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The Perils of an .xyz Domain

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Re: The Perils of an .xyz Domain

#141

Post by aaaaaaaaaaab »

_xy8h wrote: post #100
blendergeek wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have this same problem with "obscure" .net domains. My text messages are silently dropped. The only work around I found is to not include http:// , just use the bare domain. Personally, I find this behavior of my SMS provider reprehensible.

I ran into this recently even on Facebook Messenger. A friend of mine was hunting for a short domain name and I had a list of some three character .net and .org domains I recently had found that were available. Cut and pasted the list and the message wouldn't send. Narrowed it down to one. Typed just the bare domain. Wouldn't go through. (It was something incredibly benign like n17.org) Couldn't find a history on tha…

>and it took me sending each domain name individually until I found the one that was failing the entire message.

A true hacker would have used binary search ;)

Re: The Perils of an .xyz Domain

#142

Post by aquark »

duskwuff wrote: post #77
krono wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Blocking of messages/emails and blanket email server/domain/extension blacklisting is the same as a postal service not delivering mail to or from a particular entity/street/town. Doing so silently and without a valid and case-specific reason should not be legally allowed. Edit: Added "street/town" to analogy, and "case-specific" before reason

You'd be getting an unbelievable amount of SMS spam if carriers weren't allowed to block messages. There's a lot of bad actors out there.

We've run into this issue with replies to texts that the user sent first.

Telecom spam filtering seems to be a ridiculously primitive and wide net. I can't imagine a valid use case for dropping a text sent to a number when that number just sent you a text a few seconds before.

I don't understand why SMS spam has such a big issue with false positives compared to email spam when emails are practically free to send but SMS is much more costly.

(Yes, I know there are a lot of false positives on email too ... but we run into false positive SMS spam issues a lot even though it feels like it should be a much simpler problem to solve).

Re: The Perils of an .xyz Domain

#143

Post by blowski »

mindslight wrote: post #124
blowski wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the email provider says "Would you like us to add a set of rules people tend to add?", is that censorship? There's a very fuzzy line somewhere, on one side of which a provider is helping users get what they want, and on the other is blocking content they don't want users to receive. I'm exploring where that line is. While you have a right to send emails to me, I have a right to sign up for a service that automatic…

I would say the line has to do with how informed/empowered the user is about the initial content, ongoing changes, and their ability to make their own modifications. The original comment was about text messages, of which there is certainly not a competitive market (the Ma Bell T-1000 has reassembled itself into only 3 remaining pieces), users were surprised at the behavior, and there doesn't seem to be a straightforw…

What if users don't want to be informed, or make their own modifications? What if they just want a click a button and not receive junk mail, albeit also not receiving the occasional non-junk email because it had an unusual address.

I'd guess there are far more users like that, which is precisely why there are no major email providers offering the kind of service you talk about.

As always comes up in these conversations, while you have a right to speak, users have a right not to listen, and to use tools to help accomplish that.

Re: The Perils of an .xyz Domain

#144

Post by aquark »

tiffanyh wrote: post #115
humanistbot wrote: post #2

> One surprising side effect of having a .xyz domain is that the mere inclusion of .xyz inside of a text message will result in a silent delivery failure for many providers. This is wild to me. Tested it out myself and I couldn't send an SMS with a spot.xyz link to/from Google Voice T-Mobile. And no "failed delivery" notice either, just a silent failure. And yet I still get so many texts that are obviously spam or ph…

I wish the Telco's did MORE filtering given the huge amount of SMS spam I get since Twilio has turned this channel into a positive ROI for spammers. (1st biggest spam channel being email, which surprise/surprise - Twilio also dominates via SendGrid)

I have no knowledge of the ROI involved here, but would love to understand this: Twilio is 0.75c to send a text.

Is it possible for a spammer to generate >$75 per 10,000 people spammed? I've no idea were the SMS spams I've got link to (not about to find out) but they are so obviously spam.

We use SMS for communicating with users and would be happy to more a lot more per text to escape the 'positive ROI for spammers' territory.

I'd be happy to do that for important emails too!

Re: The Perils of an .xyz Domain

#146

Post by tsimionescu »

duskwuff wrote: post #139
seph-reed wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So put it in a spam folder. If I had a spam texts folder that showed me everything I was being blocked from, I'd both appreciate it and not feel this massive breach of trust that things being sent to me are being completely ignored by a third party system. The system that does this is absolutely primed for censorship, and we have no way to know it's not being used.

> So put it in a spam folder. 1) Neither the SMS protocol nor any phone I've ever seen has any mechanism to file messages in "folders". 2) Processing SMS messages and delivering them to subscribers has a cost. Doing so for high-volume junk messages would place a significant burden on carriers. 3) Most carriers used to charge subscribers for receiving SMS messages. Some still do! Charging subscribers to receive spam S…

I would add 4) feature phones and SIM cards have extremely low SMS storage capacities, around 100 or so max.

Re: The Perils of an .xyz Domain

#149

Post by sodality2 »

DaiPlusPlus wrote: post #39
taftster wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disable auto-image loading, and it will cut down the ability for companies to do this. Unfortunately, this often times leads to direct phone calls along the lines of, "Hey taftster, did you get my email? It shows that you haven't opened it yet." This side-effect is also very annoying.

Who gives companies their personal phone number?

Perhaps this is from a nosy colleague who has enabled read receipts. I learned this the hard way when I "didn't see" an email I had in fact opened.

Re: The Perils of an .xyz Domain

#150

Post by sytelus »

humanistbot wrote: post #2

> One surprising side effect of having a .xyz domain is that the mere inclusion of .xyz inside of a text message will result in a silent delivery failure for many providers. This is wild to me. Tested it out myself and I couldn't send an SMS with a spot.xyz link to/from Google Voice T-Mobile. And no "failed delivery" notice either, just a silent failure. And yet I still get so many texts that are obviously spam or ph…

I am pretty sure this is not intentional. Somewhere some classifier in Google has overfitted onto .xyz. They will probably fix that some day so this will not be true forever either.
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