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Today’s mail servers often don’t know who’s in the receiver’s address book or who they have received mail from before. That seems to be an untapped source for s

by danrl 5y ago

Today’s mail servers often don’t know who’s in the receiver’s address book or who they have received mail from before. That seems to be an untapped source for scoring on the server site. If the SMTP server also hosts the mailbox, and can access well known folders (Archive, All Mail, Junk) it could quickly decide after the RCPT TO how to react. Options: Slowing down to increase sender’s cost, requiring proof of work (hashcash style SMTP extension), adding scoring information for spam filters, issue a temporary unavailable (gray listing), you name it. Some have contact lists and email from the same provider and synced to the cloud (e.g. gmail/gcontacts; e.g. iCloud+ email hosting and icloud sync for contacts). One would expect these data sources work together, but it seems that today at best one informs the spam filter of the other, and not necessarily server side. There is potential in moving the smartness to earlier stages of the transmission where the sender is also bearing some of the costs. JMAP (sic!) is a good step to standardize syncing here. Still think there is untapped potential even there.

jcranmer 5y ago
> Today’s mail servers often don’t know who’s in the receiver’s address book or who they have received mail from before. One of the big revolutions in antispam was reputation-based, which is used in all large email providers. Effectively, every email domain gets a reputation based on their email history. Someone like @gmail.com that sends a lot of mail to the server that isn't spam is going to get through easily. Someone like @spammymcspamface.com that sends naught but spam is going to get black holed. Someone like @whoami.com who hasn't sent anything is going to get throttled until they can establish a reputation as not-spammy.
- danrl 5y ago
  Reputation is, however, not weighted by data tied to the individual receiver's mailbox. Reputation is often tied to the sending domain. Reputation, as helpful as it is, doesn't tap into the data that currently remains largely untapped.

by danrl 5y ago

jcranmer 5y ago

> Today’s mail servers often don’t know who’s in the receiver’s address book or who they have received mail from before. One of the big revolutions in antispam was reputation-based, which is used in all large email providers. Effectively, every email domain gets a reputation based on their email history. Someone like @gmail.com that sends a lot of mail to the server that isn't spam is going to get through easily. Someone like @spammymcspamface.com that sends naught but spam is going to get black holed. Someone like @whoami.com who hasn't sent anything is going to get throttled until they can establish a reputation as not-spammy.

danrl 5y ago
Reputation is, however, not weighted by data tied to the individual receiver's mailbox. Reputation is often tied to the sending domain. Reputation, as helpful as it is, doesn't tap into the data that currently remains largely untapped.