Are Spam Blockers Too Strict?

Myrte writes "Wired.com has a long piece on whether spam blockers are blocking wanted messages." From the article: "For years, e-mail users complained that torrents of unwanted messages clogged their inboxes and crimped their productivity. Now, e-mail users, marketers and mailing list operators are more worried that spam filters are blocking out too many wanted messages. AOL isn't the only company to face charges that it improperly blocks legitimate messages. But, as the world's largest ISP for years, it has long borne the brunt of complaints from mass e-mailers over the problem."

Comments

I don't understand

[linvir]

it has long borne the brunt of complaints from mass e-mailers over the problem

Does this mean mailing list owners or something? I associate "mass e-mailer" with "spammer", so my first instinct was "You may continue to cry". So are there other mass e-mailers? Does it mean the likes of Amazon? If so they too may continue to cry. I don't need to know about This week's hot deals on Electronics & Photo at Amazon.co.uk.

Re:I don't understand

[Anonymous Coward]

>> I associate "mass e-mailer" with "spammer"

That's an invalid assumption.

People sign up for newsletters. There are 300,000+ who've subscribed to ServerSide, for example (mostly Java developers). That's mass e-mailing.

It's not that they're too strict

[Nijika]

It's more that SMTP is too broken. The model we use to communicate with each other is sadly too open, given the potential of the technology for automation. The real solution is to extend or replace SMTP completely.

Re:It's not that they're too strict

[hackstraw]

The real solution is to extend or replace SMTP completely.

People say this from time to time, but they conclude that its still best the way it is. I value mailing lists, and making people pay or whatever proposed mechanism there is simply does not cut it.

I get spam sent via email. I get spam in my snail mailbox. I get spam on my fax machine. I get spammed by cold calls from sales drones/marketers. I've never had this happen (yet), but I've seen someone's phone get spammed with hundreds of porn text messages over a 10 or 15 minute time period. The user was initially billed for the porn spams and had to call the phone company to get them taken off of there bill.

It just seems as though open communication is just going to be subject to spam. Don't want it? Use your own private network to communicate.

How is this a "gray area"

[TubeSteak]

A particularly troublesome gray area, Schneider said, involves affiliate marketers. These marketers often send e-mails to people who signed up on a website with whom the affiliate has a marketing agreement. The recipient of the e-mail, however, probably isn't aware of the arrangement and has no idea why they're receiving the message.

Translation: people are getting e-mails they neither want, nor expected.

It's like inviting someone to a party & you agree that they can bring their "affiliates" along. Your invitee shows up with 20 strangers & whoever you have working the door says "I don't know all these people, they aren't allowed in."

The solution isn't to cry about the "gray" area, it's to explicitly tell people who the fark these affiliates are & what they'll be sending.

Confirmation challenge

[Spazmania]

When I get a message with a moderate probability of being spam, my spam blocker sends a message back requesting that the sender confirm the message. Works great. Those few legitimate senders stuck on a problematic server can still get their messages to me and so far no spammer has attempted to bypass it.

The only time it doesn't work is when the sender's spam blocker dumps the confirmation request or when the sender doesn't understand what to do.

Re:Confirmation challenge

[Josh Triplett]

Or when you spam all the people spammers use as their forged From addresses.

Don't send mass e-mails

[iamacat]

Just like door to door salesmen and tele-marketers, mass e-mailers have ruined their reputation as a group and are no longer effective at what they are trying to do. If you want to keep your customers updated, offer an RSS feed, personalized with their user id if necessary. Times change, deal with it.

Re:Don't send mass e-mails

[c0d3h4x0r]

Your point is actually true in a more general sense.

In general, if people want something, they will seek it out for themselves.

People don't want or need to be advertised at in any way via any means. This applies to companies trying to sell products or services, religions trying to amass followers, or political activists trying to rally voters. It's all BS.

If I want something, I'll go seek it out for myself. Leave me the hell alone. It's not your place to constantly bother me.

Yes and no

[Bogtha]

If a user has signed up for a mailing list, and doesn't get what they asked for, then that's a false positive, no matter how commercial the mailing list. And this does happen. So in that respect, spam blockers are too strict.

But on the other hand, I fish out a few false positives from my spam dump every month and look to see why they were blocked. In most of the cases, it's because the mailing list operator is doing something dumb. For instance, the last false positive I received - for a legitimate, informative mailing list I deliberately signed up for - triggered my spam filter because of forged headers, two counts of malformed headers, and every other line was in all caps.

The reason why they were caught out was because they used what appears to be a mass mailer designed for sleazy purposes, and they didn't bother with any QA.

Anybody who is running a mailing list should follow a few simple rules:

1. If you outsource, outsource to a reputable company.
2. If you run the mailing list yourself, use reputable software.
3. Set up an email account for every popular spam blocker, and include those addresses in your mailing lists. Check those accounts every time you send out an email, to see if you are blocked by any of them.
4. Never buy email addresses. Ever.

That's what I consider to be common sense, but apparently common sense is hard to come by these days.

Re:Confirmation challenge -- Thank you so much!

[alexo]

> When I get a message with a moderate probability of being spam, my
> spam blocker sends a message back requesting that the sender confirm the
> message. Works great. Those few legitimate senders stuck on a
> problematic server can still get their messages to me and so far no
> spammer has attempted to bypass it.

Well thank you so much!

Since the lowlifes started forging "from" addresses using my domain, I am getting several such "confirmation" messages every day. And while my spam filter is doing its job pretty well, I have not found a way to filter out your smug verifications without getting rid of the legitimate ones.

So, thanks to people like you, I get 5 times more verification requests than actual spam.

You better hope that there is no higher power because if there is, and it decides to grant my wishes just when I get yet another verification, you'll have a bit of a problem removing that sequoia from your rear orifice.