Your system; your rules

In the late 90s I was reasonably active in the anti-spam community and in trying to protect mailboxes. There were a couple catchphrases that developed as a bit of shorthand for discussions. One of them was “my server, my rules.” The underlying idea was that someone owned the different systems on the internet, and as owners of those systems they had the right to make usage rules for them. These rules can be about what system users can do (AUPs and terms of service) or what about what other people can do (web surfers or email senders).
I think this is still a decent guiding principle in “my network, my rules”. I do believe that network owners can choose what traffic and behavior they will allow on their network. But these days it’s a little different than it was when my dialup was actually a PPP shell account and seeing a URL on a television ad was a major surprise.
But ISPs are not what they once were. They are publicly owned, global companies with billion dollar market caps. The internet isn’t just the playground of college students and researchers, just about anyone in the US can get online – even if they don’t own a computer there is public internet access in many areas. Some of us have access to the internet in our pockets.
They still own the systems. They still make the rules. But the rules have to balance different constituencies including users and stockholders. Budgets are bigger, but there’s still a limited amount of money to go around. Decisions have to be made. These decisions translate into what traffic the ISP allows on the network. Those decisions are implemented by the employees. Sometimes they screw up. Sometimes they overstep. Sometimes they do the wrong thing. Implementation is hard and one of the things I really push with my clients. Make sure processes do what you think they do.
A long way of dancing around the idea that individual people can make policy decisions we disagree with on their networks, and third parties have no say in them. But those policy decisions need to be made in accordance with internal policies and processes. People can’t just randomly block things without consequences if they violate policies or block things that shouldn’t be blocked.
Ironically, today one of the major telcos managed to accidentally splash their 8xx number database. 8xx numbers are out all over the country while they search for backups to restore the database. This is business critical for thousands of companies, and is probably costing companies money right and left. Accidents can result in bigger problems than malice.
 

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Language as filtering criteria

A few months ago I was working on a delivery audit for a client who sends mail in multiple languages. We discovered that the language of an email has a significant delivery impact. The same email in different languages was delivered differently, particularly at Gmail. Emails in a language I don’t normally receive email in were delivered to my bulk folder.
Other folks have commented on similar things. Some filters really do look at preferred language of the recipient and treat mail in other languages as problematic. I don’t think that’s unreasonable. I do get a lot of foreign language spam and there’s no real way to stop it. Many countries don’t require opt-out links, and so there isn’t a clear way to even unsubscribe.
Writing in the recipient’s local language is one way to minimize inappropriate blocking, even when you have permission to send mail.
 
 

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Ashley Madison Compromise

Last month Brian Krebs reported that the Ashley Madison database was compromised. Ashley Madison is a dating site that targets married folks who are looking to have affairs. Needless to say, there is a lot of risk for users if their data is found on the released data. Today what is supposedly the Ashley Madison data was released.
The release of this data can have some significant impacts on the site members. Of course there’s the problem of credit card numbers being stolen, but that’s something most of us have to deal with on a regular basis. But there can also be significant relationship repercussions if/when a spouse discovers that their partner has registered on a site to have affairs.
When I first heard of the compromise I wondered if they had my data. You see, they have one of my spamtraps on their unsubscribe list. It just so happened that I visited an unsubscribe link, hosted by Ashley Madison (http://unsub.ashleymadison.com/?ref=2). This was during the time when I decided to unsubscribe from all the spam coming into one of my spamtraps. Is my email address going to be a part of this data dump? If my email address is there, what name do they have associated with it? This is the trap that gets mail addressed to multiple other people. Maybe it’s my email address but their name. Are they at risk for relationship problems or legal problems due to my attempt to unsubscribe?
Of course, Ashley Madison had no incentive to make sure their data was correct. In fact, they were sued for faking data to entice paying members. How much of the released data is false and will there be real harm due to that?
I expect in the next few days someone (or multiple someones) will put up a website where those of us who are curious can search the data. I just hope that people realize how much of the data is likely to be false. Even Arstechnica cautions readers from jumping to conclusions.

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Don't like opt-outs? Target your program better.

I get a LOT of spam here. Most of it is marked and trivial to get rid of. Some of it is what I would call semi-legitimate. It’s a real product, but I never asked to receive any information from this company and am not actually part of their demographic. For one time things I just hit delete and move on. Life is too short to complain or opt out of every spam I get. (Tried that, got more mail)
But sometimes if the same sender keeps bothering me, I will send back an email asking them to cease contact. I recently had an occasion where someone sent an initial email trying to sell me bulk SMS, online video and other services. I ignored it because we’re not in the market for any of these services. A week later I get a followup asking why I hadn’t provided feedback to them and if there was a better person to talk to at the company. I looked for a way to opt-out of this message stream, but there wasn’t one. I send a reply telling them we were not interested in speaking to them and to please cease all communication. (“You didn’t receive feedback because I have no interest in talking to you. Please cease all future contact.” Admittedly that was terse, but it was polite.)
My request to cease communication was not well received, nor was it honored. Mind you, they first contacted me trying to sell me services that are totally off what we offer. When I asked them not to contact me, they turned it around that we’d lost business.

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