Re: AOL/Microsoft-Hotmail Preventing Delivery of Truthout Communications NOTE DUE TO THEIR REPUTATION djf

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: "Danny O'Brien" <danny () spesh com>
Date: September 18, 2007 1:46:19 AM EDT
To: David Farber <dave () farber net>
Cc: ip () v2 listbox com
Subject: Re: [IP] Re:   AOL/Microsoft-Hotmail Preventing Delivery of  
Truthout Communications NOTE DUE TO THEIR REPUTATION djf
Reply-To: danny () spesh com

On Sun, Sep 16, 2007 at 08:02:54AM -0400, David Farber wrote:
> Begin forwarded message:
> From: "Suresh Ramasubramanian" <suresh () hserus net>
> Date: September 15, 2007 11:00:39 PM EDT
> To: <dave () farber net>, "'Robert Grosshandler'" <rob () iGive com>
> Subject: RE: [IP] AOL/Microsoft-Hotmail Preventing Delivery of
> Truthout Communications NOTE DUE TO THEIR REPUTATION djf
>
> "Robert Grosshandler" <rob () iGive com> wrote: [on IP]
>
> > Reputation isn't "political or social reputation" when used in this
> > particular context. It refers to the opinions of the receivers'
> > customers (the e-mail recipient, Hotmail and AOL's customers) as the
> > "goodness" or "wantedness" of the sender's missives.
>
> Well yes.  And when you contrast that with truthout's call for "public
> pressure, they can ignore us but they can't ignore YOU" - well,  
> let's  put
> it this way, AOL and Hotmail actually listening to their users is  
> quite
> probably what caused this block in the first place, especially  
> given the
> "reputation" word used there.

G-d knows, I've trying very hard not to get drawn into one of  
Suresh's long
email exchanges about this, especially as last time it resulted in  
him quoting
Hitler at me and accusing me of being Karl Rove, but let's at least  
correct
this misapprehension:

AOL's blocking is, probably, as a result of some sort of complaint about
TruthOuts mailing. Or the IP address that the TruthOut mail comes  
from. Or an
URL that TruthOut mentions is a phisher. Or a site that TruthOut  
mentions (as
in the case of DearAOL.com) has the a DNS TTL rate that falls into  
the class
of sites that AOL, or a third-party, believes indicative of a  
phishing site.
Or any one of a list of attributes that current anti-spam filters  
currently
use to determine whether an email should be bounced, or more often  
these days,
just silently dropped.  Probably.  There's no transparency here, so  
we simply
don't know.

What isn't going on here, is AOL listening to all their users,  
particularly as
its clear that TruthOut has at least a few members of AOL who noticed  
their
mail was getting through -- enough to be upset and complain back. Can  
those
users get TruthOut's mail delivery turned back on, even to just  
themselves?
Apparently not.

Also, contrary to what Suresh says, public notice is often the only way
organisations can find to discover what's gone wrong with their email
delivery. Despite Suresh's touching belief that all EFF cares about  
is spam,
we're hardly the first port of call for those suffering from overeager
blocking, and yet it's often the case that we hear of organisations  
who have
tried and tried again get themselves unblocked, and are provided with no
information about what they've done wrong - what sacred tripwire they  
have
fallen over and need to correct to regain access to thousands or  
millions of
their own members. At least we know who to call and get a reply.

The fact that Suresh is fighting spam, and we're seeing the downside  
explains
why we have divergent views. The way Suresh would present it, the  
world is
divided into spammers and other undeserving fools, and those good  
citizens who
- in the words of Joe Melloy - "deserve"  to have their mail  
delivered. The
  truth is that, in their fight to keep out the spammers, these filters
frequently catch the good citizens too - and almost every mass-mailer  
has a
tale to tell about it.  When small groups hit these filters, they  
have only
occasionally have enough knowledge to know that they have done so, or  
how to
get themselves out, and involves dealing with intermediaries who have  
only a
tangential connection with the recipient of their mail. Or else why  
is their
an entire industry devoted to measuring and improving "deliverability"?

I don't think it's controversial to suggest that there's a real  
problem with
organisations getting their mail delivered. And I don't feel we have  
to harp
on about this, because every time a complaint like this emerges on  
IP, it
confirms the existence of that ongoing problem. I'll leave it to  
Suresh to
continue to present his take on why there is no problem, and that we  
should
just be content to let things be as they are.

d.

> > to the size of their customer bases.  If a "lot" of their customers
> > tell them that they are receiving unwanted e-mail from a sender, that
> > sender's reputation suffers.  If a sender utilizes IP addresses that
>
> That is typically specific numbers - if a certain percentage of people
> receiving your newsletter click report as spam, then there's a  
> good  chance
> you will get blocked or your mail flow slowed down coming into an  
> ISP's
> servers.
>
> That will happen even faster if combined with your sending to a   
> number of
> email addresses on their domain that simply don't exist as you have  
> a  list
> full of old addresses that you haven't bothered to clean out, or   
> plain dud
> addresses that some kind soul imported into your list from a big   
> address CD
> he bought somewhere and added to your list - both of which have   
> happened to
> nonprofits, and even more often to badly managed political action  
> group
> mailing lists.
>
> > are used to send some other sender's unwanted e-mail, the sender's
> > reputation suffers.  If a sender sends too much e-mail all at once,
> > the sender's reputation suffers.  If the sender has "unclean" lists,
> > with lots of bounces, their reputation suffers.  And so on.
>
> Al Iverson has some wonderfully practical ways to responsibly  
> manage  your
> mailing list that I would strongly recommend to someone who seems  
> to be
> getting blocked by both AOL and Hotmail - and quite likely by  
> other  ISPs
> out there as well ..
> <http://www.spamresource.com/2007/01/how-to-deliver-mail-to-aol.html>
>
> All of that is quite easy to do (or at least free and requires a  
> certain
> amount of time you need to spend and look at just how you run your   
> mailing
> list).  Whatever Truthout is doing, they're certainly not running a  
> very
> responsibly managed mailing list. Certainly not when user feedback  
> from
> report spam buttons leads to filters going up in two different ISPs.
>
> Righteous indignation and signed petitions aren't the way to go  
> here.  The
> EFF found that out the hard way after their multiple campaigns   
> against AOL
> and other ISPs were broadly criticized by people who would otherwise
> support them, and eventually fizzled out .. to their credit they  
> haven't
> launched one of those since the Goodmail one in 2006.
>
> Their last campaign - about the goodmail issue - was a spectacular   
> fizzle,
> "came in with a bang and went out with a whimper" as T.S. Eliot  
> would  have
> said. The sequence dearaol.com / the EFF followed on that one was  
> like:
>
> 1. Campaign begins, there are several press releases and blog posts,
> deeplinks etc made by various EFF people (Cindy Cohn, Brad  
> Templeton,  Danny
> O'Brien etc) all with a very common meme being perpetuated -   
> "blackmail",
> "shakedown"
>
> 2. People step in to provide counterpoints. Tim Lee of the Technology
> Liberation Front at http://www.techliberation.com/archives/ 
> 038303.php -
> talking about a long discussion I had with Danny on politech -
> http://www.politechbot.com/2006/04/15/debate-over-dearaolcom/ (and
> ended up
> comparing the way the EFF was operating in this case to Karl Rove -
> http://www.circleid.com/posts/eff_use_of_propaganda_karl_rove/)
>
> 3. End result? Dearaol.com fizzled, and the last post to their  
> blog,  dated
> May 9 2006 (and broadly critical of Goodmail, again a shakedown  
> meme  spread
> there) is now only accessible over google cache
> <http://64.233.167.104/search?q=cache:www.dearaol.com/blog> as the   
> domain
> registration seems to have lapsed.
>
> 4. And meanwhile - AOL continues to use goodmail, and nobody, but   
> nobody
> has been blackmailed, or shaken down, or whatever to send mail to  
> AOL.   We
> have 40 million ++ users on our service.  And our users face zero  
> issues
> delivering their email to their friends / colleagues that use AOL  
> email
> addresses.
>
> > monitoring and compliance, and they're sometimes challenging (we have
> > problems right now with Centurytel and Barracuda Networks.)  But I
>
> The suggestions Al Iverson posted on spamresource.org (above)  
> would  help
> you too. Challenging - well yes it is, beyond a certain level, and
> depending on the persons you are dealing with at a particular  
> blocklist. But
> the very large ISPs - say AOL - certainly have people, that I've  
> met and
> whose competence I respect - working on this issue.
>
> > If they are able to say that they've jumped through those e-mail
> > reputation hoops, and that their bounce rate is low, and that their
> > spam complaint rate is low, and that they handle unsubscribes in a
> > timely fashion, and they're still being blocked, THEN the political
> > avenue may be the best route to take.
>
> I would be so very surprised if they didn't quickly get unblocked  
> if  they
> took a bit of time to fix their mailing list management practices ..
>
>         srs
>
>
>
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