Re: Ready to throw in the towel on email providing...
Ted Mittelstaedt wrote: Bob Proulx wrote: Ted Mittelstaedt wrote: What do other people do? Or are we just going to end up with an Internet in about 10 years where every single email box is either on Microsoft 365 or Gmail and the NSA has a wonderful interface to use to hunt through whatever they want without bothering with a warrant? One of my clients switched from a classic local imaps mail server over to Gmail. The logic was the same as all of your reasoning. Even though I have reservations and I won't be using Gmail I didn't oppose them switching. It would be inefficient for me to work against the massive corporations of Google and MS. It is all just as you said. Once some technology goes to the masses it becomes a cost margin game. The cheapest product that can be offered will win regardless of quality. Which means that by most measures of quality it will suffer. But it will be impossible to avoid. Gmail and MS Outlook 365 have a different cost model. Users agree to be the product sold to advertisers. Margins like that mean that small IT companies cannot compete. It would stress me out to try. Hey Bob I think you missed something in my OP. The customer leaving ISN'T paying LESS to gmail. They are paying slightly more, in fact. Hmm... Maybe I did since I assumed Google and Microsoft and others were going to be to be the lowest cost. But you were also asking what other people do. What I do is that I sidestep the issue by doing something else. And as to your next question I think that yes in ten years almost all general consumers will have their email box at one of the big box companies. Which of course means that everyone will too because if you and I personally do not everyone we correspond with will and so a copy of our messages will be there regardless of what we do. That is bad. I will continue to support the free(dom) software side of things and hopefully that day will be further off. I don't have a problem flying under gmail and office 365's prices on mailboxes. I tip my hat to you for being efficient. That is quite hard to do. I can't do it. In this case I wasn't selling email services. I was simply doing some admin work upon the customers servers. But I wasn't in a position to dissuade them with a counter offering. And so off to Gmail they went. And then half of them later to Outlook. Yes there are customers out there going to the free gmail. No, I don't attempt to compete with that. But this wasn't that situation. I think it might also be a cultural thing developing. Some of these service companies are so large that they are becoming embedded in the culture. You wouldn't think of baby food without thinking of Gerber. You wouldn't think of mayonnaise without thinking of Kraft. These days when people think of email I think most of them think of something that happens on a web page. These days when people think of email they think of Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, others on the Internet as a Software As A Service over a web page and not of smtp port 25 arriving to their personal desktop. I was in a planning meeting with someone a week ago. We were talking about networking and firewalls and routing and infrastructure improvements and that type of thing. The servers send system email notifications (root mail) but do not receive any email. Several times other people kept raising points that I couldn't block their email. I pointed out that Gmail uses https over the web. Blank stares. Isn't that email? No, that is the web, they use a web browser for it. Ten minutes later basically the same conversation again. And then yet again later. To them email is a Gmail web page. It is hard for me in a few minutes to educate someone who has learned something repeated over a decade. In other words, the gist of your argument is, if you can't beat them, go elsewhere. Yes. But I didn't say they were unbeatable. You asked what other people do. I told you what I do. That's fine if you want to do that. But my question wasn't that, my question was, essentially, how are other people beating them? Your not really even trying to answer my post. On the contrary. I was trying to answer your post. I may have misunderstood what you were asking. You had asked what do other people do. I told you what I do. Perhaps you should have asked a different question? :-) I don't subscribe to the theory that any one company is unbeatable. People used to think of IBM like that until Microsoft proved them wrong. Then people used to think of Microsoft like that until iPads and Android proved them wrong. But I can tell you this - Microsoft tried a lot of things before hitting on the combination that worked against IBM and Google tried a lot of things before hitting on the combination that beat Microsoft. There is a combination out there that will beat Gmail it is just a matter of figuring out what it is. I don't think
Re: Ready to throw in the towel on email providing...
On 8/5/2014 4:01 PM, Bob Proulx wrote: Ted Mittelstaedt wrote: What do other people do? Or are we just going to end up with an Internet in about 10 years where every single email box is either on Microsoft 365 or Gmail and the NSA has a wonderful interface to use to hunt through whatever they want without bothering with a warrant? One of my clients switched from a classic local imaps mail server over to Gmail. The logic was the same as all of your reasoning. Even though I have reservations and I won't be using Gmail I didn't oppose them switching. It would be inefficient for me to work against the massive corporations of Google and MS. It is all just as you said. Once some technology goes to the masses it becomes a cost margin game. The cheapest product that can be offered will win regardless of quality. Which means that by most measures of quality it will suffer. But it will be impossible to avoid. Gmail and MS Outlook 365 have a different cost model. Users agree to be the product sold to advertisers. Margins like that mean that small IT companies cannot compete. It would stress me out to try. Hey Bob I think you missed something in my OP. The customer leaving ISN'T paying LESS to gmail. They are paying slightly more, in fact. I don't have a problem flying under gmail and office 365's prices on mailboxes. Yes there are customers out there going to the free gmail. No, I don't attempt to compete with that. But this wasn't that situation. Instead I have turned my attention to other areas that I can provide benefit that is not addressed by the large corporations. People still have other needs that need system administration. Just not email. This had a side benefit later. As in many environments there were factions and arguments. At this place one faction liked Google and Gmail. But another faction liked Microsoft and Outlook. A power struggle broke about between the two factions. The splinter faction broke off and moved half of the email accounts over to Outlook. There were cries of foul and requests for features from all around. Infighting. I imagine the same thing happens in reverse in many places. If I had been the admin for their local email when the MS faction appeared I would have been in the middle of the battle. It would have been stressful. Since I wasn't I could honestly say that I wasn't involved and it was a battle between Google Gmail and MS Outlook 365. It was good not to be wearing a target around me. Instead by not being pinned between the gorillas I could concentrate on adding value in other places. The job mutates and is different but still continues. In other words, the gist of your argument is, if you can't beat them, go elsewhere. That's fine if you want to do that. But my question wasn't that, my question was, essentially, how are other people beating them? Your not really even trying to answer my post. I don't subscribe to the theory that any one company is unbeatable. People used to think of IBM like that until Microsoft proved them wrong. Then people used to think of Microsoft like that until iPads and Android proved them wrong. But I can tell you this - Microsoft tried a lot of things before hitting on the combination that worked against IBM and Google tried a lot of things before hitting on the combination that beat Microsoft. There is a combination out there that will beat Gmail it is just a matter of figuring out what it is. You can believe that email providing is a lost cause then try going into system admin work. But there's a lot of people already operating in the system admin workspace, so your just exchanging one set of competition problems for another. One other thing I will add to the narrative. I followed up with the customer who is leaving and found some other things to add to the pot. It turns out this customer had not upgraded any of their PC workstations, everything they had was still on Windows XP, and Office 2003. One of their biggest reasons for going to Google Apps is the idea that doing this would allow them to avoid the cost of buying 20 copies of Office 2013. When I pointed out that they were still on Windows XP that was not supported and they would have to address the cost of buying new PC gear and operating systems for it, they said that they were hoping to get another year out of their existing hardware. And yes, this was straight out of the mouth of the business owner. So in the long run, there's 2 takeaways here. The first and most important one - one that I have to keep reminding myself - is simply that some businesses just don't value email, or computer technology. They regard all of that stuff as a cost-suck and drain that does not contribute to their bottom line. So any possible way they can skimp on that they believe is a good thing. Trying to sell technology to those kinds of customers is, in the long run, a waste of time. Even if you have the lowest
Re: Ready to throw in the towel on email providing...
Ted Mittelstaedt wrote: What do other people do? Or are we just going to end up with an Internet in about 10 years where every single email box is either on Microsoft 365 or Gmail and the NSA has a wonderful interface to use to hunt through whatever they want without bothering with a warrant? One of my clients switched from a classic local imaps mail server over to Gmail. The logic was the same as all of your reasoning. Even though I have reservations and I won't be using Gmail I didn't oppose them switching. It would be inefficient for me to work against the massive corporations of Google and MS. It is all just as you said. Once some technology goes to the masses it becomes a cost margin game. The cheapest product that can be offered will win regardless of quality. Which means that by most measures of quality it will suffer. But it will be impossible to avoid. Gmail and MS Outlook 365 have a different cost model. Users agree to be the product sold to advertisers. Margins like that mean that small IT companies cannot compete. It would stress me out to try. Instead I have turned my attention to other areas that I can provide benefit that is not addressed by the large corporations. People still have other needs that need system administration. Just not email. This had a side benefit later. As in many environments there were factions and arguments. At this place one faction liked Google and Gmail. But another faction liked Microsoft and Outlook. A power struggle broke about between the two factions. The splinter faction broke off and moved half of the email accounts over to Outlook. There were cries of foul and requests for features from all around. Infighting. I imagine the same thing happens in reverse in many places. If I had been the admin for their local email when the MS faction appeared I would have been in the middle of the battle. It would have been stressful. Since I wasn't I could honestly say that I wasn't involved and it was a battle between Google Gmail and MS Outlook 365. It was good not to be wearing a target around me. Instead by not being pinned between the gorillas I could concentrate on adding value in other places. The job mutates and is different but still continues. Bob
Re: RBL effectiveness (was Re: Ready to throw in the towel on email providing...)
On Thu, Jul 31, 2014 at 1:06 AM, Noel Butler noel.but...@ausics.net wrote: There is no such thing as 'too big' when it comes to handling the shit storm of spam that gets spewed out of some organisations, and I'll treat Gmail and the likes the same as a ma 'n pa run outback country dialup ISP, there is At dnswl.org we use two measures that may be helpful in this context. The first is the magnitude of a sender as we observe it. A magnitude of 10.0 represents 100% traffic, 9.0 10%, 8.0 1% and so on. The other is the magnitude of spamminess. This is an artificial measure which indicates the relative spamminess of a particular DNSWL record (based on the number of days it's IPs have been on certain blacklists with a certain weight for each blacklist, number of abuse reports we receive etc). Both numbers are not fully accurate, but at least the error is consistent. For the examples of Yahoo and Google often cited, by spamminess they are ranked at number 173 and 174 (yes, by chance just side-by-side). By their sender magnitude, they are placed at number 1 and 2 (Google with considerable distance to Yahoo, followed by Mailchimp, Hotmail and Facebook). Note that the spamminess magnitude is _not_ a direct measure of number of spam sent. Blocking Yahoo or Google based on their spamminess is actually not justified. Taken together with their sheer size makes them a noticeable problem - but if the SMTP traffic would come out from other, less well-managed networks, the situation could actually be worse. -- Matthias For stats freaks: Top Senders by Monthly Magnitude with Spamminess: google.com 8.55 7.26 yahoo.com 8.15 7.26 mailchimp.com 8.13 6.84 hotmail.com 8.07 7.04 facebook.com 8.02 6.48 exacttarget.com 7.95 5.82 amazonses.com 7.86 6.01 outlook.com 7.87 6.88 * sendgrid.com 7.87 6.30 linkedin.com 7.83 5.68 cheetahmail.com 7.76 5.68 messagelabs.com 7.68 5.92 twitter.com 7.54 none ** emailvision.com 7.56 7.17 constantcontact.com 7.59 6.19 responsys.com 7.48 5.55 emarsys.net 7.36 6.60 silverpop.com 7.45 5.86 postini.com 7.43 5.95 *** * Can be considered jointly with hotmail.com ** We discard spamminess 5.0 due to the tiny numbers and low reliability *** Can be considered jointly with google.com The Top Spamminess report is not intended for publication, as we don't want to nameshame (and there is still some cleanup to do on our end). Rank 100 in the top spamminess report has a spamminess magnitude of 7.48.
Re: Ready to throw in the towel on email providing...
On Tue, 29 Jul 2014 18:05:11 -0700 Ted Mittelstaedt t...@ipinc.net wrote: Eventually something will supplany MSFT and yes, even Google will fade eventually. People used to say that about General Motors Ford Motor Company 100 years ago. Except for unconscionable intervention by the US and Canadian governments, General Motors would have been history. And Ford has nowhere near the dominance it had 100 years ago. [...] Email providing IT NOT A NICHE MARKET. That is crazy and false. It is a commodity market. Yes, exactly. And there is *no way* you can compete in a commodity market with behemoths. So you need to find some differentiating niche that you can service that the behemoths either cannot service or don't care to service. [...] This is why your we only want to sell to the smart people plays so well. It's absolutely spot on that same line of sales baloney, and since your small you can make it believable, as an added bonus. It works for me. That is one of the other reasons that this perception that Gmails spam filtering is superior. Gmail's spam filtering is at least as good as stock SpamAssassin, and honestly I think it's better. You can achieve equal quality with SpamAssassin if you're willing to work at it. But it does take a lot of work. Because the public swallows the advertising that their product IS unique and special, and NOT commodity, because when weak people are yelled at with the same thing every day, they start to believe it must be true. I don't think that's why most customers use Gmail or O-365. IMO, they use those products because they've heard of them. Brand awareness is key in a commodity market. Email today IS COMMODITY. We are all selling the same product. This baloney about there being a special niche in email is just baloney. You are confusing a niche market with a niche product. Yes, email is commodity, but there are indeed niche markets. We service several of them quite nicely: Managed Service Providers, educational institutions, European national research and education networks. These niche markets care about things that Microsoft and Google don't offer. The Achilles heel of Google and Microsoft is that they cannot provide decent customer service and remain profitable. We and most small companies can and that's a huge differentiator. For example, we recently had a support ticket created by someone who wasn't a customer of ours, but who was trying to email a customer of ours and got a bounce. Within 20 minutes, we'd tracked down the email, found out what happened, and reported back. Both the requestor and our customer were impressed with the care we took to track down the email and resolve the problem. Try that with Google sometime... Regards, David.
Re: Ready to throw in the towel on email providing...
On 2014-07-31 07:39, David F. Skoll wrote: Gmail's spam filtering is at least as good as stock SpamAssassin, and honestly I think it's better. You can achieve equal quality with SpamAssassin if you're willing to work at it. But it does take a lot of work. This is the real difference with Gmail -- You don't have to work at it. Gmail controls the client and the server, their spam filtering learns based on how you interact with messages. They also have some impressive bayes-type categorization which narrows messages into far more specific categories than just a spam or not spam, and it profiles what types of messages you are likely to *want* vs *not want* rather than what is technically spam. Open messages frequently? Click on multiple links? Those messages, and messages similar to them, are less likely to be spam. Leave something in your mailbox for days/weeks and delete it without reading it? You might not miss it next time. It's the level of personalization that makes Gmail appear to be so amazing to users, it has an understanding that one message might be spam to you, and not spam to someone else, and it uses your own history to make that decision on freshly received messages. To me, it's not worth the price as a primary mailbox (privacy, security, control of data, terrible UI usability), but the filtering alone is impressive. -- Dave Warren http://www.hireahit.com/ http://ca.linkedin.com/in/davejwarren
Re: RBL effectiveness (was Re: Ready to throw in the towel on email providing...)
On 31/07/2014 11:36, Dave Warren wrote: There is a difference: Gmail is a very major source of wanted, legitimate mail. Most may 'n pa run outback country dialup ISPs are not. Most mail to most clients are a very major source of wanted mail Again, playing favourites is plain wrong, and it is exactly why gmail have the spam problems they do because again, they think they are like the untouchables and nobody dare do anything about them, well, when we blocked them, IIRC last time was for around 3 months, and a lot of angry emails from our clients to THEM, finally got their attention and they removed a handful of spammers, or so they eventually claimed. so yeah it took 3 months, but in the end, it got them off their arse. If you don't care about interacting with prospective or current customers, you might be able to afford to block Gmail. At $DAYJOB, we can't. Thats a stupid statement, it's because I do care that I take such actions, every SP wants to keep clients, cares and interacts with them, but clients these days actually have an IQ higher than most peoples shoe size, they know the world will always have a spam problem, they known full well SP's need to take whatever action they can to stop or reduce it, hell, they even expect it. 99% of users are POP3, if they were mostly IMAP, I would have other options, like just auto scoring all gmail messages high enough to always end up in Junk folders. Do you know the number of clients that argued blocking gmail for spam was wrong? None Do you know the number of clients we lost because of blocking gmail for spam? None
Re: RBL effectiveness (was Re: Ready to throw in the towel on email providing...)
On Wed, 30 Jul 2014 09:34:30 +1000 Noel Butler noel.but...@ausics.net wrote: This is the exact attitude as to why they wont get off their arses, because people think they are too big to block. be damned if I care, I have blocked yahoo and gmail before, and I dare say I'll have to again sometime. You don't have paying customers for whom you relay email, do you? Regards, David.
Re: RBL effectiveness (was Re: Ready to throw in the towel on email providing...)
On 2014-07-30 06:12, David F. Skoll wrote: On Wed, 30 Jul 2014 09:34:30 +1000 Noel Butler noel.but...@ausics.net wrote: This is the exact attitude as to why they wont get off their arses, because people think they are too big to block. be damned if I care, I have blocked yahoo and gmail before, and I dare say I'll have to again sometime. You don't have paying customers for whom you relay email, do you? I know as a fact that I wouldn't have many left if I intentionally blocked mail they wanted, and the reality of it is that they want mail from users of freemail services. The sheer number of complaints we get when mail to Yahoo is deferred is enough to give us a taste of what would happen if we did start interfering with the flow of legitimate mail between us and Yahoo, and Gmail is a much bigger player. Luckily there are other tools available than blanket IP-level or provider-level blocks. -- Dave Warren http://www.hireahit.com/ http://ca.linkedin.com/in/davejwarren
Re: RBL effectiveness (was Re: Ready to throw in the towel on email providing...)
On Wed, 2014-07-30 at 09:12 -0400, David F. Skoll wrote: On Wed, 30 Jul 2014 09:34:30 +1000 Noel Butler noel.but...@ausics.net wrote: This is the exact attitude as to why they wont get off their arses, because people think they are too big to block. be damned if I care, I have blocked yahoo and gmail before, and I dare say I'll have to again sometime. You don't have paying customers for whom you relay email, do you? Regards, David. Certainly have done it on employers network before (a public ISP), and would have no problem doing it again if the need arose. There is no such thing as 'too big' when it comes to handling the shit storm of spam that gets spewed out of some organisations, and I'll treat Gmail and the likes the same as a ma 'n pa run outback country dialup ISP, there is no difference in my eyes, the fact that many see there is, is exactly why the likes of Gmail don't give a rats about spam complaints, if more operators started taking a stand, and directed their users bitching about blocked mail to Gmail etc, maybe Google etc, will pull their finger out of their ears (amongst other places) and not only listen, but act. It's in their interest to play nice, they make money by data mining every single Gmail users account, targeting, and advertising, if they keep getting blocked, less people will use them, they will start to notice the impact on their bottom line sooner or later. signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part
Re: RBL effectiveness (was Re: Ready to throw in the towel on email providing...)
On Thu, 2014-07-31 at 09:06 +1000, Noel Butler wrote: Certainly have done it on employers network before (a public ISP), and would have no problem doing it again if the need arose. There is no such thing as 'too big' when it comes to handling the shit storm of spam that gets spewed out of some organisations, and I'll treat Gmail and the likes the same as a ma 'n pa run outback country dialup ISP, there is no difference in my eyes, the fact that many see there is, is exactly why the likes of Gmail don't give a rats about spam complaints, if more operators started taking a stand, and directed their users bitching about blocked mail to Gmail etc, maybe Google etc, will pull their finger out of their ears (amongst other places) and not only listen, but act. It's in their interest to play nice, they make money by data mining every single Gmail users account, targeting, and advertising, if they keep getting blocked, less people will use them, they will start to notice the impact on their bottom line sooner or later. Too true, Blue. That answer deserves a Darwin Stubby.
Re: RBL effectiveness (was Re: Ready to throw in the towel on email providing...)
On 2014-07-30 16:06, Noel Butler wrote: Certainly have done it on employers network before (a public ISP), and would have no problem doing it again if the need arose. There is no such thing as 'too big' when it comes to handling the shit storm of spam that gets spewed out of some organisations, and I'll treat Gmail and the likes the same as a ma 'n pa run outback country dialup ISP, there is no difference in my eyes, the fact that many see there is, is exactly why the likes of Gmail don't give a rats about spam complaints, if more operators started taking a stand, and directed their users bitching about blocked mail to Gmail etc, maybe Google etc, will pull their finger out of their ears (amongst other places) and not only listen, but act. There is a difference: Gmail is a very major source of wanted, legitimate mail. Most may 'n pa run outback country dialup ISPs are not. A substantial percentage of our pre-sales inquiries come from Gmail addresses (even if the final purchase use a legitimate corporate mailbox -- We're B2B, we don't sell to consumers), and a surprisingly large percentage of actual corporate addresses are hosted on Google Apps. We literally can't afford to discard all mail from Gmail any more than we could afford to de-list ourselves from Google's search index, the hit to our business would be substantial. If you don't care about interacting with prospective or current customers, you might be able to afford to block Gmail. At $DAYJOB, we can't. -- Dave Warren http://www.hireahit.com/ http://ca.linkedin.com/in/davejwarren
Re: Ready to throw in the towel on email providing...
On 28.07.14 10:29, Nate Metheny wrote: Sadly, until SMTP is rewritten and we're not using protocols on the Internet that have been based on very very old code and then just patched and updated ad infinitum, there isn't a sure fire solution. More patches, more fixes, more filters, more overhead, more wasted CPU time and bandwidth. You Might Be An Anti-Spam Kook If... The FUSSP involves replacing SMTP. http://www.rhyolite.com/anti-spam/you-might-be.html#programmer-11 -- Matus UHLAR - fantomas, uh...@fantomas.sk ; http://www.fantomas.sk/ Warning: I wish NOT to receive e-mail advertising to this address. Varovanie: na tuto adresu chcem NEDOSTAVAT akukolvek reklamnu postu. Saving Private Ryan... Private Ryan exists. Overwrite? (Y/N)
Re: Ready to throw in the towel on email providing...
On 07/29/2014 09:11 AM, Matus UHLAR - fantomas wrote: On 28.07.14 10:29, Nate Metheny wrote: Sadly, until SMTP is rewritten and we're not using protocols on the Internet that have been based on very very old code and then just patched and updated ad infinitum, there isn't a sure fire solution. More patches, more fixes, more filters, more overhead, more wasted CPU time and bandwidth. You Might Be An Anti-Spam Kook If... The FUSSP involves replacing SMTP. http://www.rhyolite.com/anti-spam/you-might-be.html#programmer-11 and in the meantime, one has to be creative SA offers an arsenal of tools but we shouldn't take it for granted that volunteers to do the job for us. we could, one should, SA should are pipe dreams as long as admins are not willing to contribute. This is one of the reasons why projetcs like SARE died (wave @Chris Santerre!) It seems to be sign of the times that ppl have a hard time with commitment, spamfighters are getting closer to retirement age and apparently, the next generation doesn't find spam fighting sexy. So what can be done? raise your hand if you're willing to contribute, is a starting point... ... best regards from yet another retired SARE Ninja
Re: Ready to throw in the towel on email providing...
On 7/28/2014 4:17 PM, Jay Plesset wrote: My church decided to go with O-365, without even evaluating any alternatives. We have an unemployed IT person that talked the staff into this, even though I've offered to implement a real e-mail solution multiple times, and even provide hardware to run it on. Apparently they didn't understand if the guy was an unemployed IT person there was a reason he was unemployed! free was the biggest draw, then no administration. *sigh*. But, the no administration isn't true at all. There's still administration. Does Microsoft provide Office 365 free to churches? I know that they had ridiculously cheap server license pricing (through their Charity Pricing program) but I didn't know they had got to Free with Office 365? I did a lot of work for my families church a decade ago in the volunteer area. Both on the building committee and IT work for them. I learned after a year that if your goal is to have people who don't understand or appreciate what you do for them, and shit all over what you do for them, volunteer for a church. There's a reason most churches constantly solicit for volunteers. A church is the only place that a professional tradesperson can volunteer his services and during the job be told that he's doing it wrong, by people who have never held a wrench, paintbrush, pipe threader, network cable, you name it. I actually saw one time a couple come in and paint a large room in the church, used very good paint, excellent coverage, masked off everything, etc. and when they left the room looked like a pro had done it - no paint runs or drips where they weren't supposed to be etc. Then 2 weeks later the church paid to have a professional come in and paint the room - again - same color - same paint. When I asked why, I was told we had the painters scheduled for that room, they should have asked us before painting in there This is the kind of politics you run into with church volunteering. Ted jay plesset IT, dp-design.com On 7/28/2014 3:49 PM, Ian Zimmerman wrote: On Mon, 28 Jul 2014 12:57:38 -0400 David F. Skoll d...@roaringpenguin.com wrote: David 1) Gmail is actually pretty good at filtering spam. I can't David speak for MSFT since I don't use it. David 2) Especially in North America, companies are short-sighted and David go for quick fixes and things that look cheap up-front without David considering the long-term costs. David 3) Especially in North America, people don't see the value in David learning technology. They want simple, spoon-fed solutions and David they love the word oursourcing. Sorry if (2) and (3) are not David PC, but the slag against North Americans is based on my personal David experience. :) And hey, I'm Canadian so I can dis my own crowd... David 4) Most non-technical small businesses equate Mail Server with David Microsoft Exchange, and Microsoft has steadily been making David Exchange more and more of a PITA to administer. Each new version David of Exchange breaks things and requires learning new procedures. David Combine that with (3) and we see that MSFT is using on-premise David Exchange as a trojan horse to get people on O-365. The huge pool David of managed service providers that recommend MSFT solutions is David by-and-large staffed by incompetents who are only too happy to David shove their customers onto O-365 and collect kickbacks every David month. Good summary, but I think you forgot (5): They have prettier icons. I am not 100% kidding, either. --- This email is free from viruses and malware because avast! Antivirus protection is active. http://www.avast.com
Re: Ready to throw in the towel on email providing...
On 7/29/2014 9:33 AM, Ted Mittelstaedt wrote: On 7/28/2014 4:17 PM, Jay Plesset wrote: My church decided to go with O-365, without even evaluating any alternatives. We have an unemployed IT person that talked the staff into this, even though I've offered to implement a real e-mail solution multiple times, and even provide hardware to run it on. Apparently they didn't understand if the guy was an unemployed IT person there was a reason he was unemployed! Agreed. free was the biggest draw, then no administration. *sigh*. But, the no administration isn't true at all. There's still administration. Does Microsoft provide Office 365 free to churches? I know that they had ridiculously cheap server license pricing (through their Charity Pricing program) but I didn't know they had got to Free with Office 365? That's what they told me. I said, Free for now at least. . . I did a lot of work for my families church a decade ago in the volunteer area. Both on the building committee and IT work for them. I learned after a year that if your goal is to have people who don't understand or appreciate what you do for them, and shit all over what you do for them, volunteer for a church. Oh, yeah. My wife and I built a new website for them. Last summer, the staff didn't bother with updating the calendar, and come fall, they said, we forgot how. The other thing about churches is that the staff runs more than they should, and really, truly doesn't understand the reason for a website, marketing, etc. jay There's a reason most churches constantly solicit for volunteers. A church is the only place that a professional tradesperson can volunteer his services and during the job be told that he's doing it wrong, by people who have never held a wrench, paintbrush, pipe threader, network cable, you name it. I actually saw one time a couple come in and paint a large room in the church, used very good paint, excellent coverage, masked off everything, etc. and when they left the room looked like a pro had done it - no paint runs or drips where they weren't supposed to be etc. Then 2 weeks later the church paid to have a professional come in and paint the room - again - same color - same paint. When I asked why, I was told we had the painters scheduled for that room, they should have asked us before painting in there This is the kind of politics you run into with church volunteering. Ted jay plesset IT, dp-design.com On 7/28/2014 3:49 PM, Ian Zimmerman wrote: On Mon, 28 Jul 2014 12:57:38 -0400 David F. Skoll d...@roaringpenguin.com wrote: David 1) Gmail is actually pretty good at filtering spam. I can't David speak for MSFT since I don't use it. David 2) Especially in North America, companies are short-sighted and David go for quick fixes and things that look cheap up-front without David considering the long-term costs. David 3) Especially in North America, people don't see the value in David learning technology. They want simple, spoon-fed solutions and David they love the word oursourcing. Sorry if (2) and (3) are not David PC, but the slag against North Americans is based on my personal David experience. :) And hey, I'm Canadian so I can dis my own crowd... David 4) Most non-technical small businesses equate Mail Server with David Microsoft Exchange, and Microsoft has steadily been making David Exchange more and more of a PITA to administer. Each new version David of Exchange breaks things and requires learning new procedures. David Combine that with (3) and we see that MSFT is using on-premise David Exchange as a trojan horse to get people on O-365. The huge pool David of managed service providers that recommend MSFT solutions is David by-and-large staffed by incompetents who are only too happy to David shove their customers onto O-365 and collect kickbacks every David month. Good summary, but I think you forgot (5): They have prettier icons. I am not 100% kidding, either. --- This email is free from viruses and malware because avast! Antivirus protection is active. http://www.avast.com
Re: Ready to throw in the towel on email providing...
On 7/29/2014 12:33 PM, Ted Mittelstaedt wrote: I learned after a year that if your goal is to have people who don't understand or appreciate what you do for them, and shit all over what you do for them, volunteer for a church. Depends on the church. I do volunteer work for my church on a regular basis. Technical stuff, but not usually directly computer related as they pay an IT company to take care of the computers and network. They are always very appreciative of their volunteers. There's a reason most churches constantly solicit for volunteers. A church is the only place that a professional tradesperson can volunteer his services and during the job be told that he's doing it wrong, by people who have never held a wrench, paintbrush, pipe threader, network cable, you name it. You get that sort of thing everywhere -- whether you are a volunteer or a paid employee/contractor. In my experience, the main reason churches are constantly looking for volunteers is that most people don't see the value in donating their time or assume that in a large church other people will do it. http://www.columbia.edu/~sss31/rainbow/whose.job.html I actually saw one time a couple come in and paint a large room in the church, used very good paint, excellent coverage, masked off everything, etc. and when they left the room looked like a pro had done it - no paint runs or drips where they weren't supposed to be etc. Then 2 weeks later the church paid to have a professional come in and paint the room - again - same color - same paint. When I asked why, I was told we had the painters scheduled for that room, they should have asked us before painting in there This is the kind of politics you run into with church volunteering. I see two problems here. 1) Disorganization -- if they were planning to hire professionals to paint, why were the volunteers there to begin with? 2) If the professional was willing to be paid to re-paint a room that clearly didn't need it, they need to get rid of him and find someone who won't rip them off. -- Bowie
Re: Ready to throw in the towel on email providing...
On 7/29/2014 10:11 AM, Bowie Bailey wrote: On 7/29/2014 12:33 PM, Ted Mittelstaedt wrote: I learned after a year that if your goal is to have people who don't understand or appreciate what you do for them, and shit all over what you do for them, volunteer for a church. Depends on the church. I do volunteer work for my church on a regular basis. Technical stuff, but not usually directly computer related as they pay an IT company to take care of the computers and network. They are always very appreciative of their volunteers. There's a reason most churches constantly solicit for volunteers. A church is the only place that a professional tradesperson can volunteer his services and during the job be told that he's doing it wrong, by people who have never held a wrench, paintbrush, pipe threader, network cable, you name it. You get that sort of thing everywhere -- whether you are a volunteer or a paid employee/contractor. In my experience, the main reason churches are constantly looking for volunteers is that most people don't see the value in donating their time or assume that in a large church other people will do it. http://www.columbia.edu/~sss31/rainbow/whose.job.html I actually saw one time a couple come in and paint a large room in the church, used very good paint, excellent coverage, masked off everything, etc. and when they left the room looked like a pro had done it - no paint runs or drips where they weren't supposed to be etc. Then 2 weeks later the church paid to have a professional come in and paint the room - again - same color - same paint. When I asked why, I was told we had the painters scheduled for that room, they should have asked us before painting in there This is the kind of politics you run into with church volunteering. I see two problems here. 1) Disorganization -- if they were planning to hire professionals to paint, why were the volunteers there to begin with? The volunteers were teaching a class in that room and wanted the room to look nice. They had offered to paint the room and been told something along the lines of the room doesn't need it don't worry about it The class was an english as second language type of class and the teaching was of course also donated by the couple. I saw the room in the before stage and while it didn't require it, it was dingy and hadn't been painted in years. One corner the ceiling had fallen and been patched due to a roof leak (that had been fixed later) 2) If the professional was willing to be paid to re-paint a room that clearly didn't need it, they need to get rid of him and find someone who won't rip them off. I think you missed the point of the story. The issue was a control issue. This was paid church staff that ordered in a paid professional painter to deliberately repaint a room that had just been painted. The staff was attempting to send a message to the volunteer couple that you volunteers don't do anything unless we tell you to do it. For all I know their normal pro painter took one look and told them it didn't need it, and they said fine and just picked up the phone and called another. I agree with the staff comment made by the other poster. The issue in churches is that a church is supposed to be under the control of the congregation (in some denominations) or the minister (in other denominations) But it's not supposed to EVER be under the control of the paid staff - many of whom aren't even members of the church nor even share the same faith. But, once you bring the paid staff in, if they get a chance they will take over, like any bureaucracy, and act in a manner to preserve their criticality to the organization. This is why I really don't trust churches for doing most good works type of things. Way too many of them violate the 503(c) requirements of financial transparency and so forth. Many do not publish their exec staff meeting notes at all, and others only make them available on request - a clear violation of transparency laws. I'm not a Mormon but I will say this - that is one thing they got right when they setup the Mormon church - they don't allow paid staff -at all- in their churches. Ted --- This email is free from viruses and malware because avast! Antivirus protection is active. http://www.avast.com
Drifting OT [was Re: Ready to throw in the towel on email providing...]
On Tue, 29 Jul 2014 13:11:00 -0400 Bowie Bailey bowie_bai...@buc.com wrote: [Church stuff] I think this is getting a bit off-topic... Regards, David.
RE: Drifting OT [was Re: Ready to throw in the towel on email providing...]
Preach it brother! ;-) ...Kevin -- Kevin Miller Network/email Administrator, CBJ MIS Dept. 155 South Seward Street Juneau, Alaska 99801 Phone: (907) 586-0242, Fax: (907) 586-4500 Registered Linux User No: 307357 -Original Message- From: David F. Skoll [mailto:d...@roaringpenguin.com] Sent: Tuesday, July 29, 2014 9:50 AM To: users@spamassassin.apache.org Subject: Drifting OT [was Re: Ready to throw in the towel on email providing...] On Tue, 29 Jul 2014 13:11:00 -0400 Bowie Bailey bowie_bai...@buc.com wrote: [Church stuff] I think this is getting a bit off-topic... Regards, David.
Re: Ready to throw in the towel on email providing...
My question regarding all of this interesting topic is, isn't there some kind of RBL or something which can be subscribed to for a nominal fee per year that can aid the small IT shop in maintaining spam filters? --Asai On 7/28/14 9:10 AM, Ted Mittelstaedt wrote: Hi All, Just lost another one, dammit. Small company with about 6 mailboxes who some consultant gave them a song and dance about how Gmail's such a better mail service since they don't get any spam No it's not going to break us. But this is what I see happening. SpamAssassin for us filters probably about 80% of the spam out of the box, doing nothing other than using defaults. If the users feed the learner, it's even better. But, the spam is coming in at such a tremendously high volume now that when a user account gets 5,000 pieces of mail a day, all of it except for maybe 5 pieces of mail are NOT spam, even at 99% effectiveness, the user is STILL getting 50 pieces of spam in a day that SpamAssassin misses, compared to their 5 pieces of ham mail. they don't see the 4,950 pieces of mail we deleted for them. They just see the 50 pieces that got past, compared to their 5 legitimate pieces. So naturally the users figure we are rat bastards who aren't doing a good job filtering. So they setup a test account at Google and try it out for a month Of course, the account gets very little spam. Why would it otherwise? It's brand new. It hasn't had a chance to be disseminated to all of the mailing lists, the websites, the other coorespondents's computers of theirs that get hit by harvesting viruses. Their ignorance then reinforces their invalid perception and then they figure we are liars. So they move their domain. A year later, when Gmail is doing the same thing to them, they finally figure out it's not the provider, its the spammers and oh boy maybe we weren't lying after all. But, it's a lot of work to shift back to us, so why bother if all the mail services are the same way? So they are gone, permanently, never to return. We have tried educating them. But spamfighting today is complex. If you explain it completely and they understand the explanation and believe you, they give up hope because they realize that just hitting the delete button on those 50 pieces of spam is easier than shifting their poor email behaviors that got them into the mess in the first place. But then a month later the complex explanation is forgotten and they are once more vulnerable to any snake oil sales consultant selling them gmail. But most of them don't understand anyway. And if you just try to dumb down the explanation it starts making no sense at all very quickly. What do other people do? Or are we just going to end up with an Internet in about 10 years where every single email box is either on Microsoft 365 or Gmail and the NSA has a wonderful interface to use to hunt through whatever they want without bothering with a warrant? And to add insult to injury - this small company is a dental office - subject to HIPAA - and Gmail is not (and has stated they will not) be HIPAA complaint. We are! Ted --- This email is free from viruses and malware because avast! Antivirus protection is active. http://www.avast.com
Re: Ready to throw in the towel on email providing...
On Jul 29, 2014, at 11:29 AM, Ted Mittelstaedt t...@ipinc.net wrote: On 7/29/2014 10:11 AM, Bowie Bailey wrote: 2) If the professional was willing to be paid to re-paint a room that clearly didn't need it, they need to get rid of him and find someone who won't rip them off. I think you missed the point of the story. The issue was a control issue. This was paid church staff that ordered in a paid professional painter to deliberately repaint a room that had just been painted. The staff was attempting to send a message to the volunteer couple that you volunteers don't do anything unless we tell you to do it. For all I know their normal pro painter took one look and told them it didn't need it, and they said fine and just picked up the phone and called another. I guess this answers the question, “Did Jesus own his own clothes?” No, he was renting them from a Church admin… ;-) -Philip
Re: Ready to throw in the towel on email providing...
On 7/29/14, 2:13 PM, Asai a...@globalchangemusic.org wrote: My question regarding all of this interesting topic is, isn't there some kind of RBL or something which can be subscribed to for a nominal fee per year that can aid the small IT shop in maintaining spam filters? We use the invaluement lists managed by Rob McEwen and have been very happy with them-- been using them for 3-4 years. A lot of blocking that doesn't overlap with Spamhaus, very few false positives, and those that do occur are addressed quickly with a lot of transparency. Well worth the cash, IMO. (And no, I'm pretty sure I'm not getting a discount or anything for this.) :-) -- Dave Pooser Cat-Herder-in-Chief, Pooserville.com ...Life is not a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in one pretty and well-preserved piece, but to slide across the finish line broadside, thoroughly used up, worn out, leaking oil, and shouting GERONIMO!!! -- Bill McKenna
RBL effectiveness (was Re: Ready to throw in the towel on email providing...)
On Tue, 29 Jul 2014 14:21:56 -0400 Dave Pooser dave...@pooserville.com wrote: We use the invaluement lists managed by Rob McEwen and have been very happy with them-- been using them for 3-4 years. A lot of blocking that doesn't overlap with Spamhaus, very few false positives, and those that do occur are addressed quickly with a lot of transparency. Well worth the cash, IMO. RBLs are a good first line of defense, but unfortunately a lot of spam originates from servers that RBLs cannot block for political or practical resons. Think Gmail, Hotmail and Yahoo servers, for example. You need something extra to have acceptable catch rates, and the something extra inveriably ends up being content-scanning. If you are willing to pay some cash for anti-spam, you may be better off paying someone to manage your anti-spam solution entirely. Such providers enjoy economies of scale that make it hard for you to compete on your own. [Disclaimer: My company is a commercial anti-spam solution provider, so consider that when analyzing my statements for bias. :) ] Regards, David.
Re: Ready to throw in the towel on email providing...
On July 29, 2014 8:13:49 PM Asai a...@globalchangemusic.org wrote: My question regarding all of this interesting topic is, isn't there some kind of RBL or something which can be subscribed to for a nominal fee per year that can aid the small IT shop in maintaining spam filters? the best one is one that is not public known, never ever pay for spam or even filtering
Re: RBL effectiveness (was Re: Ready to throw in the towel on email providing...)
RBLs are a good first line of defense, but unfortunately a lot of spam originates from servers that RBLs cannot block for political or practical resons. Think Gmail, Hotmail and Yahoo servers, for example. You need something extra to have acceptable catch rates, and the something extra inveriably ends up being content-scanning. Very true. That said, invaluement also offers a URI list that helps considerably with content-scanning as well, so not only does it help to stem the flood but it also helps sort baby from bathwater. (Can I mix this metaphor any more? To take up arms against a sea of troubles) -- Dave Pooser Cat-Herder-in-Chief, Pooserville.com ...Life is not a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in one pretty and well-preserved piece, but to slide across the finish line broadside, thoroughly used up, worn out, leaking oil, and shouting GERONIMO!!! -- Bill McKenna
Re: Ready to throw in the towel on email providing...
On 07/29/2014 08:21 PM, Dave Pooser wrote: On 7/29/14, 2:13 PM, Asai a...@globalchangemusic.org wrote: My question regarding all of this interesting topic is, isn't there some kind of RBL or something which can be subscribed to for a nominal fee per year that can aid the small IT shop in maintaining spam filters? We use the invaluement lists managed by Rob McEwen and have been very happy with them-- been using them for 3-4 years. A lot of blocking that doesn't overlap with Spamhaus, very few false positives, and those that do occur are addressed quickly with a lot of transparency. Well worth the cash, IMO. (And no, I'm pretty sure I'm not getting a discount or anything for this.) :-) +1 I've also been using them for a few years and they do a good job
Re: Ready to throw in the towel on email providing...
On 2014-07-29 12:20, Axb wrote: On 07/29/2014 08:21 PM, Dave Pooser wrote: On 7/29/14, 2:13 PM, Asai a...@globalchangemusic.org wrote: My question regarding all of this interesting topic is, isn't there some kind of RBL or something which can be subscribed to for a nominal fee per year that can aid the small IT shop in maintaining spam filters? We use the invaluement lists managed by Rob McEwen and have been very happy with them-- been using them for 3-4 years. A lot of blocking that doesn't overlap with Spamhaus, very few false positives, and those that do occur are addressed quickly with a lot of transparency. Well worth the cash, IMO. (And no, I'm pretty sure I'm not getting a discount or anything for this.) :-) +1 I've also been using them for a few years and they do a good job +1 The same. Happy user, no affiliation. Plus Rob is kinda awesome when you need something. -- Dave Warren http://www.hireahit.com/ http://ca.linkedin.com/in/davejwarren
Re: Ready to throw in the towel on email providing...
We use the invaluement lists managed by Rob McEwen and have been very happy with them-- been using them for 3-4 years. A lot of blocking that doesn't overlap with Spamhaus, very few false positives, and those that do occur are addressed quickly with a lot of transparency. Well worth the cash, IMO. (And no, I'm pretty sure I'm not getting a discount or anything for this.) :-) +1 I've also been using them for a few years and they do a good job +1 The same. Happy user, no affiliation. Plus Rob is kinda awesome when you need something. Seems like utilizing such a service could really help a small IT company get some leverage on the bigger conglomerates.
Re: Ready to throw in the towel on email providing...
The commercial RBL's let spam through also. As to whether they let as much spam through as, say, spamcops RBL, I'll let others argue that point. But that is NOT the issue I raised in the beginning. The issue is this automatic assumption that companies like Gmail and Hotmail/MSN/Live/Microsoft/365/whatever-the-name-o-the-week-they-call-themselves all have SIGNIFICANTLY BETTER spam filtering than Spamassassin+free/public RBLs+some judicious blacklists. This assumption is apparently based on the notion bigger is better, not the notion that it's not the size of the wand but the magic in it. This is a perception I'm seeing some responders to this thread echo! I have to ask you if you think those guys are better why are you even using Spamassassin at all? Just throw in the towel and find something else to do, you don't even have faith in your own mailserver. Your a farmer. You have a bunch of cows. 3 of those cows are convinced the grass in the neighbor farmer's field is greener so every time you let them out to pasture they go running over there and bust down the barbed wire fence and then the rest of the herd follows them over. You and your neighbor farmer do the same damn thing to your fields, and both of you agree the grass is exactly the same but you just can't get these 3 dumb cows to see logic. What do you do? Ted PS - contracting to the farmer down the street to manage your cows AIN'T an answer!!! What is HE going to do about the cows? On 7/29/2014 11:13 AM, Asai wrote: My question regarding all of this interesting topic is, isn't there some kind of RBL or something which can be subscribed to for a nominal fee per year that can aid the small IT shop in maintaining spam filters? --Asai On 7/28/14 9:10 AM, Ted Mittelstaedt wrote: Hi All, Just lost another one, dammit. Small company with about 6 mailboxes who some consultant gave them a song and dance about how Gmail's such a better mail service since they don't get any spam No it's not going to break us. But this is what I see happening. SpamAssassin for us filters probably about 80% of the spam out of the box, doing nothing other than using defaults. If the users feed the learner, it's even better. But, the spam is coming in at such a tremendously high volume now that when a user account gets 5,000 pieces of mail a day, all of it except for maybe 5 pieces of mail are NOT spam, even at 99% effectiveness, the user is STILL getting 50 pieces of spam in a day that SpamAssassin misses, compared to their 5 pieces of ham mail. they don't see the 4,950 pieces of mail we deleted for them. They just see the 50 pieces that got past, compared to their 5 legitimate pieces. So naturally the users figure we are rat bastards who aren't doing a good job filtering. So they setup a test account at Google and try it out for a month Of course, the account gets very little spam. Why would it otherwise? It's brand new. It hasn't had a chance to be disseminated to all of the mailing lists, the websites, the other coorespondents's computers of theirs that get hit by harvesting viruses. Their ignorance then reinforces their invalid perception and then they figure we are liars. So they move their domain. A year later, when Gmail is doing the same thing to them, they finally figure out it's not the provider, its the spammers and oh boy maybe we weren't lying after all. But, it's a lot of work to shift back to us, so why bother if all the mail services are the same way? So they are gone, permanently, never to return. We have tried educating them. But spamfighting today is complex. If you explain it completely and they understand the explanation and believe you, they give up hope because they realize that just hitting the delete button on those 50 pieces of spam is easier than shifting their poor email behaviors that got them into the mess in the first place. But then a month later the complex explanation is forgotten and they are once more vulnerable to any snake oil sales consultant selling them gmail. But most of them don't understand anyway. And if you just try to dumb down the explanation it starts making no sense at all very quickly. What do other people do? Or are we just going to end up with an Internet in about 10 years where every single email box is either on Microsoft 365 or Gmail and the NSA has a wonderful interface to use to hunt through whatever they want without bothering with a warrant? And to add insult to injury - this small company is a dental office - subject to HIPAA - and Gmail is not (and has stated they will not) be HIPAA complaint. We are! Ted --- This email is free from viruses and malware because avast! Antivirus protection is active. http://www.avast.com --- This email is free from viruses and malware because avast! Antivirus protection is active. http://www.avast.com
Re: RBL effectiveness (was Re: Ready to throw in the towel on email providing...)
On Jul 29, 2014, at 12:29 PM, David F. Skoll d...@roaringpenguin.com wrote: On Tue, 29 Jul 2014 14:21:56 -0400 Dave Pooser dave...@pooserville.com wrote: RBLs are a good first line of defense, but unfortunately a lot of spam originates from servers that RBLs cannot block for political or practical resons. Think Gmail, Hotmail and Yahoo servers, for example. You need something extra to have acceptable catch rates, and the something extra inveriably ends up being content-scanning. If you are willing to pay some cash for anti-spam, you may be better off paying someone to manage your anti-spam solution entirely. Such providers enjoy economies of scale that make it hard for you to compete on your own. [Disclaimer: My company is a commercial anti-spam solution provider, so consider that when analyzing my statements for bias. :) ] Regards, David. Actually, we’ve been blacklisting yahoo.com for years without regret. When they stopped having a responsive abuse department we pulled the plug. We have a different issue from what other people have mentioned on the list: we’re getting email from legitimate companies who have purchased mailing lists from less-than-lawful providers. There are companies which promise to go out and get you “targeted potential client lists” but all they’re selling you is harvested email addresses, and a lot of these companies who do business with them don’t intend to break the law but do (or at least, indirectly). I’ll write them and tell them that we’re going to file an IC3 complaint unless they can provide proof of an opt-in, and that’s when we get the whole “we need an opt-in? well… we actually get mailing lists from another company and the SWEAR they’ve gotten opt-in’s…” Then I explain to them that it doesn’t work like that, and it’s their job to do due diligence… The worst are the ones that either harvest from job boards, or else from political campaign donor disclosure records. Something about those two sources convinces them that you’ve already opted in to every mailing list that is or will ever be… -Philip
Re: Ready to throw in the towel on email providing...
On Tue, 29 Jul 2014 12:37:00 -0700 Ted Mittelstaedt t...@ipinc.net wrote: Hotmail/MSN/Live/Microsoft/365/whatever-the-name-o-the-week-they-call-themselves all have SIGNIFICANTLY BETTER spam filtering than Spamassassin+free/public RBLs+some judicious blacklists. My experience is only with Gmail. And I have to say: Gmail's spam filtering is pretty darn good. I almost never get spam on my gmail.com account and I almost never get false-positives either. This is a perception I'm seeing some responders to this thread echo! I have to ask you if you think those guys are better why are you even using Spamassassin at all? Because I don't trust Google with anything important. I would rather put in the effort to run my own mail server than let Google have all my mail. [...] You and your neighbor farmer do the same damn thing to your fields, and both of you agree the grass is exactly the same but you just can't get these 3 dumb cows to see logic. What do you do? I wish the cows who want to go to Gmail Farm the best of luck and move on. I spend my time and energy with people who understand the issues, rather than trying to get dumb and/or closed-minded people to the point where they understand. It's a simple business decision. Regards, David.
Re: Ready to throw in the towel on email providing...
Make your grass greener than the neighbor's. --Asai On 7/29/14 12:37 PM, Ted Mittelstaedt wrote: What do you do?
Re: Ready to throw in the towel on email providing...
The commercial RBL's let spam through also. As to whether they let as much spam through as, say, spamcops RBL, I'll let others argue that point. But that is NOT the issue I raised in the beginning. The issue is this automatic assumption that companies like Gmail and Hotmail/MSN/Live/Microsoft/365/whatever-the-name-o-the-week-they-call-themselves all have SIGNIFICANTLY BETTER spam filtering than Spamassassin+free/public RBLs+some judicious blacklists. This assumption is apparently based on the notion bigger is better, not the notion that it's not the size of the wand but the magic in it. This is a perception I'm seeing some responders to this thread echo! I have to ask you if you think those guys are better why are you even using Spamassassin at all? Just throw in the towel and find something else to do, you don't even have faith in your own mailserver. Your a farmer. You have a bunch of cows. 3 of those cows are convinced the grass in the neighbor farmer's field is greener so every time you let them out to pasture they go running over there and bust down the barbed wire fence and then the rest of the herd follows them over. I believe, personally, using your cow and farmer metaphor would include your farm being limited and your fields and operation being smaller, while the cows look at a major farming operation across the way with hundreds of people seemingly do really green and wonderful things with grass, regardless of the fact that grass is just grass. I would never equate my SPAM filtering capabilities to the army of monkeys at Google that do it, regardless of my internal configurations and the amount of filters or RBL's that I use with success. I simply cannot compare to a large, dedicated team at a major corporation. This has nothing to do with faith or my abilities. It simply has to do with manpower and available resources. Regardless of how robust, secure, and tasty my grass is, I simply can't grow and maintain the same amount they can. It's just facts. Hopefully you commune with your cows and you help them to realize that having the ability to get one-on-one time with the farmer and having response times for loading the trough are significantly faster than the robots across the way throwing feed wildly in each direction. Or you just turn the 3 into hamburger. You and your neighbor farmer do the same damn thing to your fields, and both of you agree the grass is exactly the same but you just can't get these 3 dumb cows to see logic. What do you do? Ted PS - contracting to the farmer down the street to manage your cows AIN'T an answer!!! What is HE going to do about the cows? On 7/29/2014 11:13 AM, Asai wrote: My question regarding all of this interesting topic is, isn't there some kind of RBL or something which can be subscribed to for a nominal fee per year that can aid the small IT shop in maintaining spam filters? --Asai On 7/28/14 9:10 AM, Ted Mittelstaedt wrote: Hi All, Just lost another one, dammit. Small company with about 6 mailboxes who some consultant gave them a song and dance about how Gmail's such a better mail service since they don't get any spam No it's not going to break us. But this is what I see happening. SpamAssassin for us filters probably about 80% of the spam out of the box, doing nothing other than using defaults. If the users feed the learner, it's even better. But, the spam is coming in at such a tremendously high volume now that when a user account gets 5,000 pieces of mail a day, all of it except for maybe 5 pieces of mail are NOT spam, even at 99% effectiveness, the user is STILL getting 50 pieces of spam in a day that SpamAssassin misses, compared to their 5 pieces of ham mail. they don't see the 4,950 pieces of mail we deleted for them. They just see the 50 pieces that got past, compared to their 5 legitimate pieces. So naturally the users figure we are rat bastards who aren't doing a good job filtering. So they setup a test account at Google and try it out for a month Of course, the account gets very little spam. Why would it otherwise? It's brand new. It hasn't had a chance to be disseminated to all of the mailing lists, the websites, the other coorespondents's computers of theirs that get hit by harvesting viruses. Their ignorance then reinforces their invalid perception and then they figure we are liars. So they move their domain. A year later, when Gmail is doing the same thing to them, they finally figure out it's not the provider, its the spammers and oh boy maybe we weren't lying after all. But, it's a lot of work to shift back to us, so why bother if all the mail services are the same way? So they are gone, permanently, never to return. We have tried educating them. But spamfighting today is complex. If you explain it completely and they understand the explanation and believe you, they give up hope because they realize that just hitting the delete button on those 50 pieces of spam is easier than
Re: Ready to throw in the towel on email providing...
On 07/29/2014 09:37 PM, Ted Mittelstaedt wrote: The commercial RBL's let spam through also. As to whether they let as much spam through as, say, spamcops RBL, I'll let others argue that point. But that is NOT the issue I raised in the beginning. The issue is this automatic assumption that companies like Gmail and Hotmail/MSN/Live/Microsoft/365/whatever-the-name-o-the-week-they-call-themselves all have SIGNIFICANTLY BETTER spam filtering than Spamassassin+free/public RBLs+some judicious blacklists. This assumption is apparently based on the notion bigger is better, not the notion that it's not the size of the wand but the magic in it. This is a perception I'm seeing some responders to this thread echo! I have to ask you if you think those guys are better why are you even using Spamassassin at all? Just throw in the towel and find something else to do, you don't even have faith in your own mailserver. They're not better, they're just cheaper. As long as I can detect all the spam THEY throw at me, I don't consider them any better than anybody else, using a nicely customized sA setup. Give the amount of money they throw at subsidizing their services, we all know how it paysback. Thankfully there' a whole lot of clients who don't buy that.
Re: Ready to throw in the towel on email providing...
On 7/29/2014 12:44 PM, David F. Skoll wrote: On Tue, 29 Jul 2014 12:37:00 -0700 Ted Mittelstaedtt...@ipinc.net wrote: Hotmail/MSN/Live/Microsoft/365/whatever-the-name-o-the-week-they-call-themselves all have SIGNIFICANTLY BETTER spam filtering than Spamassassin+free/public RBLs+some judicious blacklists. My experience is only with Gmail. And I have to say: Gmail's spam filtering is pretty darn good. I almost never get spam on my gmail.com account and I almost never get false-positives either. Yet you don't use your gmail address to post here - so how is this a fair apples to apples comparison. It isn't. All you saying is - an email address at gmail that I hardly use, doesn't get a lot of spam - and an email address at roaringpenguin.com which I use all the time - gets more spam. Therefore google's spam filter is better? This is a perception I'm seeing some responders to this thread echo! I have to ask you if you think those guys are better why are you even using Spamassassin at all? Because I don't trust Google with anything important. I would rather put in the effort to run my own mail server than let Google have all my mail. The average user doesn't think like that I am afraid. [...] You and your neighbor farmer do the same damn thing to your fields, and both of you agree the grass is exactly the same but you just can't get these 3 dumb cows to see logic. What do you do? I wish the cows who want to go to Gmail Farm the best of luck and move on. I spend my time and energy with people who understand the issues, rather than trying to get dumb and/or closed-minded people to the point where they understand. It's a simple business decision. And the problem is that those understanding people represent .1% of the customers out there. In the city I live in there's probably 20 people like that. And I can't make a living off selling them email. Most older customers think like this: That goddam email why can't we go back to the good old days when they sent a fax. Now where's my damn secretary I need her to print out my email. Hey, look an email for free Braves tickets, gotta respond to that one - why is my screen suddenly filling up with red windows?!?! Most younger customers think like this: That goddam email why can't they send a text...Oh shit I nearly got hit by that semi-truckHa Ha, dropped the cell before you saw me, copper!!! Seriously, the problem is the average user thinks if something takes them more than 3 minutes to understand, there's a problem. It's like we have a society of people today who are unable to concentrate on anything requiring more than a 5th grade education. They operate off perception of reality, not off of actual reality. Are you unaware of the TV show jackass? Yes this is what we got to explain spam to. Ted Regards, David. --- This email is free from viruses and malware because avast! Antivirus protection is active. http://www.avast.com
Re: Ready to throw in the towel on email providing...
On Tue, 29 Jul 2014 13:29:25 -0700 Ted Mittelstaedt t...@ipinc.net wrote: [...] Yet you don't use your gmail address to post here - so how is this a fair apples to apples comparison. It isn't. All you saying is - an email address at gmail that I hardly use, doesn't get a lot of spam - and an email address at roaringpenguin.com which I use all the time - gets more spam. I use my gmail.com address a lot. Just not for work-related topics. [...] Because I don't trust Google with anything important. I would rather put in the effort to run my own mail server than let Google have all my mail. The average user doesn't think like that I am afraid. Yes, I know. I've given up trying to service the average user. [...] I spend my time and energy with people who understand the issues, rather than trying to get dumb and/or closed-minded people to the point where they understand. It's a simple business decision. And the problem is that those understanding people represent .1% of the customers out there. I think that is overly pessimistic. I would put it at around 1%. My ten-person company can easily survive on 0.01% of Google's annual revenue (that works out to around $5.5 million/year... I can dream...), so if we can capture 1% of the 1%, we're happy. We're not getting disgustingly rich... but we're happy. Regards, David.
Re: Ready to throw in the towel on email providing...
On 2014-07-29 13:29, Ted Mittelstaedt wrote: On 7/29/2014 12:44 PM, David F. Skoll wrote: On Tue, 29 Jul 2014 12:37:00 -0700 Ted Mittelstaedtt...@ipinc.net wrote: Hotmail/MSN/Live/Microsoft/365/whatever-the-name-o-the-week-they-call-themselves all have SIGNIFICANTLY BETTER spam filtering than Spamassassin+free/public RBLs+some judicious blacklists. My experience is only with Gmail. And I have to say: Gmail's spam filtering is pretty darn good. I almost never get spam on my gmail.com account and I almost never get false-positives either. Yet you don't use your gmail address to post here - so how is this a fair apples to apples comparison. It isn't. All you saying is - an email address at gmail that I hardly use, doesn't get a lot of spam - and an email address at roaringpenguin.com which I use all the time - gets more spam. Therefore google's spam filter is better? I own (but don't use) my firstname.lastname over there, and a I get a metric boatload of misdirected junk. I've narrowed it down to a couple regular users who can't figure out their email address, one who was dumb enough to have my address printed on his business cards (I got a recipient of such a business card to send me a photo) So while I don't personally use it everywhere, I have tons of people that do spread it far and wide. I get Amazon orders, RMA status from very legitimate companies, invitations to movie premieres, contact from wanna-be actors, restaurant reservations, etc. All legit, from companies that can't be bothered to verify user-supplied addresses. Plus I get the fallout as these companies sell their lists, subscribe me thinking I'm a customer, etc. One day I got bored and started flagging this stuff as spam. Took just about a month to get it under control (read: routed to my spam folder) If spam filtering were the only consideration, I'd switch to Gmail (well, Google Apps) in a heartbeat, and I'd figure out a way to make money putting my customers over on Google Apps too. But it isn't the only consideration. -- Dave Warren http://www.hireahit.com/ http://ca.linkedin.com/in/davejwarren
Re: Ready to throw in the towel on email providing...
On 7/29/2014 1:39 PM, David F. Skoll wrote: On Tue, 29 Jul 2014 13:29:25 -0700 Ted Mittelstaedtt...@ipinc.net wrote: [...] Yet you don't use your gmail address to post here - so how is this a fair apples to apples comparison. It isn't. All you saying is - an email address at gmail that I hardly use, doesn't get a lot of spam - and an email address at roaringpenguin.com which I use all the time - gets more spam. I use my gmail.com address a lot. Just not for work-related topics. [...] If I was working on a Masters or a doctorate, a good thesis topic I think would be to register equal addresses on all major providers as well as run your own domain, then start using them identically - on public blogs, websites, etc. - as address harvesting bait. Just to see how well these big guys are really doing. Because I don't trust Google with anything important. I would rather put in the effort to run my own mail server than let Google have all my mail. The average user doesn't think like that I am afraid. Yes, I know. I've given up trying to service the average user. [...] I spend my time and energy with people who understand the issues, rather than trying to get dumb and/or closed-minded people to the point where they understand. It's a simple business decision. And the problem is that those understanding people represent .1% of the customers out there. I think that is overly pessimistic. I would put it at around 1%. My ten-person company can easily survive on 0.01% of Google's annual revenue (that works out to around $5.5 million/year... I can dream...), so if we can capture 1% of the 1%, we're happy. We're not getting disgustingly rich... but we're happy. There are those who would define disgustingly rich as a requirement for happiness... Ted Regards, David. --- This email is free from viruses and malware because avast! Antivirus protection is active. http://www.avast.com
Re: Ready to throw in the towel on email providing...
On 7/29/2014 2:23 PM, Dave Warren wrote: On 2014-07-29 13:29, Ted Mittelstaedt wrote: On 7/29/2014 12:44 PM, David F. Skoll wrote: On Tue, 29 Jul 2014 12:37:00 -0700 Ted Mittelstaedtt...@ipinc.net wrote: Hotmail/MSN/Live/Microsoft/365/whatever-the-name-o-the-week-they-call-themselves all have SIGNIFICANTLY BETTER spam filtering than Spamassassin+free/public RBLs+some judicious blacklists. My experience is only with Gmail. And I have to say: Gmail's spam filtering is pretty darn good. I almost never get spam on my gmail.com account and I almost never get false-positives either. Yet you don't use your gmail address to post here - so how is this a fair apples to apples comparison. It isn't. All you saying is - an email address at gmail that I hardly use, doesn't get a lot of spam - and an email address at roaringpenguin.com which I use all the time - gets more spam. Therefore google's spam filter is better? I own (but don't use) my firstname.lastname over there, and a I get a metric boatload of misdirected junk. I've narrowed it down to a couple regular users who can't figure out their email address, one who was dumb enough to have my address printed on his business cards (I got a recipient of such a business card to send me a photo) So while I don't personally use it everywhere, I have tons of people that do spread it far and wide. I get Amazon orders, RMA status from very legitimate companies, invitations to movie premieres, contact from wanna-be actors, restaurant reservations, etc. All legit, from companies that can't be bothered to verify user-supplied addresses. Plus I get the fallout as these companies sell their lists, subscribe me thinking I'm a customer, etc. One day I got bored and started flagging this stuff as spam. Took just about a month to get it under control (read: routed to my spam folder) If spam filtering were the only consideration, I'd switch to Gmail (well, Google Apps) in a heartbeat, and I'd figure out a way to make money putting my customers over on Google Apps too. There isn't such a way. I watched the large elephant Telcos do this with the dialup ISPs with DSL. The come-on was offering the dialup ISPs a way to interconnect to sell DSL. In the beginning, the ISPs were able to make money selling their data Then the elephant Telcos jacked up access prices and the only offer was a wholesale/partnership where the ex-dialup ISPs could brand the Telco DSL and network connectivity as their own. Then the Telcos undercut the partner prices and the old Dialup ISPs were out of business. The same thing today is going on with Google and Microsoft Office 365 Both companies offer street-level consultants partnerships and the ability to brand their stuff. But it only is a way of getting existing customers who perhaps have a small network with Exchange 2003 running mail/file/print services, into a Cloud-serviced customer, serviced by one of the 2. I guarantee that 5 years from now Microsoft and Google will be dealing direct with those people and the street-level consultants will be out of the picture. Eventually the business owner will be able to login to their Google Apps interface, click on provision a new employee and a week later UPS will deliver a fully configured HP or Dell, and that former street level consultant who owned his own consultancy will now be a minimum wage employee of Geek Squad, who will simply spend 20 minutes setting up the machine, plugging it into the router, adjusting the monitor, then turning it on and the rest of the work will be entirely done remotely. And the Geek Squad guy will be fired if he mentions Linux or anything other than the company line to the business owner. That's the plan that these companies like Microsoft and Google have designed. It's all about vendor lock-in. Ted But it isn't the only consideration. --- This email is free from viruses and malware because avast! Antivirus protection is active. http://www.avast.com
Re: Ready to throw in the towel on email providing...
On Tue, 29 Jul 2014 14:36:51 -0700 Ted Mittelstaedt t...@ipinc.net wrote: There are those who would define disgustingly rich as a requirement for happiness... Yes, and most of them are unhappy. But I fear we drift OT again... That's the plan that these companies like Microsoft and Google have designed. It's all about vendor lock-in. Yes, it is. That's been the history of computing since IBM. Nothing lasts forever; IBM is nowhere near the dominant player it used to be. Eventually something will supplany MSFT and yes, even Google will fade eventually. The key is to find something you enjoy, find a niche in which you can enjoy it profitably, and go for it. There's no use bemoaning the situation when your niche disappears. You just have to find a new one. Regards, David.
Re: RBL effectiveness (was Re: Ready to throw in the towel on email providing...)
On 30/07/2014 04:29, David F. Skoll wrote: originates from servers that RBLs cannot block for political or practical resons. Think Gmail, Hotmail and Yahoo servers, for This is the exact attitude as to why they wont get off their arses, because people think they are too big to block. be damned if I care, I have blocked yahoo and gmail before, and I dare say I'll have to again sometime.
Re: Ready to throw in the towel on email providing...
On 7/29/2014 3:20 PM, David F. Skoll wrote: On Tue, 29 Jul 2014 14:36:51 -0700 Ted Mittelstaedtt...@ipinc.net wrote: There are those who would define disgustingly rich as a requirement for happiness... Yes, and most of them are unhappy. But I fear we drift OT again... That's the plan that these companies like Microsoft and Google have designed. It's all about vendor lock-in. Yes, it is. That's been the history of computing since IBM. Nothing lasts forever; IBM is nowhere near the dominant player it used to be. Eventually something will supplany MSFT and yes, even Google will fade eventually. People used to say that about General Motors Ford Motor Company 100 years ago. The key is to find something you enjoy, find a niche in which you can enjoy it profitably, and go for it. There's no use bemoaning the situation when your niche disappears. You just have to find a new one. Email providing IT NOT A NICHE MARKET. That is crazy and false. It is a commodity market. Google and Microsoft understand this and they aren't out there selling their cloud email solutions to people looking for special email. They are selling their solutions to people looking for commodity email. Companies that supply commodity products DON'T follow this something will supplant them notion of yours. Westinghouse is still around. Consolidated Edison is still around. Ford Motor Company is still around. They were never supplanted Your rise and fall theory only applies to High Tech companies that prefer to think of themselves as innovators and turn up their nose at commodity products. Like Apple. Microsoft. Sun. And dozens of others, most of them gone now. Google is almost unique in high tech because while they embrace innovation they DON'T turn up their nose at commodity products, and they actively seek to sell them. And Microsoft in my opinion got in Cloud email right now because Google is doing it - and they thought that since Google is there, they better be there too. They didn't quite understand WHY they needed to be there, but they were paranoid about all this talk about Android taking over Windows. I think that they are learning, though. One of the fundamental things you learn with the commodity market is people don't like to admit to themselves that they are buying commodity products. This is why your we only want to sell to the smart people plays so well. It's absolutely spot on that same line of sales baloney, and since your small you can make it believable, as an added bonus. The big guys, Microsoft and Google spend oodles of money assuring every one of their customers they sell Google Apps to, or Office 365 to, that they are special that their Google Apps or Office 365 is unique and special They say the same thing you do. Exactly the same, just worded a bit differently. (a little less snooty) That is one of the other reasons that this perception that Gmails spam filtering is superior. Because the public swallows the advertising that their product IS unique and special, and NOT commodity, because when weak people are yelled at with the same thing every day, they start to believe it must be true. Google and Microsoft have enough money they can scream at the sheep that our stuff is better every day so the sheep start believing them. McDonalds does exactly the same thing with their excuse for hamburgers. Even though, the real truth is that Gmail and Office 365 is the very definition and essence of commodity email. The people buying them are the same as everyone else. They just THINK they are different. Email today IS COMMODITY. We are all selling the same product. This baloney about there being a special niche in email is just baloney. It's all the same stuff. What you sell is the same as what Google sells which is the same as what I sell. It is like selling milk. We are all dairies with cows squirting out the same stuff. So please stop with the niche market talk. It is simply not true. The problem we have right now is that the two biggest dairies - Microsoft Office 365, and Google Apps - are being selected by the people because the people have drunk their advertising. The rest of us cannot afford to go up against their advertising. So what is our story, and why is it better and how can we use it against their pack of advertising lies? I'm not willing to roll over and just give up. Some responders to this thread aren't either and I have loved their responses. I'll summarize them to this thread. Ted Regards, David. --- This email is free from viruses and malware because avast! Antivirus protection is active. http://www.avast.com
Re: Ready to throw in the towel on email providing...
On July 29, 2014 9:50:22 PM Asai a...@globalchangemusic.org wrote: Make your grass greener than the neighbor's. provide cold beers to anyone :)
Ready to throw in the towel on email providing...
Hi All, Just lost another one, dammit. Small company with about 6 mailboxes who some consultant gave them a song and dance about how Gmail's such a better mail service since they don't get any spam No it's not going to break us. But this is what I see happening. SpamAssassin for us filters probably about 80% of the spam out of the box, doing nothing other than using defaults. If the users feed the learner, it's even better. But, the spam is coming in at such a tremendously high volume now that when a user account gets 5,000 pieces of mail a day, all of it except for maybe 5 pieces of mail are NOT spam, even at 99% effectiveness, the user is STILL getting 50 pieces of spam in a day that SpamAssassin misses, compared to their 5 pieces of ham mail. they don't see the 4,950 pieces of mail we deleted for them. They just see the 50 pieces that got past, compared to their 5 legitimate pieces. So naturally the users figure we are rat bastards who aren't doing a good job filtering. So they setup a test account at Google and try it out for a month Of course, the account gets very little spam. Why would it otherwise? It's brand new. It hasn't had a chance to be disseminated to all of the mailing lists, the websites, the other coorespondents's computers of theirs that get hit by harvesting viruses. Their ignorance then reinforces their invalid perception and then they figure we are liars. So they move their domain. A year later, when Gmail is doing the same thing to them, they finally figure out it's not the provider, its the spammers and oh boy maybe we weren't lying after all. But, it's a lot of work to shift back to us, so why bother if all the mail services are the same way? So they are gone, permanently, never to return. We have tried educating them. But spamfighting today is complex. If you explain it completely and they understand the explanation and believe you, they give up hope because they realize that just hitting the delete button on those 50 pieces of spam is easier than shifting their poor email behaviors that got them into the mess in the first place. But then a month later the complex explanation is forgotten and they are once more vulnerable to any snake oil sales consultant selling them gmail. But most of them don't understand anyway. And if you just try to dumb down the explanation it starts making no sense at all very quickly. What do other people do? Or are we just going to end up with an Internet in about 10 years where every single email box is either on Microsoft 365 or Gmail and the NSA has a wonderful interface to use to hunt through whatever they want without bothering with a warrant? And to add insult to injury - this small company is a dental office - subject to HIPAA - and Gmail is not (and has stated they will not) be HIPAA complaint. We are! Ted --- This email is free from viruses and malware because avast! Antivirus protection is active. http://www.avast.com
Re: Ready to throw in the towel on email providing...
I definitely appreciate your rant and your point of view. Sadly, until SMTP is rewritten and we're not using protocols on the Internet that have been based on very very old code and then just patched and updated ad infinitum, there isn't a sure fire solution. More patches, more fixes, more filters, more overhead, more wasted CPU time and bandwidth. There's plenty who won't agree with my point of view and think of it as unrealistic, but that's just the way opinions go. :) Independent email providers will never have the resources of conglomerates. We have the security and the ability to guarantee data control, delivery and confidentiality, but as far as SPAM filtering and other time and resource intensive things go, we'll never compete at the same level. Keep on keepin' on. On 07/28/2014 10:10 AM, Ted Mittelstaedt wrote: Hi All, Just lost another one, dammit. Small company with about 6 mailboxes who some consultant gave them a song and dance about how Gmail's such a better mail service since they don't get any spam No it's not going to break us. But this is what I see happening. SpamAssassin for us filters probably about 80% of the spam out of the box, doing nothing other than using defaults. If the users feed the learner, it's even better. But, the spam is coming in at such a tremendously high volume now that when a user account gets 5,000 pieces of mail a day, all of it except for maybe 5 pieces of mail are NOT spam, even at 99% effectiveness, the user is STILL getting 50 pieces of spam in a day that SpamAssassin misses, compared to their 5 pieces of ham mail. they don't see the 4,950 pieces of mail we deleted for them. They just see the 50 pieces that got past, compared to their 5 legitimate pieces. So naturally the users figure we are rat bastards who aren't doing a good job filtering. So they setup a test account at Google and try it out for a month Of course, the account gets very little spam. Why would it otherwise? It's brand new. It hasn't had a chance to be disseminated to all of the mailing lists, the websites, the other coorespondents's computers of theirs that get hit by harvesting viruses. Their ignorance then reinforces their invalid perception and then they figure we are liars. So they move their domain. A year later, when Gmail is doing the same thing to them, they finally figure out it's not the provider, its the spammers and oh boy maybe we weren't lying after all. But, it's a lot of work to shift back to us, so why bother if all the mail services are the same way? So they are gone, permanently, never to return. We have tried educating them. But spamfighting today is complex. If you explain it completely and they understand the explanation and believe you, they give up hope because they realize that just hitting the delete button on those 50 pieces of spam is easier than shifting their poor email behaviors that got them into the mess in the first place. But then a month later the complex explanation is forgotten and they are once more vulnerable to any snake oil sales consultant selling them gmail. But most of them don't understand anyway. And if you just try to dumb down the explanation it starts making no sense at all very quickly. What do other people do? Or are we just going to end up with an Internet in about 10 years where every single email box is either on Microsoft 365 or Gmail and the NSA has a wonderful interface to use to hunt through whatever they want without bothering with a warrant? And to add insult to injury - this small company is a dental office - subject to HIPAA - and Gmail is not (and has stated they will not) be HIPAA complaint. We are! Ted --- This email is free from viruses and malware because avast! Antivirus protection is active. http://www.avast.com -- . === -- - -- - - -- - ---. | Nate Metheny IT Group Leader | | Santa Fe Institute office 505.946.2730 | | cell 505.930.9390 fax 505.982.0565 | | http://www.santafe.edu n...@santafe.edu | `--- - -- ---- - = == ===' smime.p7s Description: S/MIME Cryptographic Signature
RE: Ready to throw in the towel on email providing...
I think it goes a little deeper, too. I just went to Postfix-Spamassassin-Amavis setup as a front-end for Exchange because I had a Sonicwall ES300 for two years and it didn't even work as well as this new setup. Exchange filtration is a joke. I paid $2,000 for two years of service on the junky ES300 for 100 users and EVERYONE complained about its lack of effectiveness for two solid years. I feel your pain but to be honest, I've paid more and received way less. I hope your clients get to be as understanding as mine. There's no perfect solution, unless you hire staff to maintain it around the clock and even then it's only as good as the attention that's paid to it. Spammer hire staff in foreign countries to format emails until they get around the filters. Many of them BUY the filters and bounce emails against them until they get through and THEN send them out. We are always going to be fighting an uphill battle with spam as long as a computer is attached to the internet. Greg Ledford PHHW Technology Services LLC 1000 Corporate Centre Dr, Ste 200 Franklin, TN 37067 Office (615) 778-1777 Cell (615) 403-6989 Fax (615) 771-0081 Email gledf...@phhwtechnology.com -Original Message- From: Nate Metheny [mailto:n...@santafe.edu] Sent: Monday, July 28, 2014 11:30 AM To: users@spamassassin.apache.org Subject: Re: Ready to throw in the towel on email providing... I definitely appreciate your rant and your point of view. Sadly, until SMTP is rewritten and we're not using protocols on the Internet that have been based on very very old code and then just patched and updated ad infinitum, there isn't a sure fire solution. More patches, more fixes, more filters, more overhead, more wasted CPU time and bandwidth. There's plenty who won't agree with my point of view and think of it as unrealistic, but that's just the way opinions go. :) Independent email providers will never have the resources of conglomerates. We have the security and the ability to guarantee data control, delivery and confidentiality, but as far as SPAM filtering and other time and resource intensive things go, we'll never compete at the same level. Keep on keepin' on. On 07/28/2014 10:10 AM, Ted Mittelstaedt wrote: Hi All, Just lost another one, dammit. Small company with about 6 mailboxes who some consultant gave them a song and dance about how Gmail's such a better mail service since they don't get any spam No it's not going to break us. But this is what I see happening. SpamAssassin for us filters probably about 80% of the spam out of the box, doing nothing other than using defaults. If the users feed the learner, it's even better. But, the spam is coming in at such a tremendously high volume now that when a user account gets 5,000 pieces of mail a day, all of it except for maybe 5 pieces of mail are NOT spam, even at 99% effectiveness, the user is STILL getting 50 pieces of spam in a day that SpamAssassin misses, compared to their 5 pieces of ham mail. they don't see the 4,950 pieces of mail we deleted for them. They just see the 50 pieces that got past, compared to their 5 legitimate pieces. So naturally the users figure we are rat bastards who aren't doing a good job filtering. So they setup a test account at Google and try it out for a month Of course, the account gets very little spam. Why would it otherwise? It's brand new. It hasn't had a chance to be disseminated to all of the mailing lists, the websites, the other coorespondents's computers of theirs that get hit by harvesting viruses. Their ignorance then reinforces their invalid perception and then they figure we are liars. So they move their domain. A year later, when Gmail is doing the same thing to them, they finally figure out it's not the provider, its the spammers and oh boy maybe we weren't lying after all. But, it's a lot of work to shift back to us, so why bother if all the mail services are the same way? So they are gone, permanently, never to return. We have tried educating them. But spamfighting today is complex. If you explain it completely and they understand the explanation and believe you, they give up hope because they realize that just hitting the delete button on those 50 pieces of spam is easier than shifting their poor email behaviors that got them into the mess in the first place. But then a month later the complex explanation is forgotten and they are once more vulnerable to any snake oil sales consultant selling them gmail. But most of them don't understand anyway. And if you just try to dumb down the explanation it starts making no sense at all very quickly. What do other people do? Or are we just going to end up with an Internet in about 10 years where every single email box is either on Microsoft 365 or Gmail and the NSA has a wonderful interface to use to hunt through whatever they want without bothering with a
Re: Ready to throw in the towel on email providing...
On 7/28/2014 12:10 PM, Ted Mittelstaedt wrote: Small company with about 6 mailboxes who some consultant gave them a song and dance about how Gmail's such a better mail service since they don't get any spam Ted, fwiw, I had a situation last year where a friend (not one of my own clients) called me up asking me about a situation where legit hand-typed messages to their paid business-class gmail service... were getting blocked. So I ask, why are you asking me, ask gmail! He responded by saying that they are a paid business class gmail user, sending from their own domain name... and when he called his paid support line at google (again, this isn't the regular free gmail)... the tech support consultant was not able to lift a finger to help them. No research.. no SMTP logs... nothing. The paid subscriber was told that there must be some kind of problem... you'll have to wait this out In contrast, if one of my mail hosting clients reports that a hand-typed message to them is blocked, i get the details about the message and search through the SMTP logs, and report back to them exactly what happened and fix it if it were something controllable on my end. (usually there is a more innocent explanation, like the sender making a typo in the e-mail address, etc)... but I first ASSUME it is my problem... THEN research it.. then give the client ANSWERS and SOLUTIONS. PLEASE correct me if I'm wrong as my example above is anecdotal.. but from what I understand, Google doesn't provide ANSWERS and SOLUTIONS for situations like this. You just get excuses and delays. Maybe Google has improved since then?... or maybe my report is not accurate (but it came to me first hand from a trustworthy source). Definately double check this. If you can verify that this is true (and continues to be true)... then use this info as a rebuttal the next time you have a client talk about leaving you for gmail. -- Rob McEwen +1 (478) 475-9032
RE: Ready to throw in the towel on email providing...
On Mon, 28 Jul 2014, Greg Ledford wrote: Spammer hire staff in foreign countries to format emails until they get around the filters. Many of them BUY the filters and bounce emails against them until they get through and THEN send them out. The only thing that evolves faster than bacteria is spammers. -- John Hardin KA7OHZhttp://www.impsec.org/~jhardin/ jhar...@impsec.orgFALaholic #11174 pgpk -a jhar...@impsec.org key: 0xB8732E79 -- 2D8C 34F4 6411 F507 136C AF76 D822 E6E6 B873 2E79 --- When people get used to preferential treatment, equal treatment seems like discrimination. -- Thomas Sowell --- 8 days until the 279th anniversary of John Peter Zenger's acquittal
Re: Ready to throw in the towel on email providing...
On Mon, 28 Jul 2014 09:10:40 -0700 Ted Mittelstaedt t...@ipinc.net wrote: Or are we just going to end up with an Internet in about 10 years where every single email box is either on Microsoft 365 or Gmail and the NSA has a wonderful interface to use to hunt through whatever they want without bothering with a warrant? I don't think every single mailbox will be like that, but sadly a lot will. A number of things are conspiring to cause this: 1) Gmail is actually pretty good at filtering spam. I can't speak for MSFT since I don't use it. 2) Especially in North America, companies are short-sighted and go for quick fixes and things that look cheap up-front without considering the long-term costs. 3) Especially in North America, people don't see the value in learning technology. They want simple, spoon-fed solutions and they love the word oursourcing. Sorry if (2) and (3) are not PC, but the slag against North Americans is based on my personal experience. :) And hey, I'm Canadian so I can dis my own crowd... 4) Most non-technical small businesses equate Mail Server with Microsoft Exchange, and Microsoft has steadily been making Exchange more and more of a PITA to administer. Each new version of Exchange breaks things and requires learning new procedures. Combine that with (3) and we see that MSFT is using on-premise Exchange as a trojan horse to get people on O-365. The huge pool of managed service providers that recommend MSFT solutions is by-and-large staffed by incompetents who are only too happy to shove their customers onto O-365 and collect kickbacks every month. We will be left in a niche market with people who really understand the value of controlling their own email. It'll be a much smaller market, but (I hope) a more discerning and intelligent one. Regards, David.
Re: Ready to throw in the towel on email providing...
On Mon, 28 Jul 2014 12:49:24 -0400 Rob McEwen r...@invaluement.com wrote: PLEASE correct me if I'm wrong as my example above is anecdotal.. but from what I understand, Google doesn't provide ANSWERS and SOLUTIONS for situations like this. You just get excuses and delays. That has been my experience too. We had a customer who had problems emailing someone and once we determined that Google was blocking the mail, my customer gave up. He said there's no point in bothering to contact Google; he just phoned the original recipient instead. If you can verify that this is true (and continues to be true)... then use this info as a rebuttal the next time you have a client talk about leaving you for gmail. Unfortunately, people usually only care about crappy support and service after it's too late. You might win back some ex-Google customers, but it's really hard to stem the tide beforehand. Regards, David.
RE: Ready to throw in the towel on email providing...
-Original Message- From: John Hardin [mailto:jhar...@impsec.org] Sent: 2014-07-28 12:55 To: users@spamassassin.apache.org Subject: RE: Ready to throw in the towel on email providing... On Mon, 28 Jul 2014, Greg Ledford wrote: The only thing that evolves faster than bacteria is spammers. I've just about stopped trying to fight them. I write local rules maybe once every 2 weeks. I'm so tired of users complaining they get Tons of spam which turns out to be 4. Yeah... 4. I stop so much and users are never satisfied. It was a side project that turned into a hobby that turned into a pain in my butt. --Chris
Re: Ready to throw in the towel on email providing...
On Mon, Jul 28, 2014 at 6:10 PM, Ted Mittelstaedt t...@ipinc.net wrote: Just lost another one, dammit. Small company with about 6 mailboxes who some consultant gave them a song and dance about how Gmail's such a better mail service since they don't get any spam The trend towards email service providers for companies to host their mailboxes has been accelerating for about the past 6 to 12 months. I don't know whether there was any specific trigger (Exchange version upgrade-related, possibly?). At dnswl.org, we see a number of netranges going stale (ie, not being seen with live traffic any more for extended periods of time), and when we re-check we see that MX/SPF point to (largely) outlook.com or Google Mail (plus a long tail of other providers). SpamAssassin for us filters probably about 80% of the spam out of the box, doing nothing other than using defaults. Yes, SpamAssassin requires site- or customer-specific tuning. So does every other spamfilter. I run the domain for my family over Gmail, and while it's decent at filtering, it has a hard time coping with some of the more bizarre technical and list email I get :) 5 pieces of mail are NOT spam, even at 99% effectiveness, the user is STILL getting 50 pieces of spam in a day that SpamAssassin misses, compared to their 5 pieces of ham mail. It's not only the spam. It's also the viruses, the email archive, the eDiscovery, the mobile device integration, the version upgrades, the web access, the system administration, the email reputation management, the IPv6 migration, the squeeze on the IT budget and staffing, the service level requirements, ... you name it. Messaging has become complex and is more interconnected between various channels (instant messaging, presence awareness, voice, voice conferencing, video conferencing with screen sharing...). The market for specialised, dedicated and/or access-provider-bound mail services is definitely shrinking. It's not disappearing completely anytime soon, but some providers will have a hard time to retain meaningful economies of scale and are thus likely to leave that market. SpamAssassin is still an important and useful component in an overall setup. But it needs to be embedded in a full suite (and by that I do not mean just plumbing into the MTA of choice). What do other people do? Or are we just going to end up with an Internet in about 10 years where every single email box is either on Microsoft 365 or Gmail and the NSA has a wonderful interface to use to hunt through whatever they want without bothering with a warrant? The NSA argument does not really influence any purchase decision - or not any more than it did in pre-Snowden times. Large european customers who have an exposure to privacy-related risks did not and do not outsource to US providers given the poor legal and regulatory protection. The wave of revelations merely served to proof an already existing sentiment. -- Matthias
Re: Ready to throw in the towel on email providing...
On Mon, 28 Jul 2014, David F. Skoll wrote: Unfortunately, people usually only care about crappy support and service after it's too late. You might win back some ex-Google customers, but it's really hard to stem the tide beforehand. See if the people you won back are willing to talk about their experiences to the people considering leaving. -- John Hardin KA7OHZhttp://www.impsec.org/~jhardin/ jhar...@impsec.orgFALaholic #11174 pgpk -a jhar...@impsec.org key: 0xB8732E79 -- 2D8C 34F4 6411 F507 136C AF76 D822 E6E6 B873 2E79 --- Gun Control is marketed to the public using the appealing delusion that violent criminals will obey the law. --- 8 days until the 279th anniversary of John Peter Zenger's acquittal
Re: Ready to throw in the towel on email providing...
On Mon, Jul 28, 2014 at 1:44 PM, John Hardin jhar...@impsec.org wrote: On Mon, 28 Jul 2014, David F. Skoll wrote: Unfortunately, people usually only care about crappy support and service after it's too late. You might win back some ex-Google customers, but it's really hard to stem the tide beforehand. I think there is also the tolerance level people have depending on who they are dealing with. If they are dealing with a smaller/local company, they expect 24/7 support and solutions for problems before said problems are even conceived. But, when dealing with a large corporation, they accept the fact they are just another customer in hundreds of thousands who should be glad they are given the time of the day. Hence the it is HP/Microsoft/IBM/Google/Apple shrug while throwing money at those companies. After all, a bigger company must be better than a smaller one, right? See if the people you won back are willing to talk about their experiences to the people considering leaving. -- John Hardin KA7OHZhttp://www.impsec.org/~jhardin/ jhar...@impsec.orgFALaholic #11174 pgpk -a jhar...@impsec.org key: 0xB8732E79 -- 2D8C 34F4 6411 F507 136C AF76 D822 E6E6 B873 2E79 --- Gun Control is marketed to the public using the appealing delusion that violent criminals will obey the law. --- 8 days until the 279th anniversary of John Peter Zenger's acquittal
Re: Ready to throw in the towel on email providing...
On 7/28/2014 10:42 AM, Matthias Leisi wrote: On Mon, Jul 28, 2014 at 6:10 PM, Ted Mittelstaedtt...@ipinc.net wrote: Just lost another one, dammit. Small company with about 6 mailboxes who some consultant gave them a song and dance about how Gmail's such a better mail service since they don't get any spam The trend towards email service providers for companies to host their mailboxes has been accelerating for about the past 6 to 12 months. I don't know whether there was any specific trigger (Exchange version upgrade-related, possibly?). The specific trigger is in 2012 Microsoft announced SBS would be terminated. (SBS 2011) is the last. For a company to field exchange 2012 server for 5 people is about $20K. That is licensing, server hardware and expertise to put it together. Our other consultancy is a windows shop and we can roll these if anyone wants them. When SBS 2011 shipped you could do Exchange for 5 users for around $5K for the licensing and hardware and expertise. I'm not going to go into the technical changes Microsoft made in the new version of Exchange that tripled the costs, just trust me they are there. A couple years ago we sold around 6 exchange servers a year. Once MS graduated everyone to the new version of exchange, we haven't sold any. Sold SB Essentials but that's not Exchange. We also have some large companies and all of them are holding to exchange 2008 R2 for the same reasons. Microsoft is on service pack 3 rollup 7 on exchange 2008 R2. It is very much a trainwreck in the making for the large site licensees of Exchange and Microsoft. In fact we already rolled a complete drop-in Exchange replacement using Horde/IMP for one customer with about 100 employees who didn't want to upgrade from exchange 2003. We expect to do more of these. Microsoft will win in the end with upgrades to exchange server but it simply isn't going to make economic sense for anyone with 200 employees or lower. So they will win but it will be Pyrrhic since a chunk will bail completely and go to Linux. At dnswl.org, we see a number of netranges going stale (ie, not being seen with live traffic any more for extended periods of time), and when we re-check we see that MX/SPF point to (largely) outlook.com or Google Mail (plus a long tail of other providers). SpamAssassin for us filters probably about 80% of the spam out of the box, doing nothing other than using defaults. Yes, SpamAssassin requires site- or customer-specific tuning. So does every other spamfilter. I run the domain for my family over Gmail, and while it's decent at filtering, it has a hard time coping with some of the more bizarre technical and list email I get :) 5 pieces of mail are NOT spam, even at 99% effectiveness, the user is STILL getting 50 pieces of spam in a day that SpamAssassin misses, compared to their 5 pieces of ham mail. It's not only the spam. It's also the viruses, the email archive, the eDiscovery, the mobile device integration, the version upgrades, the web access, the system administration, the email reputation management, the IPv6 migration, the squeeze on the IT budget and staffing, the service level requirements, ... you name it. Ah, no. Everything other than the spam can be handled by OSS. But, spam is bad because the users bring it down on themselves by their own behavior. These are employees who go online and fill their work email address out on the online win an ipod fake contest websites. Because they know if they use their private address it will get spammed and they will have to do something about it. But hey they can use work email and it's someone elses problem to fix. Then bitch to their bosses that they are getting so much spam. Their bosses bitch to us because it doesn't even enter their mind that their employees would be wasting time on their break doing this crap online. Messaging has become complex and is more interconnected between various channels (instant messaging, presence awareness, voice, voice conferencing, video conferencing with screen sharing...). The market for specialised, dedicated and/or access-provider-bound mail services is definitely shrinking. It's not disappearing completely anytime soon, but some providers will have a hard time to retain meaningful economies of scale and are thus likely to leave that market. SpamAssassin is still an important and useful component in an overall setup. But it needs to be embedded in a full suite (and by that I do not mean just plumbing into the MTA of choice). The specifics is spam. Users believe administrators can just flick a switch and turn it off. Billions is wasted every year on scanning software that the vendors claim will just turn it off because the buyers actually believe that switch exists. Nothing you have said addresses this. You are droning on and on all of the sound bites people use to sell Cloud. Fine. Great. I know that. I'm Cloud. Gmail is Cloud. 365 is
Re: Ready to throw in the towel on email providing...
On 7/28/2014 10:56 AM, Mauricio Tavares wrote: On Mon, Jul 28, 2014 at 1:44 PM, John Hardinjhar...@impsec.org wrote: On Mon, 28 Jul 2014, David F. Skoll wrote: Unfortunately, people usually only care about crappy support and service after it's too late. You might win back some ex-Google customers, but it's really hard to stem the tide beforehand. I think there is also the tolerance level people have depending on who they are dealing with. If they are dealing with a smaller/local company, they expect 24/7 support and solutions for problems before said problems are even conceived. But, when dealing with a large corporation, they accept the fact they are just another customer in hundreds of thousands who should be glad they are given the time of the day. Hence the it is HP/Microsoft/IBM/Google/Apple shrug while throwing money at those companies. After all, a bigger company must be better than a smaller one, right? Except of course when it's MY product and industry, then the smaller company is definitely better (you were paying attention when I mentioned the company that left for the bigger is better provider is itself small - 6 boxes) After all do as I say not as I do, eh! Ted See if the people you won back are willing to talk about their experiences to the people considering leaving. -- John Hardin KA7OHZhttp://www.impsec.org/~jhardin/ jhar...@impsec.orgFALaholic #11174 pgpk -a jhar...@impsec.org key: 0xB8732E79 -- 2D8C 34F4 6411 F507 136C AF76 D822 E6E6 B873 2E79 --- Gun Control is marketed to the public using the appealing delusion that violent criminals will obey the law. --- 8 days until the 279th anniversary of John Peter Zenger's acquittal --- This email is free from viruses and malware because avast! Antivirus protection is active. http://www.avast.com
Re: Ready to throw in the towel on email providing...
Chris Santerre wrote: I've just about stopped trying to fight them. I write local rules maybe once every 2 weeks. I'm so tired of users complaining they get Tons of spam which turns out to be 4. Yeah... 4. I stop so much and users are never satisfied. It was a side project that turned into a hobby that turned into a pain in my butt. When I see this kind of complaint, I pull out two stats from the filter logs: 1) How much mail got tagged by SA on their account, per day, over the last week 2) How much mail got tagged by SA on my own staff account, per day, over the last week. 2) is almost always larger than 1), and 1) is, like you say, commonly pretty low. -kgd
Re: Ready to throw in the towel on email providing...
On Mon, 28 Jul 2014 15:31:17 -0400 Kris Deugau kdeu...@vianet.ca wrote: I'm so tired of users complaining they get Tons of spam which turns out to be 4. Yeah... 4. [...] When I see this kind of complaint, I pull out two stats from the filter logs: [...] I sometimes do a more dramatic demonstration: I turn off spam filtering for an hour. That usually stops the complaints. Regards, David.
Re: Ready to throw in the towel on email providing...
What you could do, is send a regular (weekly or monthly) spam report that tells your customers how many emails that were blocked vs the number of ham emails and other such statistics. That might get some to stay. On Jul 28, 2014 3:31 PM, Kris Deugau kdeu...@vianet.ca wrote: Chris Santerre wrote: I've just about stopped trying to fight them. I write local rules maybe once every 2 weeks. I'm so tired of users complaining they get Tons of spam which turns out to be 4. Yeah... 4. I stop so much and users are never satisfied. It was a side project that turned into a hobby that turned into a pain in my butt. When I see this kind of complaint, I pull out two stats from the filter logs: 1) How much mail got tagged by SA on their account, per day, over the last week 2) How much mail got tagged by SA on my own staff account, per day, over the last week. 2) is almost always larger than 1), and 1) is, like you say, commonly pretty low. -kgd
Re: Ready to throw in the towel on email providing...
Hi, Just lost another one, dammit. Small company with about 6 mailboxes who some consultant gave them a song and dance about how Gmail's such a better mail service since they don't get any spam The trend towards email service providers for companies to host their mailboxes has been accelerating for about the past 6 to 12 months. I don't know whether there was any specific trigger (Exchange version upgrade-related, possibly?). The specific trigger is in 2012 Microsoft announced SBS would be terminated. (SBS 2011) is the last. For a company to field exchange 2012 server for 5 people is about $20K. That is licensing, server hardware and expertise to put it together. Our other consultancy is a windows shop and we can roll these if anyone wants them. When SBS 2011 shipped you could do Exchange for 5 users for around $5K for the licensing and hardware and expertise. I'm not going to go into the technical changes Microsoft made in the new version of Exchange that tripled the costs, just trust me they are there. A couple years ago we sold around 6 exchange servers a year. Once MS graduated everyone to the new version of exchange, we haven't sold any. Sold SB Essentials but that's not Exchange. We recently lost a small-business customer to Comcast. They have about 150 employees and needed better collaboration tools, calendaring, contacts, and shared resources which we really can't provide with just open source tools. Comcast was offering all of this with spam/virus for like $400/mo or less. We just can't compete in that market. Much of our business now is front-ending Exchange. However, another problem we're experiencing is that, with the latest Exchange, is no more IMAP/POP to public folders, so there's no real way for us to receive spam/ham samples for analysis from them over the Internet. Ideas for solving this problem would be appreciated. For the issue regarding users going to Gmail, I like to dig up problems with their service that people from notable companies have had, or articles from PC Week, and the like, about service outages, lost email, data-mining and privacy issues, etc. Our users want regular reports, but the actual end-users never really see that. It's only some levels of management that ever see it, and I don't think they really have a concept of just how much spam they would be receiving. We're in a commodity business. It's no longer the efficacy that differentiates us - it's service, price, privacy, features (user tools, webmail, mobile capabilities), etc. Regards, Alex
Re: Ready to throw in the towel on email providing...
On 2014-07-28 12:40, Daniel Reynolds wrote: What you could do, is send a regular (weekly or monthly) spam report that tells your customers how many emails that were blocked vs the number of ham emails and other such statistics. We quarantine mail that is between our target threshold and 10 points, above that we reject at the SMTP level. The quarantine report is sent daily. This approach works well for two reasons, #1 is definitely marketing, #2 is that it makes users feel like our spam filter isn't blocking anything they wanted. Sure, if we did quarantine something a user wanted, they might want to release it. Last I looked, there's a single digit number of quarantine releases per month, despite the fact that it's a single un-authenticated click from the email in their mailbox. I do really believe that it makes users feel happier about the handful of spam that does make it into their mailbox when they see even a percentage of the stuff that didn't make it -- And it's a small percentage, a vast majority is rejected outright. (Also, take my numbers with a grain of salt, my spam filtering system is comprised of more than just SpamAssassin, SA's score is directly added to various other rules for the final decision) -- Dave Warren http://www.hireahit.com/ http://ca.linkedin.com/in/davejwarren
Re: Ready to throw in the towel on email providing...
On 2014-07-28 10:56, Mauricio Tavares wrote: I think there is also the tolerance level people have depending on who they are dealing with. If they are dealing with a smaller/local company, they expect 24/7 support and solutions for problems before said problems are even conceived. While that's sometimes true, as a very small service provider, a lot of my customers appreciate that they're speaking to a person and not a department, and it allows me to to provide solutions to customers based on /their/ needs rather than their demographic's needs. But as with so many other markets, most customers will opt for a bigger, generic level of solution rather than going for a small local business when it can save them a few dollars. Google, Office 365 and Outlook.com are the Walmart of our industry, and that's okay, there's still room for competition, but you do have to work a lot harder at areas that the big guys can't compete with. -- Dave Warren http://www.hireahit.com/ http://ca.linkedin.com/in/davejwarren
Re: Ready to throw in the towel on email providing...
On Mon, 28 Jul 2014 12:57:38 -0400 David F. Skoll d...@roaringpenguin.com wrote: David 1) Gmail is actually pretty good at filtering spam. I can't David speak for MSFT since I don't use it. David 2) Especially in North America, companies are short-sighted and David go for quick fixes and things that look cheap up-front without David considering the long-term costs. David 3) Especially in North America, people don't see the value in David learning technology. They want simple, spoon-fed solutions and David they love the word oursourcing. Sorry if (2) and (3) are not David PC, but the slag against North Americans is based on my personal David experience. :) And hey, I'm Canadian so I can dis my own crowd... David 4) Most non-technical small businesses equate Mail Server with David Microsoft Exchange, and Microsoft has steadily been making David Exchange more and more of a PITA to administer. Each new version David of Exchange breaks things and requires learning new procedures. David Combine that with (3) and we see that MSFT is using on-premise David Exchange as a trojan horse to get people on O-365. The huge pool David of managed service providers that recommend MSFT solutions is David by-and-large staffed by incompetents who are only too happy to David shove their customers onto O-365 and collect kickbacks every David month. Good summary, but I think you forgot (5): They have prettier icons. I am not 100% kidding, either. -- Please *no* private copies of mailing list or newsgroup messages.
Re: Ready to throw in the towel on email providing...
My church decided to go with O-365, without even evaluating any alternatives. We have an unemployed IT person that talked the staff into this, even though I've offered to implement a real e-mail solution multiple times, and even provide hardware to run it on. free was the biggest draw, then no administration. *sigh*. jay plesset IT, dp-design.com On 7/28/2014 3:49 PM, Ian Zimmerman wrote: On Mon, 28 Jul 2014 12:57:38 -0400 David F. Skoll d...@roaringpenguin.com wrote: David 1) Gmail is actually pretty good at filtering spam. I can't David speak for MSFT since I don't use it. David 2) Especially in North America, companies are short-sighted and David go for quick fixes and things that look cheap up-front without David considering the long-term costs. David 3) Especially in North America, people don't see the value in David learning technology. They want simple, spoon-fed solutions and David they love the word oursourcing. Sorry if (2) and (3) are not David PC, but the slag against North Americans is based on my personal David experience. :) And hey, I'm Canadian so I can dis my own crowd... David 4) Most non-technical small businesses equate Mail Server with David Microsoft Exchange, and Microsoft has steadily been making David Exchange more and more of a PITA to administer. Each new version David of Exchange breaks things and requires learning new procedures. David Combine that with (3) and we see that MSFT is using on-premise David Exchange as a trojan horse to get people on O-365. The huge pool David of managed service providers that recommend MSFT solutions is David by-and-large staffed by incompetents who are only too happy to David shove their customers onto O-365 and collect kickbacks every David month. Good summary, but I think you forgot (5): They have prettier icons. I am not 100% kidding, either.
Re: Ready to throw in the towel on email providing...
On Mon, 28 Jul 2014, Ian Zimmerman wrote: Good summary, but I think you forgot (5): They have prettier icons. I am not 100% kidding, either. Oh, god yes. Sadly my sigmonster isn't on the ball, so I had to give it a poke... (h/t to Steve, if he's still around) -- John Hardin KA7OHZhttp://www.impsec.org/~jhardin/ jhar...@impsec.orgFALaholic #11174 pgpk -a jhar...@impsec.org key: 0xB8732E79 -- 2D8C 34F4 6411 F507 136C AF76 D822 E6E6 B873 2E79 --- End users want eye candy and the ooo's and hhh's experience when reading mail. To them email isn't a tool, but an entertainment form. -- Steve Lake --- 8 days until the 279th anniversary of John Peter Zenger's acquittal
