Re: [mailop] The oligopoly has won.

[Paul Kincaid-Smith via mailop]

We have a reasonably large sample of messages sent from Gmail, Yahoo and
Outlook and can assess how much was "spam foldered" by each of those
services. We are in the same ballpark as John Levine, who estimated that
"about 30% of the mail I get from Gmail is spam."

EmailGrades collects metrics about senders and receivers, primarily to
measure inbox placement and recipient engagement for commercial ESPs vs a
cohort of their peers, but we also have insights regarding messages sent by
mailbox providers like Gmail, Yahoo and Outlook. For the month of August
2022, millions of messages received from Gmail, Yahoo and Outlook's
email infrastructure by hundreds of thousands of panel mailboxes reveals
the following spam foldering rates:

  Received at Gmail | Received at Yahoo | Received at
Outlook
Sent from Gmail   16% 38% 49%
Sent from Outlook 47% 78% 47%
Sent from Yahoo5%  3%  9%

The way to read this table is, "Of the messages received by our Yahoo panel
mailboxes, 38% of those sent by Gmail were routed to Yahoo's spam folder"
and "Of the messages received by our Outlook panel mailboxes, 9% of those
sent by Yahoo were routed to Outlook's junk mail folder" and "Of the
messages received by our Gmail panel mailboxes, 47% of those sent by
Outlook were routed to Gmail's spam folder."

All other things being equal, Outlook filters messages from Gmail most
aggressively. Yahoo filters messages from Outlook most aggressively.
Outlook filters messages from Yahoo most aggressively.

Outlook's spam percentages are higher than Gmail's but that may be because
Outlook chooses to block less outbound mail and instead flags
questionable outbound messages, sending them via a pool of IPs that ought
to receive additional filtering scrutiny.

(Note: This analysis only summarizes the disposition of messages that were
actually delivered, either to the inbox or to the spam folder. The messages
that were blackholed are not accounted for here. This sample also excludes
messages sent or relayed by commercial ISPs on behalf of these mailbox
providers' sender domains.)

-- Paul Kincaid-Smith

On Mon, Sep 12, 2022 at 1:53 PM Brandon Long via mailop 
wrote:

>
>
> On Mon, Sep 12, 2022 at 10:26 AM Grant Taylor via mailop <
> mailop@mailop.org> wrote:
>
>> On 9/12/22 5:13 AM, Thomas Walter via mailop wrote:
>> > What bothers me most is that the oligopoly makes it impossible to
>> > deliver emails to protect their users from spam, yet it is the biggest
>> > source of it…
>>
>> Does anyone have any evidence that shows that the big players are the
>> biggest source of spam /by/ /percentage/ of outgoing messages?
>>
>
John Levine observed:


*Probably not, but it's the largest source of hard to filter spam.  It
looksto me like about 30% of the mail I get from Gmail is spam, and
reliably*
*filtering that using just content clues is hard.*


>
>> I absolutely agree that they are the biggest source of spam /by/ /volume/.
>>
>> Sadly even a super tiny percentage of a huge volume is still a big
>> volume in and of itself.  It's just math.
>>
>
> I don't think they are the biggest source of spam by volume either, but I
> think there
> is a very large amount of spam which targets just the large providers, or
> most of them.
>
> By their very nature, the personal servers that people are talking about
> here just don't see
> the same volume of spam.
>
> Gmail certainly receives an order of magnitude more spam attempts each day
> than all of the
> email that gmail sends.   So, no, we are not the biggest source by volume.
>
> We deal with spam campaigns with message counts in the billions,  I'm not
> sure how any
> personal server sees anything remotely representative of the big picture.
>
> Brandon
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Re: [mailop] Howto be a good mailop (best practice / insights wanted)

[Paul Kincaid-Smith via mailop]

Hi Stefan,

I am encouraged that you're choosing to be proactive and want to configure
your platform and processes to reduce the risk of email abuse.

M3AAWG, the Messaging, Mobile and Malware Anti-Abuse Working Group has
published numerous best practices documents to help senders and ESPs reduce
abusive email:
https://www.m3aawg.org/published-documents

A few that will interest you:
https://www.m3aawg.org/sites/default/files/document/M3AAWG_Senders_BCP_Ver3-2015-02.pdf
https://www.m3aawg.org/sites/default/files/m3aawg-senders-complaint-handling-2017-12.pdf
https://www.m3aawg.org/sites/default/files/document/MAAWG_Vetting_BCP_2011-11.pdf
https://www.m3aawg.org/sites/default/files/document/CodeofConduct.pdf
https://www.m3aawg.org/sites/default/files/m3aawg-dkim-key-rotation-bp-2019-03.pdf

If your service will enable customers to collect email addresses via a web
form, you can reduce the risk of list bombing:
https://www.m3aawg.org/rel-WebFormHeader

As your email volume grows, you may qualify for a Gmail Postmaster Tools
account, which can provide helpful insight:
https://www.gmail.com/postmaster/

Regards,

Paul Kincaid-Smith
EmailGrades

On Wed, May 8, 2019 at 10:48 AM Stefan Bauer via mailop 
wrote:

> Hi,
>
>
> we're providing a small smtp sent-service for our customers (via
> submission port / auth only - postfix). ~ 7.000 outgoing mails / day (via 2
> hosts in different data centers/ip networks).
>
>
> As the amount of mails increase, we would like to be ready for
>
>
> - stolen auth-data to our service is used for sending spam
>
>
> - broken clients send thousand of mails/minute
>
>
> - one of our pub-ips get blacklisted / rerouting traffic?
>
>
> - ISPs block our complete provider networks (and we are included)
>
>
> - Perm-blocks with 5xx, always return all 5xx to senders?
>
>
>
> How do you guys prepare yourself for this?
>
>
> we have in place:
>
>
> only allow pre-defined sender-addresses after auth
>
> monitor mail-queues for high connection count
>
> monitor RBLs if we're listed
>
> only allow single mail / 5s to be sent outgoing
>
> anti-virus checking of attachments
>
>
> Would be awesome to get some insight how "big sites" handle this and maybe
> other cases.
>
>
> Thank you!
>
>
> Stefan
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Re: [mailop] How long does an IP address take to "Warm up"?

[Paul Kincaid-Smith via mailop]

Hi Robert,

Gmail's systems are very sensitive to sudden changes. Start with just a
few/tens of emails the first day and ramp up slowly -- an *order of
magnitude* at a time. Eventually their machine learning systems will
discover that recipients want your mail and adjust accordingly.

Paul

On Wed, Apr 13, 2016 at 4:39 AM, Robert Guthrie  wrote:

> Hello list,
>
> I run a group decision making app. We send about 40,000 transactional
> emails a day, with very good open rates.
>
> I recently setup a new SMTP on a new IP address, emails to Google Apps
> accounts take a few hours to arrive do to throttling on Google's end. I
> wish I'd reused the old IP address, because those emails always arrived
> immediately.
>
> After about a week I'm still seeing 1 hour delays on things like password
> reset emails. How long does this warm up process typically take? Is there
> anything I can do to reduce the delay time?
>
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Re: [mailop] Hotmail connection errors

[Paul Kincaid-Smith via mailop]

Confirmed. SendGrid saw these begin today at about 10 am Central time, with
a peak around 5 pm Central. Looks like Microsoft's team resolved the
problem by 7 pm Central. This is one more reason why senders can't classify
all 5xx bounces as permanent. And future delivery to these recipient
addresses should not be suppressed. Messy.



On Wed, Apr 6, 2016 at 5:18 PM, Al Iverson <aiver...@spamresource.com>
wrote:

> Yep, I'm now also seeing 554 Transaction Failed bounces for valid Hotmail
> recipients.
>
> Cheers,
> Al Iverson
>
>
> --
> Al Iverson
> www.aliverson.com
> (312)725-0130
>
> On Wed, Apr 6, 2016 at 2:55 PM, Sanket Jain <sanketj...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> ​I dont see anything unusual. ​
>>
>> Thanks
>>
>> Sanket
>> ​Maropost​
>>
>>
>>
>> On Wed, Apr 6, 2016 at 3:00 PM, Paul Kincaid-Smith via mailop <
>> mailop@mailop.org> wrote:
>>
>>> Hi Tara,
>>>
>>> We don't see anything unusual on our end, either.
>>>
>>>
>>> Paul Kincaid-Smith
>>> VP of Email Delivery
>>> w: +1-303-625-7009
>>>
>>> SendGrid -- Email Delivery. Simplified.
>>>
>>> On Wed, Apr 6, 2016 at 11:25 AM, Matt Vernhout <zvernh...@gmail.com>
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>>> Sorry Tara,
>>>>
>>>> Haven't seen anything on our end.
>>>>
>>>> ~
>>>> Matt
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On Wed, Apr 6, 2016 at 12:42 PM, Tara Natanson <tar...@natanson.net>
>>>> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> Hello,
>>>>>
>>>>> For about the last hour we have seen a huge spike in connection errors
>>>>> and timeouts at Hotmail MXs.  They are holding connections open for a long
>>>>> time and then simply timing out.  Spread across entire netblock.
>>>>>
>>>>> Anyone else seeing similar?
>>>>>
>>>>> Tara Natanson
>>>>>
>>>>>
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>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>
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>>>>
>>>>
>>>
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>>>
>>
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>
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Re: [mailop] Hotmail connection errors

[Paul Kincaid-Smith via mailop]

Hi Tara,

We don't see anything unusual on our end, either.


Paul Kincaid-Smith
VP of Email Delivery
w: +1-303-625-7009

SendGrid -- Email Delivery. Simplified.

On Wed, Apr 6, 2016 at 11:25 AM, Matt Vernhout  wrote:

> Sorry Tara,
>
> Haven't seen anything on our end.
>
> ~
> Matt
>
>
> On Wed, Apr 6, 2016 at 12:42 PM, Tara Natanson 
> wrote:
>
>> Hello,
>>
>> For about the last hour we have seen a huge spike in connection errors
>> and timeouts at Hotmail MXs.  They are holding connections open for a long
>> time and then simply timing out.  Spread across entire netblock.
>>
>> Anyone else seeing similar?
>>
>> Tara Natanson
>>
>>
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>
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Re: [mailop] What to do with Amazon SES?

[Paul Kincaid-Smith via mailop]

Hi Petar,

Amazon has an email-specific abuse address: email-ab...@amazon.com. Let me
know if you need to escalate, and I'll make off-list introductions to the
good folks on Amazon's email anti-spam team.

Cheers,

Paul Kincaid-Smith
VP of Email Delivery

SendGrid -- Email Delivery. Simplified.

On Thu, Feb 11, 2016 at 10:17 AM, Petar Bogdanovic  wrote:

> How should one handle Amazon SES abuse?  I'm seeing more and more junk
> from them but I also don't remember my abuse reports getting far.
>
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