Problems sending mail to yahoo?
Joe Greco
jgreco at ns.sol.net
Mon Apr 14 14:02:52 UTC 2008
> > You want to define standards? Let's define some standard for
> > establishing permission to mail. If we could solve the
> > permission problem, then the filtering wouldn't be such a
> > problem, because there wouldn't need to be as much (or maybe
> > even any). As a user, I want a way to unambiguously allow a
> > specific sender to send me things, "spam" filtering be
> > damned. I also want a way to retract that permission, and
> > have the mail flow from that sender (or any of their
> > "affiliates") to stop.
> >
> > Right now I've got a solution that allows me to do that, but
> > it requires a significant paradigm change, away from
> > single-e-mail-address.
>
> In general, your "permission to send" idea is a good one to
> put in the requirements list for a standard email architecture.
> But your particular solution stinks because it simply adds
> another bandage to a creaky old email architecture that is
> long past its sell-by date.
Yes. I'm well aware of that. My requirements list included that my
solution be able to actually /fix/ something with /today's/ architecture;
this is a practical implementation to solve a real problem, which was
that I was tired of vendor mail being confused for spam.
So, yes, it stinks when compared to the concept of a shiny new mail
architecture. However, it currently works and is successfully whitelisting
the things I intended. I just received a message from a tool battery
distributor that some batteries I ordered months ago are finally shipping.
It was crappy HTML, and I would normally have completely missed it -
probably even forgetting that we had ordered them, certainly not
recognizing the "From" line it came from. It's a success story. Rare.
You are welcome to scoff at it as being a stinky bandaid on a creaky mail
system.
> IMHO, the only way that Internet email can be cleaned up is
> to create an entirely new email architecture using an entirely
> new set of protcols with entirely new port assignments and
> no attempt whatsoever to maintain reverse compatibility with
> the existing architecture. That is a fair piece of work and
> requires a lot of people to get their heads out of the box
> and apply some creativity. Many will say that the effort is
> doomed before it starts because it is not compatible with
> what went before. I don't buy that argument at all.
>
> In any case, a new architecture won't come about until we have
> some clarity of the requirements of the new architecture. And
> that probably has to be hashed out somewhere else, not on any
> existing mailing list.
If such a discussion does come about, I want people to understand that
user-controlled permission is a much better fix than arbitrary spam
filtering steps. There's a lot of inertia in the traditional spam
filtering advice, and a certain amount of resistance to considering
that the status quo does not represent e-mail nirvana.
Think of it as making that "unsubscribe" at the bottom of any marketing
e-mail actually work, without argument, without risk.
... JG
--
Joe Greco - sol.net Network Services - Milwaukee, WI - http://www.sol.net
"We call it the 'one bite at the apple' rule. Give me one chance [and] then I
won't contact you again." - Direct Marketing Ass'n position on e-mail spam(CNN)
With 24 million small businesses in the US alone, that's way too many apples.
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