NNSquad - Network Neutrality Squad
[ NNSquad ] Yahoo's spam insanity
Speculation regarding the below. Yahoo may have been using an automated screening process on the submitted forms, preventing incomplete forms from ever being really seen by a human in a position to make decisions. It's possible that submitting dummy information to "complete" the form might have been enough to push the form along to someone who could actually evaluate the situation fully. I've run into exactly this situation with automated forms input systems in the past, and used this technique successfully. Whether or not this would really help with Yahoo is unclear of course. --Lauren-- NNSquad Moderator ----- Forwarded message from David Farber <dave@farber.net> ----- Date: Fri, 18 Dec 2009 13:32:25 -0500 From: David Farber <dave@farber.net> Subject: [IP] Yahoo's spam insanity Reply-To: dave@farber.net To: ip <ip@v2.listbox.com> Begin forwarded message: From: Anthony Citrano <a@citrano.com> Date: December 17, 2009 10:15:29 PM EST To: dave@farber.net, ip <ip@v2.listbox.com> Subject: Yahoo's spam insanity Hi Dave & fellow IPers, Based on my experience this week, a single email failing Yahoo's "bad word" scanner will forever banish you - and everyone else who uses the same server - to the spam folder of every Yahoo customer you write to. Last week, a business proposal I e-mailed to a colleague landed in his Gmail spam folder. We really couldn't ascertain exactly why, and a gracious friend at Google helped me diagnose. We ended up concluding (without much certainty) that it was probably a problem with the receiver's remailer. This didn't feel very comforting to me, though, since I'd had this problem before. In the photography part of my life, for example, I often trade emails with editors, agents, and publicists, and those emails can contain several hyperlinks, celebrity names, and other content that might cause a message to be flagged or to score poorly. A number of my emails with this kind of content have fallen into one spam trap or another. Some friends suggested that since I have my own domain and server, I should enable DomainKeys and Sender Policy Framework on it. Apparently these help lift the legitimacy score of an inbound message on many common spam algorithms. So, I did that. Once the SPF and DomainKeys install had "taken", I did a test and emailed myself at my Yahoo account to check the new headers and make sure they were working properly and passing the checks OK. Once I saw that they were operational, and curious if this new configuration did provide any higher level of protection against false positives, I sent a *single* deliberately spammy message (4-5 key words that I'll leave you all to guess) along the same route (from my server to my Yahoo account.) That message landed in the spam folder with a new, ominous header tacked on: "X-YahooFilteredBulk:" followed by my server's IP address. I emailed other friends with Yahoo! accounts (non-spammy messages) and they each confirmed that my messages were all now going directly into their spam folders. My research brought me to the people in charge of "helping" in such situations: the Bulk Mail people on the Abuse team. They have an online "application" to fill out, but most of the questions are all aimed at - you guessed it - bulk mailers. Many questions about opt-out policies, bounce policies, links to your privacy pages, unsubscribe pages, and so on. I left many of them blank because they simply don't apply, and in the comments portion of the form I kindly and clearly explained the situation: this is a private server, no spam nor newsletters nor bulk mail originates here, never has and never will. I even explained the single spammy email and my new SPF setup. I sent a copy via e-mail to their abuse team's email address. The responses were quick, but useless and empty-minded. I was scolded for not supplying all the information on the form; I re-explained the inapplicability of the questions, I was then sent another identical form to fill out. I re-quoted myself, imploring them to grasp my request. I was again chided for not completing the form - "since we did not receive a completed application, we are unable to fully evaluate your company's mailings for prioritized delivery." I went around and around all week with these guys, them asking and re-asking me to provide nonexistent information. I got to the point today where I was begging "Eddie" to just please read what I had written. This evening I received what I think is my sixth reply from them. Eddie said: "Based on the information you have provided us, we cannot systematically deliver your email to the Inbox at this time. We suggest that you ask your users to set up a filter in Yahoo! Mail to ensure that they get your email messages in their Inbox. If you significantly change your policies, please feel free to contact us again to submit a questionnaire in 6 months, and we will re-evaluate your answers and mailing practices at that time." So, I am effectively unable to contact anyone on Yahoo Mail if I'm using my personal e-mail address. And their abuse team doesn't read -- and doesn't care. This exercise in futility with Yahoo has me pondering the spam problem overall. It seems to me that most current solutions/implementations are woefully inadequate, either requiring action / education / sophistication on the part of users (i.e. diligently checking their spam folder or "teaching" their spam filter) or presenting massive technical and/or social roadblocks to legitimate senders. A couple years ago at a party in Austin I met a guy who told me he couldn't use email. I found it really shocking and asked him why. He told me he was a pharmaceutical rep, had never spammed and wasn't blacklisted anywhere - yet he'd been unable to find a way into the inboxes of *existing clients*. Say what you will about pharma sales reps, but his is not a problem unique to peddlers of ED drugs. Thanks for indulging my long rant - the Yahoo experience got me thinking, and this felt right for IP. Happy holidays, -a --- anthony citrano technologist | cultural analyst | photographer venice, los angeles, ca, usa http://www.citrano.com +1 310.256.3730 ------------------------------------------- Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/247/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/247/ Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com ----- End forwarded message -----