On 4/26/2022 10:27 PM, Al Iverson via mailop wrote:
and solid spam folder placement
I disagree - and here is why:
(1) somewhere roughly around 5 to 10 years ago - there were numerous
articles/discussions about how the spam problem was largely "solved" -
and people were getting less spam in their inbox. Anecdotally, and for
perspective, around that time, I recall having a customer (for whom I
provide email hosting) who got ANGRY at me when they spotted 1 spam in
their inbox one particular day - 1 spam - and it wasn't even that
egregious (not a phish or virus, etc). Why? They had gotten so used to
seeing zero for many days in a row - that 1 was suddenly something to
get angry about. Remember those days? But now - several years later -
there is a building consensus that many are getting more and more
frustrated with what's suddenly making it past their spam folder and
into the inbox. So spam is suddenly a worse problem and is suddenly
UNsolved. I continually see articles about that frustration in my new
feeds. It didn't get that way overnight - more like it "snuck up on us"!
But it's suddenly hitting a critical mass in terms of recognition - it
more recently sort of "tipped the scales" - and the MAIN reason for this
- is largely BECAUSE of how much more such spams - much MORE than there
used to be even just a few years ago - are being sent from gmail,
g-suite, outlook/hotmail, o365, and various ESPs who have figured out
that they're "too big to block". The largest and most recent trend
contributing to this... is a huge surge in spam over the past several
months which are sent from gmail, as well as more ESPs providing
"tracking links" that enable the spammers to not have to expose their
own domains. The sudden increase in those two situations is causing this
to be an suddenly worsening situation.
(2) This is putting a larger burden on spam filtering and DNSBLs and
anti-spam tech providers. We're all having to work extra hard, in some
cases doing massive renovations to our data to handle these changes -
much of that, again, is due to gmail suddenly being the "wild west" -
that combined with as other such things that are causing
sending-IP-DNSBLs as well as lists that block based on the domain in the
links - to NOT work AT ALL for MANY of these types of spams. Therefore -
this is absolutely an "operational issue" - because the costs and
resources to deal with this - have been shifted from those who are
guilty of caring about the abuse sent from their networks - and which
they are often FACILITATING - to this cost being shifted the the
recipients' networks/systems which are being abused.
(3) And even the spam filtering success you're seeing - where filters
are putting these in the spam folder - those situations STILL suddenly
require a larger amount of costs and resources on the part of the spam
tech departments and tech-providers - as a DIRECT result of how these
other systems are more often now facilitating the exact types of spams
that take more tech and more resources (CPU, more anti-spam tech added,
etc) to catch!
(4) As a result - for 1 example - before too long from now - the
majority of spam that invaluement data will be blocking - won't even be
due to the types of data we're currently delivering - we're currently
having to re-engineer our entire system as a result of this - doing the
R&D over the past 4 years (that's finally coming to fruition), what had
previously been done over the previous 12 years (btw - as a result - I
don't have a life right now - haven't had one in many months! Gee
thanks, gmail). And that's representative of this cost-shifting and
burden-shifting - that is ethically reprehensible.
--
Rob McEwen, invaluement
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