Chuq Von Rospach on the AOL email imbroglio

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: Kevin Marks <kevinmarks () mac com>
Date: April 15, 2006 2:06:47 AM EDT
To: dave () farber net
Subject: Chuq Von Rospach on the AOL email imbroglio

Chuq runs lots of mailing lists.

He's OK'd forwarding this to IP.

Begin forwarded message:

> From: Chuq Von Rospach <chuqui () plaidworks com>
> Date: April 14, 2006 9:35:44 PM PDT
> To: Kevin Marks <kevinmarks () mac com>
> Subject: Re: [IP] Why was Moveon.org blocked by AOL? Did recipients  
> want the email messages? [sp]
>
> FWIW, I deal with the AOL folks some. That was the other scenario I  
> wondered about (but I decided to keep it simple....)
>
> > > We have about 122 coalition members on the list, which is enough  
> > > to trip AOL's
> > > volume filters, which I understand are set at about 100 mails  
> > > from a single IP
> > > address.  I sent out a mailout to our coalition around noon  
> > > yesterday. I found
> > > out that AOL was bouncing any mail with our URL in it at around  
> > > 4.45pm - one
> > > of our coalition had mailed a friend at AOL with a note about our  
> > > site, and
> > > received a bounce.
>
> that's one of their automated systems. FWIW, they use a ratio of  
> about 2000 per million emails from a site as the boundary for spam.  
> For a small mailing from a previously unknown site with a common  
> URL that generates a few spam complaints... It's not that hard to  
> trigger it.
>
> > > received yesterday's mail (carefully avoiding the D*arA*L.com  
> > > word).  A few
> > > had; the majority had not, which leads me to believe that the ban  
> > > occurred
> > > somewhere in the middle of the mailing run.
>
> and anything in process of being delivered gets flushed.  
> blackholed. you don't get a bounce, the user doesn't get a chance  
> to accept it.
>
> > > Ploughing through the error logs, I have found one person on the  
> > > list whose
> > > error message indicates that he does not want to receive mail  
> > > from my address.
> > > Whether he is simply set to only receive mail from friends or  
> > > whether this is
> > > a specific ban is  unclear: but he's the only indication I have  
> > > that anyone
> > > complained about the mail.
>
>
> But it's unlikely to be the only complaint. You're seeing the AOL's  
> whitelist/blacklist setting. You won't see anything back from the  
> "I call this spam" button, unless you set up a special relationship  
> with them to receive them (which I have. I get all of those for  
> apple; used to get them for my personal domain. it's -- eye opening)
>
> > > Many AOL users treat the AOL client's "spam" button, rather  
> > > sensibly, as a "I
> > > don't want to receive any more of this mail". I suspect this  
> > > person was
> > > unsubscribing by hitting this button.
> > >
> > > Unfortunately, AOL's semantics are rather different: they take it  
> > > as meaning
> > > "treat this mail as suspect for everyone else".
>
> one has to be VERY careful generalizing AOL users. About all I can  
> say is a user didn't want to see the message. Many of them don't  
> understand (or care about) the concept of unsubscribing. You can't  
> assume they understand these concepts at all; many don't. Or that  
> they're paying attention. They don't.
>
> > > (This is one of the practical
> > > problems of having intermediaries attempt to make decisions about  
> > > end-user
> > > email delivery without adequate feedback or transparency. Fixing  
> > > this semantic
> > > gap is one of the ongoing challenges of fighting spam: a  
> > > consistent standard
> > > for confirm and unsubscribes may well go some way to fixing it.)
>
> Probably not. but that's a different discussion.
>
> > > Anyway, AOL clearly doesn't view the mail as spam in a strong  
> > > sense, because
> > > they haven't banned my email address or IP. What they did, it  
> > > appears, is
> > > check out the mentioned URL.
>
> no, they just used the URL as a signature check. Doubtful any human  
> ever saw anything. Given the propensity of spam to come from  
> zombied relays, a common URL is a more effective block than an IP  
> block (it's also a common attack by Brightmail, etc...)
>
> > > Somehow - and this is what AOL's tech support folk told me when I  
> > > called them
> > > this morning - they identified www.dearaol.com as a "morpher".  
> > > This is a site
> > > that redirects user clicks to many different sites.
> > >
> > > It's true: www.dearaol.com has round-robin DNS.  I plead guilty to
> > > load-balancing of the most heinous kind.
>
> Far be it that I defend AOL's anti-spam system. It's pretty broken.  
> Here's a great example of how. They have a really tough job, to be  
> sure; Many of their choices are, in my mind, sub-optimal.
>
> > > That includes, incidentally, people mailing themselves the URL.
>
> that includes mailing a piece of mail to your postmaster contact at  
> AOL askign "why are you banning this?" -- that makes for fun  
> mornings trying to unwind a mistake, their postmasters are behind  
> the walls, too.
>
> > > AOL's spokesman told reporters variously that that there was a  
> > > software
> > > glitch, a technical glitch, and finally a hardware glitch that  
> > > affected dozens
> > > of web addresses.
> > >
> > > I find all of these hard to believe.
>
> when all else fails, blame the computer. not the people who  
> programmed it or run it. of course.
>
> > > working days. EFF has received reports of these kind of URL bans  
> > > before.
> > > Bennett Hasselton, of the free speech group PeaceFire, has  
> > > documented many
> > > innocent groups who find all mails discussing their URLs removed  
> > > from
> > > AOLspace.
>
> Never attribute to conspiracy what is better defined by stupidly- 
> built systems. UNless. of course, paranoia feeds your cause.
>
> > > This appears to be a private AOL ban list. Goodness knows how  
> > > many URLs or how
> > > long they are held. I suspect if I hadn't received that mail from  
> > > a friend, or
> > > put out a press release, www.dearaol.com would still be banned  
> > > from 20 million
> > > user's private communications, and would remain so until I made  
> > > that call.
>
> yup.
>
> > > This is exactly the kind of overreaching, black-and-white anti- 
> > > spam filtering
> > > that goes on all the time among ISPs and is largely unnoticed by  
> > > their
> > > customers - for the simple reason that nobody notices a mail that  
> > > never
> > > arrives.
>
> well, depends on the ISP. the major problem I have with AOL -- it  
> doesn't block, it doesn't use a junk folder, it blackholes. And the  
> user has no ability to whitelist around an AOL blacklist.
>
> on the other hand -- so do I. But I choose my data sources  
> carefully. AOL uses its users as a primary data source, and as  
> Spamcop long ago showed, the larger the population, the less  
> reliable the data.
>
> > > And that's why we're concerned about Goodmail: it rewards ISPs  
> > > for such bad
> > > filtering, because with such large problems, large companies will  
> > > pay a great
> > > deal to avoid those filters. And no market forces can come into  
> > > play to fix
> > > this failure to deliver when the symptoms themselves are so hard  
> > > to detect.
>
> nah. people have just misunderstood goodmail from day one.
>
> And frankly, few companies will pay very much for goodmail's  
> services. It impacts the profit margin. The people who are running  
> around screaming about this don't understand the business at all.  
> they're too busy being paranoid. I took one look at goodmail's  
> revenue setup, and it makes no sense for a typical marketing  
> organization. the margins are too tight.
>
> To say market forces can't come into play only proves they don't  
> undersatnd the situation. For one: goodmail feeds are still  
> required to stay under that 2000/million spam complaint rate. If it  
> goes over that, it can lose its goodmail certification. It's not  
> carte blanche, that argument's a factless strawman.
>
> (I could go on. maybe at some point, I will on my blog. it's a  
> witchburning. even more, it's a waste of energy, since goodmail  
> will likely fail on its own merits, without all this help; it's  
> really a very limited-use system, the only mail streams likely to  
> take advantage of it are transactional ones, not marketing ones.  
> There IS more to the world than marketing email and mailing lists,  
> you know....)
>
> > > I'm more disturbed that Suresh had a similiar block, which he  
> > > finally deigned
> > > to remove because he believed us to have "legitimate" popularity.  
> > > Suresh's
> > > company manages filters for over 40 million users.
>
> um... Who will watch the watchers?
>
> Which is a fight I had with Dave Rand many years ago over MAPS,  
> back when MAPS kept blacklisting my personal domain because I  
> happened to have a subscriber to one of my mailing lists that lived  
> on his personal server, which decided to arbitrarily start  
> declaring mail spam when it had keywords he didn't feel appropriate  
> for mailing lists.
>
> What all this comes down to is an absolute lack of transparency  
> among the spam police. Which is even worse than the fact that we  
> can't even define what spam is in terms more specific than the  
> nation's war on porn (I know it when I see it, and local community  
> standards). That, frankly, is even more important than "what is  
> spam?" standards, and woefully missing in all of these discussions.  
> AOL is just worse at blackholing stuff without any response or  
> appeal than many.
>
> chuq
> (and yes, if you feel it's worth passing back up the reply chain,  
> you may...)
>
>
> --
> Chuq Von Rospach, Architech
> chuqui () plaidworks com -- http://chuqui.typepad.com/
>
> He doesn't have ulcers, but he's a carrier.



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