This content originally appeared on dbushell.com and was authored by dbushell.com
I listened to Mostly Technical episode 42 — great podcast btw — Aaron Francis talks about the struggles of sending an email newsletter. Google are quick to rate limit new domains to prevent spam. Spam sucks, but it concerns me just how much authority big players like Google and Microsoft have over email.
Despite being keen on self-hosting I pay for Proton Mail. It’s possible to self-host an email server but even the staunchest of self-hosters say do not bother. Why? Because Google or Microsoft will inevitably kill it and there’s no recourse. If they hit you with a false positive you’re toast and they don’t care.
Even Proton have trouble with Microsoft. I was getting failed DMARC reports from an Outlook server. Proton support replied:
We have been contacting Microsoft’s engineers about this issue for the past few months. They last mentioned [their] DKIM validator only waits for a very short time (0.5 seconds). When a DKIM authentication process takes longer than 0.5 seconds, Microsoft gives the DKIM “timeout” results (the “fail” results in DMARC reports).
If Proton gets grief, what chance do self-hosters have? I’ve actually lost business due to shenanigans like this leaving my email nuked as spam. My domain has had twenty years to build a good reputation for whatever that’s worth.
All of this comes down to tackling spam. Or so they claim. Ironically, Google are by far the biggest facilitators of spam from my perspective.
Seriously considering blocking ALL email from @gmail.com and @outlook.com […]
Because guess what? Over 50% of spam I receive to @dbushell.com claims to come from those two domains, @gmail being the worst offender. However, looking deeper, not all of this spam is being sent via Google’s servers. Some are spoofing @gmail in the From and Reply-To headers. Do these Google accounts exist if I were to reply?
Seems like spammers have two tactics:
- straight up spam from Gmail
- spam from elsewhere and use Gmail to land victims
Last year I had a client request that one of their web forms block all “non-professional” email addresses; @gmail, @hotmail, @yahoo, etc. They wanted an error message saying “please email from your business address”, or something to that effect. I balked at this idea on principle. The internet should be open to all! I registered my customary protest that fell on deaf ears. The block was implemented.
Now I’m considering whether or not to block the same domains. Like my client, I get no legitimate business from them.
Gmail spam is out of control. Google are gatekeepers but the enemy has breached the walls. Do Google care about spam and phishing or is their primary goal to control the email ecosystem? Same goes for Microsoft. They too play gatekeeper and make life hard for anyone sending honest emails. To what avail? What ratio of spam do they facilitate vs prevent?
Blocking @gmail only solves half my problem. I’d like to self-host my own email server. I’d like to send transactional emails and newsletters from my own web server. But in reality I’m forced to pay a 3rd party with no guarantee of success.
Thanks Google.
This content originally appeared on dbushell.com and was authored by dbushell.com
dbushell.com | Sciencx (2024-07-03T10:00:00+00:00) Google Spam. Retrieved from https://www.scien.cx/2024/07/03/google-spam/
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