree that it does not matter if it's a smart idea. Because if it is not a smart idea then that means we can do better. One of the projects I'm working on solves the "closed ecosystem" problem. The use of the term "closed ecosystem" is ironic because it seems to me that the "open" nature of email receiving (not sending) is what leads to the spam problem. In other w…

"Consider the idea of running a mailserver than only accepts mail from a predetermined set of sending addresses." How is this functionally any different then blacklists? That's just a whitelist instead. So instead of new mail severs "quite likely" being on a blacklist, they are definitely not going to be on a whitelist. And no, it doesn't matter if isn't a smart idea when you aren't in a position to change anything.…

If Alice and Bob agree to run their own SMTP daemons, closed to the public and not necessarily on port 25, and they each agree to put the other on their "whitelist", how is this functionally different from the current third party controlled system? Answer: 1. Immediate delivery, assuming Bob and Alice keep their machines online. 2. No spam. 3. No third parties exerting control over their mail. No idiosyncratic delivery policies.

I'm afraid there's no need to convince any provider of anything. At this point, Alice and Bob are sending and receiving email without the need for any third party "email provider".

Functionally blacklists and whitelists are the same. They both have the same goal. But they are not the same in their effect. Blacklisting an entire netblock to stop one bad IP address affects many IP addresses who do not need to be blocked. Whitelisting a single known IP address does not have that side effect. For Alice and Bob, handling their own messages may be a desired option. Of course, not everyone may follow Alice and Bob's example. But who cares? The population using email is enormous and diverse. The point is that if someone wants a better solution than what "email providers" offer, she can get it.

Re: How to use Gmail to destroy your relationship with your investors and customers

#112

Post by overbroad » Sun, Oct 07, 2012, 9:06 AM UTC

icebraining wrote: post #107

overbroad wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Assuming your ISP is not blocking port 25 and your internet address is not on some blacklist you can send mail directly from your machine. No need to use intermediary SMTP servers. Is it possible that someone people might like to use their native SMTP capability for low volume noncommercial email? Does every person who sends email have some overwhelming urge to send spam? Such that we must place pseudo control over s…

My ISP doesn't block port 25, but since my IP address is technically dynamic, it's on Spamhaus' Policy Black List. That said, my ISP offers SMTP servers for proxying outgoing messages, so I used that for a while. I switched to a VPS because my home server died.

Gotta love that Spamhaus logic. Spammers use cheap dynamic IP's therefore anyone with a cheap dynamic IP that sends an email is a spammer.

Is it cheaper for you to get a static IP from a VPS than from your ISP?

Re: How to use Gmail to destroy your relationship with your investors and customers

#113

Post by msh » Sun, Oct 07, 2012, 9:16 AM UTC

philip1209 wrote: post #40

Does anybody have a suggestion for a simple email forwarding service for random domains? e.g., if I own example.com, is there a simple way with high uptime to forward all incoming email to all addresses to an email account at a separate domain?

Use a Google Apps account to host mx for all the domains, no need to use forwarders. It's what I do.

Re: How to use Gmail to destroy your relationship with your investors and customers

#114

Post by disgruntledphd2 » Sun, Oct 07, 2012, 9:23 AM UTC

eisa01 wrote: post #81

The spam filter in Gmail is too aggressive. I've actually gotten interview confirmations in my spam folder (!), which I was lucky to notice. And I just checked my spam folder and found three legitimate emails. They were from Linked in, glassdoor and HBO. Google really needs to improve. edit: Make that Udacity as well..

Sorry about the Linkedin one (it was partially mine, and other like me's, fault).

You see, I signed up for many Linkedin groups and then realised that they were sending me too many emails. I removed all of the emails in Linkedin and then found that this would take at least a week before I stopped getting the emails. I waited two weeks, the emails had not stopped and so I classified them as spam.

The issue is that Google is using collaborative filtering, which will tend to weight such emails more highly as spam given that I and others have noted them as spam. Its normally quite effective, but you do need to check your spam box quite often. This isn't because the algorithm doesnt work, its just because of noise created by people using the spam button inappropriately for your use cases.

Re: How to use Gmail to destroy your relationship with your investors and customers

#115

Post by jimstr » Sun, Oct 07, 2012, 10:39 AM UTC

tghw wrote: post #11

I ran into this problem as well. So, now, as standard practice, when I set up forwarding between GMail accounts, I add a single filter to the account being forwarded: Matches: -96f0f0036730a7d970a678e8f933e8b7 Do this: Never send it to Spam The string is just a random hex string, the minus (-) tells it to match all messages that do not contain this string. No message should ever contain it, so no message should ever…

I did this as well, and it has been working great for me for a few years. A month ago I noticed by chance that it had stopped forwarding 12 hours earlier for no apparent reason. Deleting the rule and recreating it got it working, but it got me thinking of doing a more robust solution.

Re: How to use Gmail to destroy your relationship with your investors and customers

#116

Post by doesnt_know » Sun, Oct 07, 2012, 11:14 AM UTC

overbroad wrote: post #111

doesnt_know wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Consider the idea of running a mailserver than only accepts mail from a predetermined set of sending addresses." How is this functionally any different then blacklists? That's just a whitelist instead. So instead of new mail severs "quite likely" being on a blacklist, they are definitely not going to be on a whitelist. And no, it doesn't matter if isn't a smart idea when you aren't in a position to change anything.…

If Alice and Bob agree to run their own SMTP daemons, closed to the public and not necessarily on port 25, and they each agree to put the other on their "whitelist", how is this functionally different from the current third party controlled system? Answer: 1. Immediate delivery, assuming Bob and Alice keep their machines online. 2. No spam. 3. No third parties exerting control over their mail. No idiosyncratic delive…

Your proposed solution isn't really email though. What you are describing has already been solved by instant messaging/jabber/twitter/facebook PM etc. Some of the solutions that already exist need a third part provider, others don't.

The problem to solve is how do you have a fixed address where anyone can contact you, spam doesn't get though and you don't have to maintain personal black/white lists. This is what email currently provides. Granted, the spam part varies depending on the provider.

Re: How to use Gmail to destroy your relationship with your investors and customers

#117

Post by DanBC » Sun, Oct 07, 2012, 11:33 AM UTC

prodigal_erik wrote: post #96

DanBC wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sexual orientation and skin colour are still used as insults even though sensible people agree that it's stupid to do so. > I don't think we're likely to regard intelligence that way I have no problem with people saying "This decision is dumb" or "This decision is stupid" or "This decision is idiotic". I do have a problem when people say "This decision is retarded" because that's not general stupidity, it is linked s…

Some, maybe all, of those words used to be diagnoses of intellectual disabilities. I don't think laymen distinguish them much at all; I was never taught to do so. If the goal is to deter everyone from showing contempt for lack of intelligence (though I don't think that's going to happen) I don't see another word with the same connotation as progress. Am I overlooking something?

The goal is not to deter people from showing contempt for lack of intelligent action. (Unless that contempt is for someone who lacks intelligence because of a disability). When someone does something stupid it is fine to call them stupid.

The goal is to ask people to consider using words that are not recently (even currently) used for learning disabilities. Retard has strong links with learning disabilities. Enough time has passed that words like 'moron' has little connection to its original meaning.

In time retard will have enough distance from its current use to be less hurtful.

>I don't see another word with the same connotation as progress.

I don't understand.

Re: How to use Gmail to destroy your relationship with your investors and customers

#118

Post by DanBC » Sun, Oct 07, 2012, 11:41 AM UTC

overbroad wrote: post #73

sbierwagen wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many blacklists include all the EC2 addresses: for obvious reasons, they get used to send spam a lot.

Do you think that is a smart idea? To black list entire netblocks? I mean, can we assume that every person using EC2 for email is sending spam? It would seem to degrade the usefulness of EC2 for anyone wanting to run their own mailserver.

> It would seem to degrade the usefulness of EC2 for anyone wanting to run their own mailserver.

People chose whether or not to use a block list. Thus your problem isn't really with the person creating the list, but with the mail admin choosing to use that list to filter email. That person feels it works for them.

Very few people should run their own mail server. Email is, now, toxic. Spammers pretty much destroyed email; especially the ability for people to run their own servers for sending.

For a history of a (perhaps overly vigorous block list) look at SPEWS - spam prevention early warning system - which had a few honeypots and which happily blocked large ranges. The Usegroup news.admin.net-abuse.email has very many threads from innocent blocked users and wingnuts screaming "change your ISP!!"

Re: How to use Gmail to destroy your relationship with your investors and customers

#119

Post by DanBC » Sun, Oct 07, 2012, 11:54 AM UTC

overbroad wrote: post #95

snowwrestler wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Blacklists are run by anti-spam zealots who really don't care about what is fair or a smart idea. For example my employer's mail server--which has been sending legitimate person-to-person emails for years (no bulk)--has ended up on blacklists several times because some blacklist operator decided to black-hole an entire netblock at our ISP. From the blacklist operator's perspective, the broad effect of the block is in…

I wish we could get these anti-spam zealots to apply the same effort to stopping junk postal mail. The history of direct mail is interesting and perhaps instructive. It has been kept alive by those who do the delivery (cf. those who do the sending). I have sometimes wondered if the same might be true for email. If your emplyer knows its recipients (e.g. business partners) and can coordinate with them to run an SMTP s…

If his employer knows the recipient the employer can ask the recipient to either stop using the block list, or to poke a whole in it and whitelist their email.

Re: How to use Gmail to destroy your relationship with your investors and customers

#120

Post by DanBC » Sun, Oct 07, 2012, 11:58 AM UTC

overbroad wrote: post #111

doesnt_know wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Consider the idea of running a mailserver than only accepts mail from a predetermined set of sending addresses." How is this functionally any different then blacklists? That's just a whitelist instead. So instead of new mail severs "quite likely" being on a blacklist, they are definitely not going to be on a whitelist. And no, it doesn't matter if isn't a smart idea when you aren't in a position to change anything.…

If Alice and Bob agree to run their own SMTP daemons, closed to the public and not necessarily on port 25, and they each agree to put the other on their "whitelist", how is this functionally different from the current third party controlled system? Answer: 1. Immediate delivery, assuming Bob and Alice keep their machines online. 2. No spam. 3. No third parties exerting control over their mail. No idiosyncratic delive…

White listing a single IP address is the functional equivalent of block listing the rest of the Internet?

You claim it's not a closed ecosystem, but it appears to be totally closed and locked off. The only way to get access to it is to be invited in.

> The point is that if someone wants a better solution than what "email providers" offer, she can get it.

Not if they want email.