4 ms·

No they don't. They, like most abuse sensitive recipients, don't accept mail from small indie servers, so people know not to use small indie servers to send mai

No they don't. They, like most abuse sensitive recipients, don't accept mail from small indie servers, so people know not to use small indie servers to send mail.

bzbarsky 9y ago
It's not just small indie servers. They do "reputation scoring" of senders that penalize them for things like sending plaintext mail. See https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/mozilla.governance/WWKmxU4U_K0/4PAWTnWjBAAJ https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/mozilla.governance/WWK... for more details of one example.
cookiecaper 9y ago
Right! We can't trust those "small indie servers" on the world wide web. Who knows where they've been?! Make sure you use mail servers furnished by Google, Microsoft, and other NSA-approved facilitators. They only cost $10 / mo / user, that is easily affordable for anyone who is not a Russian agent tricking the unwashed masses into preventing Hillary Clinton from ascending to her rightful place as ----- errrm, uh, from "corrupting democracy". Any non-Google, non-Microsoft mailers will be blocked, lest users be asked to renew their VIAGRA prescription from a Canadian pharmacy, or a non-compliant political message be received. It's for your own good, citizen! Thank you, wise and great Google! Thank you, wise and great Microsoft! I wouldn't know how to use this free, non-controlled computer network without your benevolent work! unsnark: Seriously, the way that Google et al have captured "anti-spam" mechanisms and converted them into "pay a big company for your mail" mechanisms is extremely sad, and speaks to the true forces at work behind all the warm and fuzzies about an "open web".
fyfy18 9y ago
I’ve read this a lot, often as a counter argument to running your own mail servers, and I believe it to be mostly FUD. I run a small SaaS and it sends out quite a lot of notification emails to customers (they are paying me for these emails, they aren’t spam or newsletters). I was originally using SendGrid but their deliverability rates were pretty bad and I was about to hit a ceiling for my plan, which would meant the monthly cost would more than double, which was unaffordable for me. I decided to try setting up my own mail server. Everyone said don’t do it, you emails won’t be delivered, it’s too much work, etc. I setup a VPS with OVH as I’ve heard their policies regarding email spam are pretty strict (I contacted them before to clarify - if they find out you are spamming they cut your off ASAP to protect their other customers). The IP I got was actually on one blacklist, but I got that resolved in a few days. The deliverability rate was better than SendGrid and it was costing me 1/10th of the price. One thing that I would assume helped is the domain had already been in use for a few years, and I setup proper DKIM and SPF records. The server has been running for a year and a half now, and the only bounces I get are due to invalid or suspended email accounts. Most of my customers are small to medium sized businesses, a lot of which run their own Exchange servers - with SendGrid those were usually the ones who were bouncing my mail due to being on a blacklist. Now admittedly just being accepted doesn’t mean it is ending up in a users inbox, but I haven’t had any complaints from paying customers.
pilif 9y ago
I'm not convinced about this generalization. Case in point is the mail relay server of our company which definitely counts as a small indie server and whose email is accepted and not marked as spam. Of course we have configured SPF, DKIM and a proper reverse dns lookup on both ipv4 and IPv6, but that’s just being a good email-citizen anyways.
lucb1e 9y ago
Even if that were true, then your parent's statement still holds: "basically made e-mail totally unusable" If it's down to a few big senders and the rest is rejected, they might as well get rid of SMTP, close it off, and just talk a proprietary protocol among each other.

No they don't. They, like most abuse sensitive recipients, don't accept mail from small indie servers, so people know not to use small indie servers to send mail.

bzbarsky 9y ago

It's not just small indie servers. They do "reputation scoring" of senders that penalize them for things like sending plaintext mail. See https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/mozilla.governance/WWKmxU4U_K0/4PAWTnWjBAAJ https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/mozilla.governance/WWK... for more details of one example.

cookiecaper 9y ago

Right! We can't trust those "small indie servers" on the world wide web. Who knows where they've been?! Make sure you use mail servers furnished by Google, Microsoft, and other NSA-approved facilitators. They only cost $10 / mo / user, that is easily affordable for anyone who is not a Russian agent tricking the unwashed masses into preventing Hillary Clinton from ascending to her rightful place as ----- errrm, uh, from "corrupting democracy". Any non-Google, non-Microsoft mailers will be blocked, lest users be asked to renew their VIAGRA prescription from a Canadian pharmacy, or a non-compliant political message be received. It's for your own good, citizen! Thank you, wise and great Google! Thank you, wise and great Microsoft! I wouldn't know how to use this free, non-controlled computer network without your benevolent work! unsnark: Seriously, the way that Google et al have captured "anti-spam" mechanisms and converted them into "pay a big company for your mail" mechanisms is extremely sad, and speaks to the true forces at work behind all the warm and fuzzies about an "open web".

fyfy18 9y ago

I’ve read this a lot, often as a counter argument to running your own mail servers, and I believe it to be mostly FUD. I run a small SaaS and it sends out quite a lot of notification emails to customers (they are paying me for these emails, they aren’t spam or newsletters). I was originally using SendGrid but their deliverability rates were pretty bad and I was about to hit a ceiling for my plan, which would meant the monthly cost would more than double, which was unaffordable for me. I decided to try setting up my own mail server. Everyone said don’t do it, you emails won’t be delivered, it’s too much work, etc. I setup a VPS with OVH as I’ve heard their policies regarding email spam are pretty strict (I contacted them before to clarify - if they find out you are spamming they cut your off ASAP to protect their other customers). The IP I got was actually on one blacklist, but I got that resolved in a few days. The deliverability rate was better than SendGrid and it was costing me 1/10th of the price. One thing that I would assume helped is the domain had already been in use for a few years, and I setup proper DKIM and SPF records. The server has been running for a year and a half now, and the only bounces I get are due to invalid or suspended email accounts. Most of my customers are small to medium sized businesses, a lot of which run their own Exchange servers - with SendGrid those were usually the ones who were bouncing my mail due to being on a blacklist. Now admittedly just being accepted doesn’t mean it is ending up in a users inbox, but I haven’t had any complaints from paying customers.

pilif 9y ago

I'm not convinced about this generalization. Case in point is the mail relay server of our company which definitely counts as a small indie server and whose email is accepted and not marked as spam. Of course we have configured SPF, DKIM and a proper reverse dns lookup on both ipv4 and IPv6, but that’s just being a good email-citizen anyways.

lucb1e 9y ago

Even if that were true, then your parent's statement still holds: "basically made e-mail totally unusable" If it's down to a few big senders and the rest is rejected, they might as well get rid of SMTP, close it off, and just talk a proprietary protocol among each other.