> On 17 Apr 2022, at 04:51, John Levine via mailop <mailop@mailop.org> wrote: > > It appears that Paul Vixie via mailop <p...@redbarn.org> said: >> srsly? do you really think changing one's domain name or ISP is a >> reasonable way forward when google isn't accepting one's e-mail? > > When your domain is a cruddy free one which has earned a poor > reputation, yes. As I have said a few times, sometimes free services > are worth what they cost.
What’s remarkable here is that Google’s filtering is normally *incredibly* nuanced. They don’t deploy domain or IP level blocks by default or as a first response to a problem. There is an escalation path to their spam filtering. When they get to the point that they’re blocking IP addresses or domains, it means the operator has really, really screwed up for a long time. The times I’ve seen widespread IP / domain blocks include (but aren’t limited to): 1) There’s been ongoing abuse that the operator just ignored for months and months. No one noticed that mail from that operator was going to spam, and then no one at the operator noticed the short term blocks and notices in their logs. The system was running unmonitored and was being abused and finally Google just decided that the sender didn’t care if their mail was accepted or not and blocked it. 2) There’s something about the configuration or technical setup that is triggering google to determine that the current system isn’t run by someone who understands modern email standards. Note: these requirements are higher for mail over IPv6 than IPv4 because Google (and many other folks receiving mail) expect that if you’re technically progressive enough to send mail over IPv6 then you can implement authentication, set up FcrDNS, use a EHLO value that maps back to the sending IP, set up SPF for EHLO, use TLS, etc. 3) The provider one is using has a clear history of allowing problematic mail (may not just be spam, could be malware or whatever) from their customers. Google will block mail with any mention of that provider - in headers, rDNS of the connecting IP, body of the message, whatever. I’ve seen less of this recently, but I don’t think Google is going to have removed that particular tool from their box. As I tell my clients: it takes at least as long to repair a reputation as it did to break it in the first place. The reality is it can often take longer because there’s a lot of bad actors out there and no system can actually be trusted to send good mail all the time. Fundamentally, though, whether or not we like google’s rules and their filtering (or Spamhaus’ or the RBL or UCEProtect or any of the other hundreds of services that filter mail) yelling about it on a public mailing list isn’t going to get them to change their rules. The people who can make changes are the users of the service by pointing out the service isn’t meeting their needs. And I say that as someone who has actually gotten multiple providers over the years to change their filtering when it was legitimately blocking mail it shouldn't. It required a lot of work, a lot of data gathering, and an openness to dialog on all sides. laura -- The Delivery Experts Laura Atkins Word to the Wise la...@wordtothewise.com Email Delivery Blog: http://wordtothewise.com/blog
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