Nominations for the J.D. Falk Award

J.D. Falk was one of the first names I encountered when learning how to read headers and report spam back in the mid-90s. He was one of the folks leading the fight against spam and actively trying to improve the Internet. When I was hired by MAPS I got to work with J.D. and a number of other big-names. One of the things that really surprised me was that this “internet elder” I had imagined was younger than me and with much bluer hair.
After MAPS imploded, J.D. and I carved out separate careers. He went to work at a number of major mailbox providers and I started delivery consulting. Our paths crossed occasionally, usually at conferences, but we also were on a number of mailing lists together. I kept an eye on J.D and his impact on email delivery. In fact, J.D. was responsible for a lot of the modern anti-spam techniques implemented at ISPs.
Eventually, he moved to Return Path where he worked on their Receiver Support group; even as he continually argued against the false sender / receiver dichotomy that so many people endorse.
M3AAWG, with financial support from Return Path, created the J.D. Falk award to recognize people who work to create a better online world. Nominations for the 3rd annual J.D. Falk award are now open. The M3AAWG website has more details.

M3AAWG wants to recognize cool work that reduces online abuse and improves the Internet.
The recipient must also embody the spirit of J.D.’s volunteerism and community building. The J.D. Falk Award winners have a vigilant eye on the broader perspective of Internet systems and communities and call upon thoughtful humor when things get tough.

I am proud to have known J.D. and to have worked with him. And he still manages to touch my life, through the friends he brought into my circle and the communities he created.

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Some email related news

A couple links to relevant things that are happening in email.
M3AAWG released the Help! I’m on a Blocklist! (PDF link) doc this week. This is the result of 4 years worth of work by a whole lot of people at M3AAWG. I was a part of the working group (“doc champion” in M3AAWG parlance) and want to thank everyone who was involved and contributed to the process. I am very excited this was approved and published so people can take advantage of the collective wisdom of M3AAWG participants.
In other announcements, Gmail announced today on their Google+ page that that they were putting a new “unsubscribe” link next to the sender name when mail is delivered to the Promotions, Social or Forums tab. This appears to be the official announcement of the functionality they announced at the SF M3AAWG last February. It likely means that all users are currently getting the “unsubscribe” link. What Gmail doesn’t mention in that blog post is that this functionality uses the “List-Unsubscribe” header, not the link in the email, but I don’t think anyone except bulk mailers really care about how it’s being done, just that it is.
Also today Gmail announced they were going to recognize usernames with non-Latin or accented characters in the name. Eventually, they claim, they’ll also allow people to get Gmail addresses with accented characters.

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Lavabit and darkmail

The M3AAWG keynote address today was a talk from Ladar Levinson about the shut down of Lavabit mail service after receiving demands from the NSA to hand over their SSL keys.
@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.
Privacy is important, how we treat privacy is important. Handing over SSL keys to governments strikes me as a big problem.

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MAAWG presents the first J.D. Falk award

Last week at MAAWG went much like all MAAWG conferences go: too much to do, too many interesting panels to attend, too many people to connect and work with, a plethora of very interesting keynote speakers and a total lack of sleep. Most of what happens at MAAWG is not public, but some of the events are.
One of the things that I can talk about is the J.D. Falk award. This award was established by MAAWG, Return Path and J.D.’s family to recognize people who work, usually behind the scenes and without fanfare, to enhance the Internet and protect end users. I sat on the award committee and we had a number of nominations for very worthy work. But the nomination that stood out was the one for Tom Grasso. Tom was the driving force behind the creation of the DNS Changer Working group. He was responsible for connecting experts from throughout the Internet industry, including ISPs, anti-virus vendors, and the broader security community to prevent the Internet for going dark for  hundreds of thousands of infected individuals.
I am very proud of the decision the committee made. The bar has been set high for future recipients. Tom did an amazing job convincing lots of players to work together. His involvement definitely made the internet better for everyone, not just those infected by Rove Digital’s malware. What he did is a model for private / public partnerships in the future.
I don’t think I could say it better than the MAAWG press release, so I’ll just end with that.

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