Subject: RE: [Asrg] Bogus News Article - FTC's do-not-call registry email blocked by Yahoo

From: "Eric Greenberg" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 1 Jul 2003 07:46:04 -0400

I agree with your point about jumping to conclusions; however, my
feeling is that you did that here and on Nanog (consider your personal
comment there, highly unprofessional). One of yours initial conclusion
appeared to be that what we had observed was perhaps a delay in email;
however, we have hard evidence that this was not the case. We did the
work to validate all assumptions-- we have been at this nearly as long
as you have. In terms of conclusions, it was here that you implied that
a bulk folder list wasn't the primary place for spam. In terms of
drawing good conclusions, have you ever looked in a Yahoo bulk mail
folder? Do you realize it is very likely filled with mountains (I would
argue nearly all) of the spam that was targeted to that user. Sure they
filter straight away on certain IP address ranges but if that were
nearly sufficient, then we wouldn't need a bulk mail folder with
megabytes of spam, would we? Do you really believe that a TYPICAL
end-user makes a distinction between an email that is blocked by the ISP
via an IP/domain block and one placed in the bulk folder? Should we
conduct a survey on the typical Internet user to determine if they
possibly understand what a bulk mail folder is and if they even know how
to access their ISP's folder even if they provide one? What do you think
we'd conclude from it? Is the bulk mail folder concept really relevant
to the general non-technical user, is that really nothing more than a
troubleshooting aid at this point for people willing to dig into the
important problem of Spam false positives? What conclusions would you
like to draw? From your posts, you seem to imply that spam filters did
not block a large volume of emails (in my opinion a false conclusion)
and that the bulk mail folder is something routine non-technical users
fish into and only a small percentage of spam goes there (also a false
conclusion in my opinion).  What exactly is your point in all of this--
that rather than using the word "blocked" in an article they should have
said "sent to bulk mail folder"?  First of all, many of the articles did
say that.  Secondly, from the perspective of the end-user, the
distinction is negligible.

I agree, we should drop the thread, you can email me directly if you'd
like. However, I suggest you take a closer look here at who is jumping
to conclusions and take greater care in your own posts. The press
coverage of the event we identified may have helped the FTC understand
why millions of people were not confirmed (at latest count, which is
unconfirmed by me and heresay from someone else, is 3 million). It may
have drawn attention to bring it under control faster. A number of folks
emailed us and we helped them try to understand how to read their bulk
mail folder if they had one. Your primary focus has been on the defense
of Yahoo (as you pointed out, you have a friend there); however, as
noted in the press coverage, this problem extended to other spam
blocking systems. 

In the end, the FTC and spam blocking systems need to work together to
get this important system running. In all of this, it highlights the sad
state of affairs with regard to privacy and security technology on the
Internet-- not a fault of technologists for the most part in my opinion,
but it speaks to the unwillingness of organizations to put the trust
controls in place in a quality manner, shouldering the across-the-board
costs. In my mind, a trust hierarchy, interoperable  policies, and
corporate/financial accountability trust network could be highly
effective in dealing with spam; however, whatever the technical solution
(and there are brilliant minds on this list with many possible ideas),
we can be assured that if it involves added cost along the way, the sell
for evolved solutions will take time and the problem of spam will
continue.

Regards,

Eric Greenberg
Chief Technical Officer
NetFrameworks, Inc.
http://www.NetFrameworks.com

-----Original Message-----
From: [email-masked] [mailto:[email-masked]] On Behalf Of John
R. Levine
Sent: Monday, June 30, 2003 9:57 PM
To: [email-masked]
Subject: Re: [Asrg] Bogus News Article - FTC's do-not-call registry
email blocked by Yahoo

> Essentially all spam at Yahoo (using Spam Guard) is blocked and placed

> into a bulk mail folder. Therefore, there>is no distinction between 
> saying that a mail message was "placed in the bulk mail folder" or 
> "blocked by spam filters" ...

I checked back with my source, and he confirms that although the details
of Yahoo's spam filters are (not surprisingly) confidential, it's clear
that like everyone else they both sidestream some mail into bulk mail
folders and reject some mail outright.  See, for example, their page
http://help.yahoo.com/help/us/mail/spam/spam-17.html at which gives
mailers advice to keep their mail from being rejected or sidestreamed.

In any event, there's no shame in making the occasional mistake, so I'm
not going to beat this particular horse any more.  But please, let's try
not to leap to conclusions in the future.

-- 
John R. Levine, IECC, POB 727, Trumansburg NY 14886 +1 607 330 5711
[email-masked], Village Trustee and Sewer Commissioner,
http://iecc.com/johnl, 
Member, Provisional board, Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial
E-mail

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