I just got an email from reader Charles Jackson, alerting me to a warninghe received when he opened this morning's Telecom Digest.
Mr. Jackson uses Gmail, and I confirmed the problem by bouncing a copy of the digest to my Gmail account, where it showed up in the "Spam" folder. When I opened the message, I got this warning:
+
never could figure out why. Likewise, some of my emails would end up in my recipients' SPAM box.
I learned to periodically check my SPAM in-box as sometimes important legitimate mail was in there.
[In other news, yesterday I got a new recording from a credit card company claiming to be "my bank with lower interest rates".] ***** Moderator's Note *****Well, Google's "Don't be evil" motto is all very nice, but they don't seem to have any problem being a pain in the butt.
What the company appears to be trying to do is eliminate spam single-handed, not only by having tight spam controls, but also by dictating that any email service which they deign to accept connections from must have "SPF" records and a "DKIM" record in place, plus the "usual" DNS "PTR" record for any domain that they talk to. No problem for deep-pocketed multi-nationals, of course, but those of us who run personal servers seldom have the knowledge or time - or money
- to implement such precautions.
One of the privileges of being billionaires is that Sergei Brin and Larry Page can tilt at windmills, and even force others to do it, by seeking a Quixotic prize known as the FUSSP: the Final Ultimate Solution to the Spam Problem. Unfortunately, being billionaires also means that very few experts are willing to tell them that it's unobtainium. As John Levine once pointed out, a cut-rate telegraph service instituted over a century ago was quickly overwhelmed with advertising messages, and John also pointed out that any low-cost delivery method will be abused, and the spammers can't get any lower a cost than the one provided by having the victims pay for the transport themselves.
Google is taking a risk: the classic trap of crying "Wolf!" so often than no one believes the warning anymore.
Bill Horne Moderator
I have some things from the digest get dropped into the SPAM folder by Gmail. Has been going on for a couple years. And, I simply check those off as NOT SPAM, and they come on thru.
Gmail is supposed to learn from my responses about spam -- they don't seem to in this case -- but from what I understand their settings are developed for each account. So, while they finally understand that for my account, it would not propagate to yours.
Possibility, if I were to add the Digest to my address book, that might act as a white list. I do not have any addresses in an address book on that Gmail account. That is intentional, since if the account were to get hacked, at least the hackers would not be getting my address book. Heaven only knows I get lots of unwanted emails from apparent friends that have had their Yahoo accounts compromised.
...Bob K
Well, it's not *quite* that bad (yet), though I certainly agree that the intellectual "cost to play" has risen over the last few years.
I too run my own email from a personal server at home with no DKIM, and GMail still accepts mail from my domain.
True, I do use an access ISP [Sonic.net] that allows [though charges for] static IPv4 address(es) on my service [ADSL2+], and that provides a simple tool for providing [though *not* delegating, but that's o.k.] reverse-lookup addresses [PTR records] for those addresses.
And, true, I do run my own DNS, which made adding an SPF record trivial.
And I run Postfix with a fairly tight set of configs, which also helps.
But once it was set up, it all works pretty well, with no lossage at GMail [that I know of].
-Rob
+--------------------------------------------------------------+ Rob Warnock 627 26th Avenue San Mateo, CA 94403***** Moderator's Note *****
Rob, you sound like just the guy I'm looking for: please help me set up the SPF and PTR records for the Telecom Digest. :-)
Bill Horne Moderator
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