On 25/12/17 23:57, Bill Cole wrote:
On 25 Dec 2017, at 3:28 (-0500), Sebastian Arcus wrote:
Also, any idea why are there 6 different rules associated with this
particular whitelist?
IADB has many independent return codes that each have distinct meaning.
See
http://www.isipp.com/email-accreditation/about-the-codes/list-of-codes/
for details.
If you get mail from an IADB-listed sender that you are 100% sure is
spam (i.e. not "I would never ask for such mail" but "the recipient
absolutely did not consent to receiving this mail.") then you should
report that to ISIPP. "ab...@suretymail.com" is the reporting address
listed on their website and while I've not had cause to use it, people I
trust with no reason to lie say that reports to that address do actually
work to either change sender behavior or eliminate listings. Anne
Mitchell (head of ISIPP) is an ex-coworker of mine whose integrity and
dedication to the anti-spam fight (which is dependent on keeping
*wanted* mail deliverable) I can personally vouch for.
However, the different responses from IADB are VERY nuanced and the two
strongest rules you listed (RCVD_IN_IADB_OPTIN and RCVD_IN_IADB_VOUCHED)
are essentially "good intentions" markers. Due to unfortunate
terminology choices by ISIPP and a willingness to engage in nuance and
estimate intentions, those aren't really as worthwhile as they might
seem. The IADB definition of "All mailing list mail is opt-in" is
(effectively) "we believe that this ESP believes in good faith that
every recipient has chosen to receive this mail." Their "vouching" for a
record is an assertion that either the ESP is personally known to ISIPP
staff as competent and honest OR has maintained stable positive listings
for >6 months. I'm pretty sure I don't want ANY score for a non-vouched
record and unlike ISIPP (and some valuable SA contributors!) I really
don't care much about ESPs' intentions or responsiveness to complaints,
only about actual spamming behavior. So I have made substantial
modification on my own system to how IADB results are scored, but those
specific adjustments are probably not fit for most other sites.
Thank you for a detailed reply. Like you as well, I don't put much
weight on what ESP's say they do or intend to do. I'm afraid the email
marketing industry is rather murky and the line between legitimate
marketing and spamming is often pretty much non-existent - with
apologies to those few operators who actually run an honest operation. I
see daily examples of supposedly legit operators who don't actually act
on unsubscribe requests, or 'magically' re-subscribe after a while, or
simply get around rules by creating a new list and re-subscribing
everybody who unsubscribed. And frankly, the whole issue of consent is
blurred beyond any usefulness. If you have ever made the mistake of
leaving the tick box selected for "receive offers from our carefully
selected partners", it is virtually impossible to take that consent
back, as your email address gets passed from database to database, never
to be removed again. Besides, with most people purchasing things from so
many different sources, and creating accounts on so many websites, how
many would actually be able to say for sure (and prove it) that they
never gave consent to be emailed by "carefully selected partners"? So
you will excuse me if I take any whitelist which helps marketing
emailing lists "improve deliverability" with a very big dollop of salt.
