Security, safety and the cavalry

In some ways it’s been really hard to focus on email for the last few months. There are so many more important issues in the world. Terrorism, Brexit, the US elections compromised by a foreign government, nuclear threats from multiple countries, the repeal of ACA, mass deportations and ICE raids here in the US.  I find myself thinking about what to blog. Then I glance at the news and wonder if there’s any value in another blog post about deliverability.
Generally I’ve tried to keep politics and world events mostly off the blog. But sometimes events are such that I need to talk about them.
Last October I had the chance to speak at the Email Innovations Summit in London. Steve and I took the chance to spend some time doing tourist things in London – including a photo walk along the Thames.

As an American I’m always a little surprised by the security in London. I grew up a few miles outside of DC. I could talk about prohibited airspace and security measures before I was 10. London is so much more open than even the DC of my youth. The surprise there is that London has been a much bigger target and attacked more than any city in the US.
The last few times we were in London I noticed a bit more visible security. In 2013 it was armed security walking through Tube stations. Last year it was Underground trains that were one long car. They were a bit weird and visually disconcerting. The part that really made me think, though, was this was a way to stop people hiding explosives between cars and to facilitate evacuations if something happened.
Last night Steve and I were talking and I mentioned the attack in London didn’t seem like terrorism to me. And it didn’t, not really. He then pointed out that explosives and guns are difficult to come by in the UK and this was classic terrorism. Oh. Sometimes our cultural differences come out in the strangest places.
Thinking about bigger issues like this make it hard to focus on email. There’s a regularly shared joke in deliverability, “There’s no such thing as a deliverability emergency.” And there isn’t, not really. Yes, even if a whole range of IPs is listed on Spamhaus, it’s still not an emergency and there’s no fast response team to deal with it.
There are abuse issues that are higher stakes than getting to the inbox. Child abuse materials. Harassment. Privacy issues. Terror threats. Every online services company, particularly the social media companies, have to deal with these kinds of things. Many of them are dealing poorly. Others have employees who are doing their best, but lack the tools, support, and training to do it well. Many companies don’t understand why they need to police their customer base.
The reality is, though, that abuse on the net (as opposed to abuse of the net) is a huge issue that needs to be dealt with. These are not small issues. The Internet is global and there’s no internet police. Law enforcement in different jurisdictions have to work together with technology experts to address crime and harassment on the internet.
It may surprise you to hear that the people who create spam filters and try and protect your inbox are the same people who fight crime on the internet. Spam and email are a vital part of online crime, so it falls on the abuse team to work with and educate law enforcement about tracing the source of email. The people you never see in ops, and abuse and support are vital to protecting folks online.
During the closing talk at MAAWG the chair was discussing how we can protect our online spaces. He stated “There is no cavalry; no second wave. It’s us or no one.” That’s a huge thing. My friends and colleagues are the people who stand protecting users online. It feels like a huge burden, but it’s something we can do to make the world a better and safer place.
 
 

It's not fair
Friday blogging… or lack of it

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It's not fair

In the delivery space, stuff comes in cycles. We’re currently in a cycle where people are unhappy with spam filters. There are two reasons they’re unhappy: false positives and false negatives.
False positives are emails that the user doesn’t think is spam but goes into the bulk folder anyway.
Fales negatives are emails that the user does thing is spam but is delivered to the inbox.
I’ve sat on multiple calls over the course of my career, with clients and potential clients, where the question I cannot answer comes up. “Why do I still get spam?”
I have a lot of thoughts about this question and what it means for a discussion, how it should be answered and what the next steps are. But it’s important to understand that I, and most of my deliverability colleagues, hate this question. Yet we get it all the time. ISPs get it, too.
A big part of the answer is because spammers spend inordinate amounts of time and money trying to figure out how to break filters. In fact, back in 2006 the FTC fined a company almost a million dollars for using deceptive techniques to try and get into filters. One of the things this company did would be to have folks manually create emails to test filters. Once they found a piece of text that would get into the inbox, they’d spam until the filters caught up. Then, they’d start testing content again to see what would get past the filters. Repeat.
This wasn’t some fly by night company. They had beautiful offices in San Francisco with conference rooms overlooking Treasure Island. They were profitable. They were spammers. Of course, not long after the FTC fined them, they filed bankruptcy and disappeared.
Other spammers create and cultivate vast networks of IP addresses and domains to be used in snowshoeing operations. Still other spammers create criminal acts to hijack reputation of legitimate senders to make it to the inbox.
Why do you still get spam? That’s a bit like asking why people speed or run red lights. You still get spam because spammers invest a lot of money and time into sending you spam. They’re OK with only a small percentage of emails getting through filters, they’ll just make it up in volume.
Spam still exists because spammers still exist.
 

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Gmail filtering in a nutshell

Gmail’s approach to filtering; as described by one of the old timers. This person was dealing with network abuse back when I was still slinging DNA around as my job and just reading headers as a hobby.

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Policy is hard

We’re back at work after a trip to M3AAWG. This conference was a little different for me than previous ones. I spent a lot of time just talking with people – about email, about abuse, about the industry, about the ecosystem. Sometimes when you’re in a position like mine, you get focused way too much on the trees.

Of course, it’s the focusing on the trees that makes me good for my clients. I follow what’s going on closely, so they don’t have to. I pay attention so I can distill things into useable chunks for them to implement. Sometimes, though, I need to remember to look around and appreciate the forest. That’s what I got to do last week. I got to talk with so many great people. I got to hear what they think about email. The different perspectives are invaluable. They serve to deepen my understanding of delivery, email and where the industry is going.

One of the things that really came into focus for me is how critical protecting messaging infrastructure is. I haven’t spoken very much here about the election and the consequences and the changes and challenges we’re facing. That doesn’t mean I’m not worried about them or I don’t have some significant reservations about the new administration. It just means I don’t know how to articulate it or even if there is a solution.
The conference gave me hope. Because there are people at a lot of places who are in a place to protect users and protect privacy and protect individuals. Many of those folks were at the conference. The collaboration is still there. The concern for how we can stop or minimize bad behavior and what the implications are. Some of the most difficult conversations around policy involve the question who will this affect. In big systems, simple policies that seem like a no-brainer… aren’t. We’re seeing the effects of this with some of the realities the new administration and the Republican leaders of congress are realizing. Health care is hard, and complex. Banning an entire religion may not be a great idea. Governing is not like running a business.
Talking with smart people, especially with smart people who disagree with me, is one of the things that lets me see the forest. And I am so grateful for the time I spend with them.

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