[HN Gopher] Gmail, Yahoo announce new 2024 authentication requir...
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       Gmail, Yahoo announce new 2024 authentication requirements for bulk
       senders
        
       Author : ilamont
       Score  : 205 points
       Date   : 2023-10-30 20:07 UTC (2 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (blog.google)
 (TXT) w3m dump (blog.google)
        
       | ilamont wrote:
       | Yahoo:
       | https://blog.postmaster.yahooinc.com/post/730172167494483968...
        
       | teruakohatu wrote:
       | Most of the spam I get in gmail apparently comes from other gmail
       | accounts. Presumably google already filtered out senders
       | pretending to be gmail, so I am not sure what a big improvement
       | this will be for the average user.
        
         | chimeracoder wrote:
         | > Most of the spam I get in gmail apparently comes from other
         | gmail accounts.
         | 
         | Are they actually from Gmail accounts, or are they simply
         | spoofing the sender? My bet is on the latter, because Google
         | has heavy restrictions on Gmail that make it impractical to use
         | for sending bulk spam.
         | 
         | > I am not sure what a big improvement this will be for the
         | average user.
         | 
         | It's not going to be particularly noticeable for the average
         | user, except for the second part (single-click unsubscribe, as
         | opposed to a multi-step flow, is slightly stricter than what's
         | required by CAN-SPAM). It will probably make Google's work
         | easier, though, by having a publicly-known policy of rejecting
         | emails without DKIM, as opposed the the status quo of having
         | that be merely an open secret.
        
           | andersa wrote:
           | Spoofing the sender to show up as gmail.com on gmail.com is
           | not possible.
        
           | ericpauley wrote:
           | Gmail also has DMARC quarantine enabled. What's more likely,
           | that someone broke DMARC or that they stole someone's
           | password? My bet is on the latter.
        
           | maybeben wrote:
           | The vast majority of spam we get that isn't trivially
           | rejected (DMARC, malformed HELO, etc) is from real, actual
           | gmail. But they sure do care about _incoming_ spam.
        
         | asddubs wrote:
         | I've gotten a few emails from my own gmail account, spoofed,
         | which inexplicably did not land in the spam folder. This
         | happened to me on multiple different gmail accounts, too.
        
           | benatkin wrote:
           | Perhaps they wanted you to see that someone was trying to
           | spoof you. They should have a better way of doing that though
           | :/
        
           | partiallypro wrote:
           | This happens to me all the time, I honestly am not sure this
           | measure is going to solve much.
        
           | NullPrefix wrote:
           | Click "Mark as spam" and the all mighty machine learning
           | might decide that the sender address (your address) is a spam
           | sender
        
         | tornato7 wrote:
         | I receive a lot of scam emails from Google Docs - ie random
         | users 'sharing' Google Docs with me that are either ads or
         | viruses or both.
        
           | foobazgt wrote:
           | I got one of these once. Google does run spam classifiers for
           | docs and you can report them as spam:
           | https://support.google.com/drive/answer/13305033
        
         | queuebert wrote:
         | The majority of my spam is to firstname.lastname@gmail.com,
         | because I have a common name. I assume spammers put together a
         | list of common names and infer addresses from them. This would
         | probably help me a lot.
        
       | zitterbewegung wrote:
       | Oh fun so basically no one will be able to setup their own email
       | servers by themselves anymore. Antispam is killing the open
       | internet now.
        
         | solardev wrote:
         | ...and saving email at the same time. It's totally unusable
         | without spam filters, and the open models/blacklists don't come
         | anywhere close to Gmail's capabilities.
        
           | candiddevmike wrote:
           | Ironically, most of my breakthrough spam seems to come from
           | @gmail.com addresses...
        
             | solardev wrote:
             | Same, but that's because all the other hundreds of pages of
             | spam got filtered away already.
             | 
             | I wouldn't be surprised if Gmail spam is higher-effort
             | (like those individual SMS spam apps that politicians use)
             | but higher-breakthrough.
        
               | supertrope wrote:
               | I read years ago a hijacked Gmail account was worth $10
               | on a black market while a Yahoo! Email account was worth
               | $0.10.
        
           | rurp wrote:
           | Perhaps, but it's hard to say. False positives are much more
           | harmful than false negatives. I have peronally had Gmail flag
           | a number of legit emails as spam, and those are just the ones
           | I know about! It's almost certain that I have lost valuable
           | messages because I didn't check the spam folder in time.
           | These aren't transactional emails either, I'm talking about
           | messages from real people that I know personally.
           | 
           | I would be willing to wade through a number of additional
           | spam emails to avoid losing important ones but of course this
           | is Google so there is no user facing dial to adjust the
           | sensitivity. Users just have to trust that Google's
           | generalized approach is well calibrated for them.
        
             | solardev wrote:
             | I'd take the false positives, personally. If someone really
             | needs to reach me and doesn't get to me on the first try,
             | they usually just email or text back and go "Hey, did you
             | get my email?". Or, just quickly skim through the spam
             | folder once a week.
        
               | jghn wrote:
               | Unless they _always_ get filtered. Which has happened to
               | me before where people wondered why I was ghosting them.
               | 
               | I now skim my spam filter regularly because of this, but
               | not everyone realizes they should do this.
        
             | ahoka wrote:
             | Most people I know regularly read their spam folders...
             | which kinda defeats the purpose.
        
           | fiddlerwoaroof wrote:
           | My personal mailserver works just fine with some rudimentary
           | anti-spam measures (mostly manual filter lists).
        
           | muppetman wrote:
           | "open models/blacklists don't come anywhere close to Gmail's
           | capabilities"
           | 
           | I disagree with you. I use Postfix with rspamd plugged into
           | it for my personal email account. I get way more spam to my
           | gmail than I do to my personal account, and I sign up to
           | everything with my personal account.
           | 
           | rspam also dkim signs my emails when I send them etc,
           | verifies SPF/DKIM/DMARC on recipet etc.
           | 
           | Now to counter that - I am a TINY mail server - Probably 100
           | emails a day tops.
        
             | solardev wrote:
             | FWIW, this would make a great blog post (or Show HN) with
             | details!
             | 
             | "I run my own mail server and get better spam results than
             | Gmail"
        
               | martin_a wrote:
               | I think that's pretty standard for everybody who runs its
               | own mail server (like "shared webhosting"-running even).
               | Owning your mail should also be standard for everybody in
               | tech, you don't want to rely on Google for something that
               | important.
        
               | muppetman wrote:
               | Exactly. I rely on Google for a number of things, the
               | primary thing being photos. But I've read too many horror
               | stories (on here) of people losing their Google account
               | and thus their life. So all my photos are also backed up
               | locally and then into a BackBlaze bucket.
               | 
               | Using Postfix+Rspamd gave me good insight into SPF, DKIM
               | and DMARC and how to use them effectively.
        
               | muppetman wrote:
               | It's really just postfix + rspamd.
               | 
               | rspamd is very, very impressive. I guess most of the hard
               | work I've put into it is adding some of the not-turned-
               | on-by-default things, like Pyzor and Razor. Also adding
               | some other RBLs that weren't included by default (I spent
               | a lot of time personally researching them and only
               | picking ones that I believed to be of high value) The
               | other big thing that I think is important is the RBL
               | whitelists - DNSWL.org and HostKarma have a whitelist as
               | well.
               | 
               | About one a week I spend 10-15 minutes looking at the
               | logs of what it's accepted/rejected during the week to
               | see if I can spot any obvious mistakes - it's pretty
               | rare. If I do spot something I make config changes to
               | address it. That said there's been months before where I
               | haven't done this and none of the users of my platform
               | have complained about spam (or missing email)
               | 
               | rspamd really is that amazing. I don't understand why
               | more people don't scream it's praises from the rooftops.
        
           | megous wrote:
           | Any data? Or just "I say so"...
           | 
           | Before I decided to leave it due to its horrendous false
           | positive rate, gmail was driving like half of notification
           | emails from my servers and mailing lists to spam, despite me
           | never marking them as such. I was regularly missing important
           | things.
           | 
           | It's much better with just regular client side bogofilter and
           | some training on my personal mail/spam archive. And I do zero
           | server side filtering, it's just all content based.
           | 
           | I don't care about capabilities, I just want near 0 false
           | positive rate on the kind of email I receive (and not some
           | common model), even at cost of some false negatives, and
           | Gmail doesn't deliver there at all. And I don't want any
           | arbitrary 5xx rejections for my senders, since I know how
           | annoying that is on the sender side. Gmail will not guarantee
           | that.
        
           | einpoklum wrote:
           | email is perfectly usable without _Google_'s spam filters.
           | 
           | And if you use non-GMail email providers, you would know they
           | do fine. Not perfect, and of course it differs among
           | providers, countries and accounts, but it's generally fine.
        
         | Kye wrote:
         | Did we read a different article? DKIM is a simple DNS entry.
         | One-click unsubscribe should be standard.
        
           | amluto wrote:
           | Also:
           | 
           | > So today, we're introducing new requirements for bulk
           | senders -- those who send more than 5,000 messages to Gmail
           | addresses in one day
           | 
           | If you run an email server for personal use, you are quite
           | unlikely to send more than 5k messages per day.
        
             | pixl97 wrote:
             | Heh, I see someone has never had an automation script go
             | bad.
        
               | amluto wrote:
               | That one time I spammed myself egregiously, I would have
               | appreciated a 5k/day limit.
        
           | superkuh wrote:
           | It's also standard practice to use self-signed certs with
           | mail DKIM. Mail as a protocol has, for the most part, tried
           | to stay true to it's federated roots and most things can be
           | implemented without dependencies on third party corporations.
           | 
           | I avoided DKIM till 2018 when google started accepting my
           | mail but silently sending it to the spam folder; so I
           | wouldn't even get a reject message. I thought it'd be to
           | onerous to implement but rspamd's dkim signing feature made
           | it easy to use with my locally generated self-signed certs
           | (and postfix).
        
         | chimeracoder wrote:
         | > Oh fun so basically no one will be able to setup their own
         | email servers by themselves anymore. Antispam is killing the
         | open internet now.
         | 
         | It's been a long time since you've been able to set up your own
         | email servers without DKIM and expect that your emails will get
         | reliably delivered to Gmail users, especially for bulk mail.
         | 
         | The second requirement is more or less already a legal
         | requirement in the US, and the third is literally how anti-spam
         | has _always_ worked - the only difference is that Google is now
         | saying that they 'll publish the threshold publicly, rather
         | than keeping it a secret.
         | 
         | This is technically news, but it's hardly a major shift.
        
           | atomicnumber3 wrote:
           | This is my impression too. I briefly used emails from a
           | domain I own to my gmail account as a way to send myself
           | "notifications". My impression was that absolute table stakes
           | to even make e-mail deliver work AT ALL were:
           | 
           | - non residential IP (I had to proxy through my VPS) - SPF -
           | DKIM - use TLS with a modern cipher
           | 
           | And even with this, I still had to "favorite" (or whatever)
           | AND set up a rule to "never send to spam" for my alerts@
           | sender address because I would still get them going to spam
           | for no reason that I could find - I'd check the message and
           | would see that SPF and DKIM PASSED and yet it was still going
           | to spam.
           | 
           | I ended up switching to using webhooks to send alerts to a
           | discord channel for a server that only had me in it. It works
           | fine. It's a lot more surefire than trying to figure out
           | email delivery
        
             | abdullahkhalids wrote:
             | I have my personal mail hosted on a hetzner server using
             | mailinabox. I didn't do anything fancy except whatever
             | mailinabox's default config is.
             | 
             | I have no problem with email deliverability to
             | gmail/outlook. I think the difference is that my emails are
             | two-way communication. I email someone, they email back or
             | vice versa. Not a continuous stream of unreplied emails
             | from my personal server to some gmail address (which does
             | look like spam).
             | 
             | I imagine if you set up a script to reply to these emails
             | from your gmail account with lorem ipsum and then deleted
             | those replies after a few days, your problems will
             | disappear.
        
         | koito17 wrote:
         | I rarely get spam in my inbox, if at all, but I also never sign
         | up for newsletters nor give airlines, grocery stores, etc. my
         | e-mail address.
         | 
         | I get spam messages once in a blue moon on my iPhone
         | (specifically, on iMessage, I get recipients with a string of
         | random letters ending in gmail.com). Ironically, it's ALWAYS a
         | gmail.com or hotmail.com address. Funny how the overwhelming
         | majority of spam I can remember comes from Gmail and Outlook,
         | both of which love sending everyone else's messages straight
         | into the spam tray, despite having DKIM + DMARC set up, static
         | IP not on any Spamhaus blocklist, etc.
        
         | 0xbadcafebee wrote:
         | I mean... No? You can set up your own mail server all you want,
         | it's just that few people will take your mail. Just make
         | friends with other people who hate managed mail companies,
         | you'll be able to email them just fine.
        
           | sltkr wrote:
           | That's too facile. Email was intended as a federated service
           | that allows anyone to send mail to anyone. Privileging large
           | companies over small companies and individual users is a
           | clear violation of that principle, and a danger to the open
           | and impartial internet. I get that spam is annoying (I hate
           | it too) but letting giant American tech companies decide who
           | is allowed to send email and who isn't is not the solution.
           | 
           | Imagine you live in an apartheid state and the people in
           | power say: "White people will now refuse mail coming directly
           | from black people. If black people want their mail to be
           | received, they are required to send it through a trusted
           | white liaison. If you're black and you don't like it, just
           | make friends with other blacks and the tiny minority of
           | whites who will accept mail from undesirables like you."
           | 
           | The above analogy is exaggerated of course, but I think there
           | is a fundamental truth for it: large tech companies like
           | Google have cornered the market by offering free solutions,
           | and now they are imposing an apartheid system where mail sent
           | through big companies is given priority over mail sent by
           | real people who run their own email system.
           | 
           | (Personally, I've disabled all spam filters in Gmail since
           | I've noticed that Gmail is likely to filter out legitimate
           | email while the amount of spam I receive is actually very
           | low.)
        
       | chimeracoder wrote:
       | This isn't as big of a change as it sounds.
       | 
       | There are three requirements. The first requirement - DKIM - is
       | already a _de facto_ must-have when sending emails to avoid
       | getting marked as spam. The second is also a legal requirement in
       | the US for all commercial email under the CAN-SPAM act[0]. And
       | the third is more or less how email delivery has worked for the
       | last 20 years or so anyway.
       | 
       | [0] The "one click" and "within two days" parts are a little
       | stricter than the bare minimum CAN-SPAM requirements, but not
       | much, and they are not difficult for any legitimate sender to
       | implement.
        
         | nerdo wrote:
         | The one-click part I believe is referring to the unsubscribe
         | smtp header.
         | 
         | CAN-SPAM is ignored for the most part anyway, e.g. LinkedIn
         | requires recipients to authenticate in order to unsubscribe and
         | openly violates the letter and spirit of the law to the point
         | scripts are required: https://github.com/chengyin/linkedin-
         | unsubscribed
        
           | pixl97 wrote:
           | Unsubscription requirements are a pain in the ass in the
           | sense that anyone that steals a large list of emails (from
           | any service, not yours in this particular case) could now run
           | it against your service and unsubscribe a million users
           | before you realize what's going on via a botnet.
        
             | TheCycoONE wrote:
             | The opaque id is suppose to not be guessable. I does mean
             | you can't batch send emails by calling RCPT TO though which
             | will hurt bandwidth.
        
           | chimeracoder wrote:
           | > CAN-SPAM is ignored for the most part anyway, e.g. LinkedIn
           | requires recipients to authenticate in order to unsubscribe
           | and openly violates the letter and intent of the law to the
           | point scripts are required:
           | 
           | There are several known-bad actors. LinkedIn isn't even the
           | worst offender - Amazon is much more brazen, though they get
           | less flak for it because the number of violating non-
           | transactional emails they send is lower.
           | 
           | Regardless, I stand by my point that this isn't a big shift.
           | Google stating publicly that they will penalize people who
           | are violating an law that turns 20 years old this year, and
           | which has generally been implemented by almost all legitimate
           | bulk email providers[0], is not something I'm particularly
           | surprised about or worried by.
           | 
           | Again, the first and third bullet points in this press
           | release are already _de facto_ policy at Gmail, and have been
           | for over a decade. The news is that Google is stating this
           | publicly, not that they 're doing something new.
           | 
           | [0] The notable exceptions notwithstanding, it's quite rare
           | to find a bulk email sender who violates this, because very
           | few legitimate mail providers will allow it, and it's pretty
           | difficult to set up your own mail server with decent inbox
           | delivery rates.
        
         | corentin88 wrote:
         | Agreed. I shared the same view here:
         | https://mailmeteor.com/blog/new-gmail-protections
        
       | tiffanyh wrote:
       | > _" Gmail's AI-powered defenses stop more than 99.9% of spam,
       | phishing and malware from reaching inboxes and block nearly 15
       | billion unwanted emails every day."_
       | 
       | This will be a pain for legit use cases but will net to a better
       | place for the ecosystem.
       | 
       | Much like strong KYB/KYC for bulk text messaging.
        
         | joering2 wrote:
         | You joking right? The amount of text messages spam I receive
         | now on Verizon, and some 8 months ago before on T-mobile is
         | staggering.
        
           | tiffanyh wrote:
           | Are you suggesting that _because_ of stronger KYB /KYC for
           | sending bulk, that _increased_ the amount of spam text you
           | get?
        
             | 998244353 wrote:
             | I think they are suggesting that the stronger KYB/KYC was
             | ineffective at reducing the amount of spam.
        
           | supertrope wrote:
           | They're cracking down with "10DLC." Mass SMS senders must
           | identify themselves, pay a fee, and register each campaign
           | including its content.
        
       | ilyt wrote:
       | > To help ensure messages you send to Gmail accounts are
       | delivered as expected, you should set up either SPF or DKIM for
       | your domain.
       | 
       | But spammers already do that, why would enforcing that even help
       | ?
        
       | overstay8930 wrote:
       | Doesn't matter to me, if an email doesn't have a one click
       | unsubscribe I just mark it as spam. Messes with their email
       | reputation so they hopefully get kicked off of reputable email
       | services.
        
         | notwhereyouare wrote:
         | biglots is horrible about this. I have unsubscribed MULTIPLE
         | times and I keep getting emails. Now marked as spam
        
         | kevincox wrote:
         | I do exactly the same. I give them one chance to let me
         | unsubscribe. If it is more than 2 or 3 clicks I give up and
         | mark as spam. If they keep sending I mark as spam.
        
         | LeifCarrotson wrote:
         | I honestly don't care about their reputation, I just mark
         | anything I don't want as spam. It's easier than finding the
         | tiny 8-point link at the bottom and rolling the dice on whether
         | their unsubscribe is one click or not. I don't feel obligated
         | to protect their shitty business model.
        
           | eastbound wrote:
           | I once went to an Atlassian conf and they resold all our
           | emails to dodgy people. Or perhaps leaked them over the black
           | markets.
           | 
           | Not only I keep receiving almost the same email suggesting to
           | buy 5,000 email addresses of Atlassian customers with always
           | the same fields, but it's always from different domains.
           | 
           | I didn't think of submitting an Atlassian ticket for each
           | spam I receive. That would teach them.
           | 
           | NEVER give your true email to Atlassian.
        
         | xnx wrote:
         | "!" key shortcut to mark as spam in Gmail web interface. I use
         | it all the time. If I didn't expect and don't want the email
         | you sent, then it is spam, regardless of what fine print I
         | clicked through unknowingly at some point.
         | 
         | Would love for an "Unsubscribe Sunday" unofficial holiday to
         | catch on to the same degree as "Cyber Monday".
        
           | eastbound wrote:
           | Why would you ever unsubscribe? Unless I remember
           | subscribing, then this is spam.
           | 
           | I don't ever remember subscribing to anything. Almost all
           | email is undesired, apart from password reset emails.
        
         | legitster wrote:
         | Unfortunately for us, the Privacy team at our org has
         | determined that a one-click unsubscribe link in the body of the
         | email is unacceptable (passing an identifier into the URL of
         | the link). So we accept either the client unsubscribe link, or
         | users who click the unsubscribe link in the email have to
         | provide their email address on the unsubscribe page.
        
       | albertgoeswoof wrote:
       | This might be good news, but as it comes from Google and involves
       | email centralisation, I'm sceptical.
       | 
       | At MailPace we already enforce DKIM, it's pretty basic stuff. But
       | list-unsubscribe is optional for our senders.
       | 
       | We can make this a requirement and manage lists for senders who
       | don't / can't implement a webhook to handle it (we already
       | default to blocking resends to emails that hard bounce).
       | 
       | However I am curious how Google will track this. Just because the
       | header is set, it doesn't mean it'll do anything. In fact it can
       | be used by spammers to identify legit email addresses and spam
       | them separately.
        
         | j45 wrote:
         | I'm wondering if they see enough gmail traffic receiving such
         | an email that maybe they can infer how much funny business
         | might be going on?
        
         | pirsquare wrote:
         | Why would you allow users to unsub from transactional emails?
        
           | queuebert wrote:
           | Because you're not evil?
        
           | albertgoeswoof wrote:
           | Because (according to this announcement) if you don't, Google
           | will put you in the spam folder.
           | 
           | Edit: I suppose it does say "unsubscribe from _commercial_
           | email in one click ". But it's hard to say exactly what they
           | mean. They also don't define Bulk Senders - is that the
           | domain or the sending SMTP server?
        
             | evangow wrote:
             | They defined bulk senders in the 3rd paragraph: "bulk
             | senders -- those who send more than 5,000 messages to Gmail
             | addresses in one day"
        
               | albertgoeswoof wrote:
               | > is that the domain or the sending SMTP server?
        
           | rbut wrote:
           | I'm having the same thoughts.
           | 
           | On one of my SaaS apps workers receive details on their
           | shifts via email. If I allow them to one-click unsubscribe, I
           | know there will be many who do so accidentally, with no idea
           | how to resubscribe.
           | 
           | Currently they need to sign in and manage their contact
           | methods in settings (email, SMS, etc). Thus they know how to
           | re-enable it if they disable it.
           | 
           | I can see many support requests from managers saying "X
           | worker isn't getting emails". Sigh.
        
             | toomuchtodo wrote:
             | I suppose the best you can do is indicate how to re-
             | subscribe in the unsubscribe confirmation email and say,
             | "you should save this email! Here are alternate channels to
             | receive your schedule if needed."
             | 
             | Perhaps you could notify the manager when a user
             | unsubscribes? Puts the ball in their court to notify the
             | user (their employee) they aren't going to get critical
             | emails. Make sure any unsubscribes show up in a log
             | available to your customer.
        
             | kvakerok wrote:
             | You can simply put two buttons on the email, one for
             | unsubscribe, one for re-subscribe. If they unsub by
             | accident they can simply pull the last email and re-sub.
             | It's not rocket science.
        
               | rbut wrote:
               | AFAIK Google shows you an unsubscribe button/link
               | separate to the email and performs the POST request to
               | your server. There's no option to ask Gmail to show a
               | resubscribe button/link.
        
               | wredue wrote:
               | Or, send an email saying
               | 
               | "Hey. You unsubscribed. Here's a link to resubscribe if
               | you happen to want to!"
               | 
               | Right after someone unsubs.
        
               | albertgoeswoof wrote:
               | You could also send them a reminder a few days later,
               | just to be sure that they meant it. And then perhaps
               | every week or so for good measure.
        
           | TylerE wrote:
           | The problem comes, as I know very well, is that when you have
           | a common sounding email, all kinds of people use it for all
           | kinds of things. I get dozens of transactional emails a week
           | from stores multiple states away.
           | 
           | A big part of why I'm stuck on/with gmail is that filtering
           | redirects about 90% of those to spam.
        
             | jsnell wrote:
             | > A big part of why I'm stuck on/with gmail is that
             | filtering redirects about 90% of those to spam.
             | 
             | That doesn't really make sense? If you used an address on
             | your own domain, other people would be pretty unlikely to
             | enter that email address instead of their own. The problem
             | with misaddressed email should be limited to domains with
             | really high username density; nobody else than the Gmails
             | and Outlooks of the world need to solve the problem because
             | nobody else also _has_ the problem.
        
               | TylerE wrote:
               | Becaus having used an address personally and
               | professionally for close to 20 years, I can't really
               | abandon it, and I honestly get way too much important
               | stuff to only go I. There once a month or so. If I
               | forward all emails to the new address, I get buried under
               | the avalanche.
        
               | jsnell wrote:
               | Why limit yourself to only either forwarding emails or to
               | "check for important emails" once per month?
               | 
               | For example, email clients generally allow you to use
               | multiple accounts at the same time. Configure your client
               | to read emails from both accounts at the same time, and
               | any time an important email arrives at the legacy account
               | try to update the sender.
               | 
               | (I mean, I'm sure that xkcd.com/1172 applies, but still
               | this seems like an odd thing to be blocked by.)
        
               | taveras wrote:
               | Transactional email intended for other people is exactly
               | my problem.
               | 
               | My name is common in certain areas, and I consistently
               | get transactional email from banks, telecoms, and
               | insurance companies around the world.
               | 
               | These businesses do not verify that their customer's
               | email is truly their own prior to sending emails.
               | 
               | Framing custom domains as the solution to this problem is
               | a bit rash, no?
        
               | jsnell wrote:
               | I'm not framing it as a general solution. But _the GP was
               | already migrating to a different domain_ and claimed this
               | was the main blocker.
        
           | tomjen3 wrote:
           | Because its better than me just sending it to the spam box.
           | Or worse, not interacting with your service.
           | 
           | At this point something as simple as ordering something
           | online means I get 4-7 emails and then some growling "please
           | rate us" shit. And if I am stupid enough to do so, but only
           | rate it 4 our of 5, another "we are sorry, please tell us
           | what we did wrong" email.
        
           | mauriciob wrote:
           | Wrong address is one reason. For example, I receive
           | transactional emails from a US-based ISP for someone else and
           | the only way to unsubscribe is calling their customer service
           | line. I'm not even in the same country.
        
             | amalcon wrote:
             | I get a number of these for some reason. If they don't let
             | me unsubscribe, I just report it as spam. It's not perfect,
             | but it's what little I can do.
        
             | crazygringo wrote:
             | Exactly, seriously -- I get monthly+ e-mails from a gym and
             | a car dealership and some golf course because somebody else
             | put in my e-mail.
             | 
             | I contacted the customer support for all of them and they
             | said they can't do anything about it. To change the
             | customer's e-mail address, I need to prove I'm the
             | customer, and obviously I have no idea who they are.
             | 
             | So I gave up and implemented a Gmail filter in the end, but
             | I definitely wish that parallel with the traditional
             | unsubscribe, there was a way to say "this isn't that
             | person's e-mail". Where I don't have to prove I'm the
             | person, I just have to demonstrate I receive the e-mails.
        
               | ska wrote:
               | The best part is when they aren't in a language you
               | understand, and the site doesn't have one available.
               | 
               | I have in the past had very good data on how often a
               | russian guy got a haircut.
        
               | yard2010 wrote:
               | I have that friend that whenever I don't feel like
               | putting my own email or phone number I just put his. You
               | probably have that friend too, the other way around
        
           | airstrike wrote:
           | Something something the customer is always right?
        
           | tempnow987 wrote:
           | So they don't start getting blocked as spam? For
           | transactional emails deliverability is often CRITICAL.
           | 
           | Oddly, on the cash app thing, I have a very basic username
           | and seem to constantly have folks sending me money, sometimes
           | good amounts. I never use the app, and eventually I hope the
           | money goes back if I don't collect it.
           | 
           | More annoying on email but much less than it used to be - I
           | think more systems require email verification now so a bit
           | less common to get the misdirected order emails etc.
           | 
           | But yes, if I can't unsubscribe - then I block and report
           | spam - even if it looks like transactional email (some is a
           | lead-in to a scam where they will refund you for the "bogus"
           | purchase).
        
           | knodi123 wrote:
           | I got a really cool vanity email address, back in the early
           | days of gmail. But the downside of that is 100s of goofball
           | people around the world randomly guessing it when they want
           | to put some bullshit value in a field on a web form. The
           | worst was when my address got posted to to some indian jobs
           | forum, under a title like "test job" - I got dozens of
           | applications per hour for a few days. I had to make filters
           | to block all email that included the words "bangalore",
           | "delhi", or "hyderabad".
           | 
           | Anyway, the job applications have died down, but I still get
           | plenty of others for people who are creating accounts. I
           | unsubscribe when I can, and "mark spam" when I can't.
        
           | iamacyborg wrote:
           | You wouldn't, if they're true transactional messages instead
           | of poorly veiled marketing ones.
           | 
           | Think of it the same way Canada's anti spam law (CASL) works.
           | https://emailkarma.net/2016/09/qa-transactional-emails-
           | unsub...
        
           | dmitrygr wrote:
           | Perhaps I do not care to receive them? Why does a store allow
           | me to say "no receipt please", but you think your
           | transactional spam needs to reach me?
        
         | michaelmior wrote:
         | > Just because the header is set, it doesn't mean it'll do
         | anything.
         | 
         | True, but I think when you're processing the volume of email
         | that Gmail is, you'll have enough data to be able to infer
         | whether the unsubscription was processed.
        
         | WirelessGigabit wrote:
         | Side-note: for list-unsubscribe, do you determine the
         | subscriber's identity that needs to be unsubscribed based on
         | the sender or the receiver (like
         | <guid>@unsubscribe.service.com)?
         | 
         | Reason I'm asking is Unsubscribe rarely works for me due to my
         | catch-all not SENDING emails from the address it was received
         | on. It sends it from my actual address. Very annoying.
        
           | albertgoeswoof wrote:
           | The RFC https://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2369.txt Section 3.2 is
           | not specific on this - but the examples only show the To
           | address, and no unique identifier beyond that, so it might
           | not work out well for you for mailto list-unsubscribes. It
           | also prefers mailto over https.
           | 
           | If we build this as a mandatory feature at MailPace, we'll
           | use an HTTPS webhook with a unique identifier for the email,
           | so if you unsubscribe from a list sent via us, it will work
           | for you.
        
         | CobrastanJorji wrote:
         | Why is list-unsubscribe is optional for your senders?
        
           | albertgoeswoof wrote:
           | It's transactional email - so generally speaking it's not a
           | subscription list that recipients are on per se. This is in
           | line with the CAN SPAM guidance (although that is a US law
           | it's good guidance to follow globally).
           | 
           | Also it requires senders to actually implement it, which is
           | not possible to confirm. Although we could add a catch all
           | service that does this automatically, which I think we'll do.
        
       | jedberg wrote:
       | It's not clear to me how this is any different than before? Most
       | of my spam that I actually see already has all those things
       | (valid DKIM, one-click unsubscribe link, and a rate limit per
       | sender).
       | 
       | If you really want to fix email spam, create a micro-payments
       | system. One cent for every email you send, the user has two
       | options after they open the email: mark it as spam and keep the
       | penny, mark it as legit and give the penny back. If they don't
       | act on it within a week you get your penny back.
       | 
       | Legit senders won't be harmed because they will get their pennies
       | back, spammers won't be able to afford sending messages anymore.
       | The real interesting part would be stuff like LinkedIn
       | notifications -- if people find them useful they'd give the penny
       | back, but companies would have to decide how many people might
       | actually find it useful for their cost analysis.
        
         | theglenn88_ wrote:
         | If I had a penny for every legitimate email I marked as spam,
         | I'd be a billionaire.
         | 
         | Jokes aside, why wouldn't you just farm pennies by marking all
         | emails as spam?
         | 
         | You could say, "well you could detect people that abuse the
         | system" - and now the mouse is chasing the cat.
        
           | jedberg wrote:
           | Because people would stop sending you email.
        
           | AnthonyMouse wrote:
           | The flaw is in giving the penny to the user instead of the
           | email provider. If an email provider is claiming everything
           | you send them is spam, you stop sending to them, which for a
           | real email provider is a problem _if_ you 're sending non-
           | spam email their customers actually want.
        
           | butlike wrote:
           | You bring up a vaid case. People farming pennies could be an
           | issue, but on the other hand, farming pennies is a more noble
           | cause, and one that ostensibly seems far easier to catch. I'd
           | rather do a lookup to find the outliers who are harvesting
           | pennies than to try and cat-and-mouse spammers who are
           | masquerading as legitimate senders.
        
         | ahoka wrote:
         | You have invented bitcash, the ancestor of bitcoin.
        
           | jedberg wrote:
           | Well not exactly. The currency isn't the hard part, it's the
           | payment transfer infrastructure that would be hard. If the
           | big players all go on board and agreed to one thing we'd be
           | off to the races.
        
       | EvanAnderson wrote:
       | Hijacking the thread: I do some "bulk" sending for a 501(c)3 I
       | volunteer for. I include unsubscribe links that go to a form with
       | a submit button (because I want the unsubscribe to be a POST
       | request). Each link has a random opaque identifier in the query
       | string. Something like:
       | 
       | hxxp://example.com/unsubscribe?id=abcd1234
       | 
       | A couple years ago I noticed that MSFT IPs hitting my unsubscribe
       | links with invalid identifiers on the quest string. Anybody ever
       | seen that?
        
         | nwienert wrote:
         | I thought it was part of CAN SPAM that you can't require a
         | second action and that was why the big email sending providers
         | moved to that.
        
           | KeepFlying wrote:
           | Probably true but how do you handle autodetonation of email
           | links in that case? Too many emails servers will click links
           | automatically to check for issues.
           | 
           | That was my understanding at least.
        
             | justinator wrote:
             | Unsubscribe link goes to a page that has a form that's
             | automatically submitted via JavaScript. Disable that for
             | the first 5 minutes of that link's life to get around
             | automated things.
        
           | EvanAnderson wrote:
           | So many email security systems preemptively access every URL
           | in messages. I found that I receive a GET for virtually every
           | unsubscribe URL I send out.
           | 
           | I don't read clicking a "confirm" button as a second action.
           | The attorney didn't either. He also said CAN SPAN doesn't
           | apply to a 501(c)3. I still try to comply to be a good
           | citizen.
        
           | jabroni_salad wrote:
           | You can require a second action such as clicking a button.
           | 
           | What you can't do is take them to a page that says "to
           | unsubscribe, send a certified letter to our headquarters and
           | wait 90 business days". The entire transaction must be
           | completed at the page you link to.
        
           | jcrawfordor wrote:
           | It's not really common for clicking a link to immediately
           | unsubscribe, almost everyone requires you to click a button
           | after navigating to the unsubscribe link. Otherwise you have
           | issues with link scanners unsubscribing your recipients
           | without their knowledge. There are some more complex ways to
           | approach this with JavaScript checks for "real browser" but
           | IMO these are more likely to create frustrating friction to
           | unsubscribing (by not working if the user has an adblocker
           | for example) than having the user click a button.
           | 
           | I've seen this pattern of unsubscribe link, then click button
           | approved as CAN-SPAM compliant more than once so I don't
           | think there's a legal concern. The CAN-SPAM rule seems more
           | targeted at the systems you used to see a lot that required
           | the user to log into their account, type in their email
           | address, or figure out a complicated "communications
           | preferences" list to use the unsubscribe form.
           | 
           | check out https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-16/chapter-I/sub
           | chapter-C...
           | 
           | It's a little fuzzy to me how exactly to interpret this but I
           | think you could reasonably read it as allowing even
           | unsubscribe pages that require you to type your email address
           | in again (even though I detest these and don't think the
           | problem they're intended to solve is a meaningful one).
        
         | ClassyJacket wrote:
         | Yes, I know I've seen someone talk about this before, I think
         | it's their link safety checking thing:
         | 
         | https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/security-compliance-a...
        
           | EvanAnderson wrote:
           | It's odd that they're, essentially, fuzzing my app.
        
             | vaporary wrote:
             | Agreed, it's curious! I wonder if they would still fuzz it
             | if you changed the URL scheme to include the identifier as
             | part of the URL path, rather than as a parameter? e.g.,
             | hxxp://example.com/unsubscribe/abcd1234
             | 
             | Please report back if you try it :-)
        
         | local_crmdgeon wrote:
         | You may not have to comply with CAN SPAM legally, but I
         | absolutely hate when orgs do this.
         | 
         | Please try to make the world a better place instead of doing
         | the legal minimum.
        
           | EvanAnderson wrote:
           | What else should I do? The list is double opt-in, every
           | message includes a one-click unsubscribe link, full contact
           | info for the organization is included, and I send text-only.
        
             | austhrow743 wrote:
             | My reading is that in your comment they replied to, you
             | said you require confirmation for unsubscription.
             | 
             | One click unsubscription is presumably what they want.
        
               | EvanAnderson wrote:
               | I require a button to be clicked to confirm. No entry, no
               | JavaScript, nothing else. Just something to make a POST
               | request because I receive GET requests for almost every
               | URL I send out.
               | 
               | My experience is that every unsubscribe goes to a form w/
               | a submit button. Shitty ones make you type your email
               | address. (Mine doesn't.)
        
               | austhrow743 wrote:
               | I dont have a problem with that but it's definitely a
               | second click.
               | 
               | Just did a bit of unsubscribing and sydneytools.com.au,
               | abc.net.au, squabblr.co, bundlehunt.com, and
               | healingstreams.tv all one click unsubscribe.
        
               | jacobwg wrote:
               | I've seen a hybrid where you have a form with a button to
               | confirm, but include JavaScript to auto-submit the form
               | on load. For the crowd that has JS disabled, they can
               | click the button, but otherwise it's one-click from the
               | email.
               | 
               | No idea if this holds if/when the email crawler bots
               | start executing JS on crawl.
        
         | tomjen3 wrote:
         | If you are sending out HTML emails, cant you just make the
         | unsubscribe button a submit button in the form?
        
           | EvanAnderson wrote:
           | I am sending text-only messages. (I hate HTML email,
           | personally.)
        
         | exabrial wrote:
         | In a previous life, we prevented the GET url problem by having
         | a javascript POST and forward to a secondary URL.
         | 
         | This allows everything to be "one click" (which honestly is a
         | good thing) but prevents crawlers from accidentally triggering
         | the unsubscribe.
         | 
         | Not sure this still works today and obviously this is not legal
         | advice.
        
           | cxr wrote:
           | Not an answer to the question they asked.
        
           | Zambyte wrote:
           | It seems like the more ideal solution would be to block the
           | malicious IPs instead of lowering the accessibility of your
           | site, no?
        
         | sbuk wrote:
         | It'll likely be the URL rewriting feature in Microsoft 365 and
         | Outlook.com. The URL will be scanned before it's rewritten.
        
       | pirsquare wrote:
       | This is the direct link to the guidelines.
       | https://support.google.com/mail/answer/81126
       | 
       | Strange there's no mentioned about transactional emails. Since we
       | wouldn't include unsubscribe link for transactional emails.
        
         | cuu508 wrote:
         | Depends. I suppose it would not make sense to have
         | "unsubscribe" for "reset password" notifications, but for
         | "there's a new event in your account, come log in to see it"
         | type notifications it would.
        
       | justinator wrote:
       | I'm a little unclear how these requirements differ from just
       | setting up correct DKIM/SPF records, and having a one-click unsub
       | link - or is this all they're saying?
       | 
       | If so, sounds good to me.
        
         | donmcronald wrote:
         | That's what it sounds like to me.
         | 
         | The cynic in me thinks it's a prelude to stuff like BIMI
         | because that lets them add a large annual cost for anyone that
         | wants decent deliverability. It's a way for large senders to
         | use their market position to invent a new industry with a
         | service we all have to pay for. Free money!
        
       | johnklos wrote:
       | You mean Yahoo isn't the rotting carcass of the company it once
       | was? I see nothing but decay: their abuse addresses don't work,
       | nor do any of the addresses they have in WHOIS, either for their
       | domains or their networks, that haven't been switched to
       | oath.com. Their SOA isn't real. They've basically stopped
       | accepting abuse complaints.
       | 
       | Is Marcel Becker, supposedly the "Sr. Dir. Product at Yahoo",
       | according to this article, the only person working at Yahoo
       | handling email these days? I'm only half joking - Yahoo is
       | incredibly unresponsive when it comes to abuse.
        
       | exabrial wrote:
       | > Enable easy unsubscription
       | 
       | Does that include the spam I get from Google? Because you guys
       | have been sending non CANSPAM compliant emails lately with
       | "Account Updates" which are thinly veiled marketting emails.
        
       | Semaphor wrote:
       | The only spam I get on my old Gmail account, is some democratic
       | party people who think opt in is for chumps. So whenever I check
       | that account, I click report spam for all their spam mails. Maybe
       | their successor won't be such an ass. One of them recently lost
       | his election and I was very happy about that.
       | 
       | Edit: no idea why I only get democratic spam, maybe people with
       | my name in the USA too dumb to enter their actual email don't
       | like republicans. But I have no acceptance for spammers, no
       | matter their politics.
        
       | jabart wrote:
       | Right now google allows the SPF domain, and/or the DKIM signing
       | domain to be different than the From domain, not just a subdomain
       | but an entire different domain. From an ESP perspective, will
       | this drop shared SPF(Return-Path) domains? I'm assuming DKIM has
       | to match, just not sure about the return-path side. It's a bit
       | vague in the support article.
        
       | tempnow987 wrote:
       | Does anyone know if this will stop NGP Van emails (seems to be
       | dem party platform). I cannot get off their mailing lists - they
       | seem to resell the email constantly. I've probably unsubscribed
       | from NGP emails 50+ times. It's crazy. How are they not entirely
       | blocked?
        
         | joering2 wrote:
         | if you mean the email marketing software for political
         | campaigns, then yeah sorry you are toasted (your email is) -
         | they resell lists and spam everyone into oblivion. Apparently
         | (as per Can-SPAM Act) politicians are (obviously) exempt from
         | spam practices, so if you are mailing on behalf of politician
         | or his campaign, its all wild west no limits and no rules
         | apply.
        
       | thiht wrote:
       | > It's clear that email has become an essential part of daily
       | communication.
       | 
       | Wow, I almost missed that!
       | 
       | Apparently even Google has to start their blog articles with SEO
       | crap like this
        
       | killthebuddha wrote:
       | If I wanted to learn everything there is to know about email and
       | SMS spam/abuse policies, technical best practices, important
       | standards, etc, what would be a good strategy? It feels like a
       | super important but ridiculously intractable subject.
        
       | adrr wrote:
       | Can we add a TTL to marketing emails? Max length is two weeks
       | before the email is automatically deleted.
        
       | einpoklum wrote:
       | We should all stop using email providers who are known to
       | massively compromise our privacy, build profiles of our online
       | activities, manipulate us through ads, pass lots (or all)
       | information to the government, and consolidate ownership of too
       | much of Internet communications and activity.
       | 
       | Specifically, we should stop using GMail (and Yahoo), and
       | encourage our friends to leave those services as well.
        
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