Gmail pilots new FBL

Yes, it’s true. Gmail announced last Thursday at M3AAWG that they were piloting a new Feedback loop.
The Gmail FBL is currently for ESPs only. The announcement during MAAWG was that only MAAWG ESP members were eligible. They are requiring a DKIM signature for the FBL, but ESPs using individual customer d= values can get a FBL based on IPs. They are also not providing ANY information that reveals the complainer. Gmail’s intention is only to give ESPs feedback so that ESPs can prevent abuse. They are not giving feedback so complainers can be removed.
The email has a .csv attachment that has 3 columns: date, identifier and complaint rate.
The identifier is an ESP provided customer identifier. One of the ESPs I talked to said they were adding an X-header into their emails.
I’ve heard from beta testers that there is a minimum of 100 complaints before you’ll get any report.
Reports are sent daily if there is sufficient traffic to trigger them.
If you’re a MAAWG member, check the senders list for the signup URL.

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@maawg tweeted different quotes from the session. There is a conflict between privacy and security, and these are questions we need to resolve.
Ladar talked about his potential new service called darkmail, which pushes encryption back to the user level. I think there is relevance to this, as many online services are used for political and other organizing. As someone said to me last night, some of the people using our service could be killed if we don’t protect their privacy. He wasn’t speaking of the US residents, but people in places like Ukraine or Arab countries or other places undergoing violent revolutions.
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I recently had someone ask me what would I recommend to someone going to their first M3AAWG conference. My recommendation to anyone in the sender or marketer space is to go to some of the talks that are not about email delivery. Go to the sessions that talk about malware or SMS or anything other than just email delivery. For anyone in the ISP space go to a session focused on mobile or email sending. Use this time to learn about something totally different than what you do every day.
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We’ll be in the city starting Monday afternoon, and I always enjoy meeting readers. Stop by and introduce yourself.

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