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> To add yet another protection, moving forward, we’ll enforce a clear spam rate threshold that senders must stay under to ensure Gmail recipients aren’t bombar
by jcrites 3y ago
> To add yet another protection, moving forward, we’ll enforce a clear spam rate threshold that senders must stay under to ensure Gmail recipients aren’t bombarded with unwanted messages. This is an industry first, and as a result, you should see even less spam in your inbox.
How is this an industry first? Every large receiving domain has had thresholds that they expect senders to stay under regarding the number of messages that bounce and receive spam complaints. As last I recall, the typical threshold for complaints was around 0.1% of messages (but it's been years since I worked in email). Gmail has certainly had a limit like this of some kind, whether or not they've talked about it.
Update: looks like Gmail landed on that same number of 0.1% as documented in https://support.google.com/mail/answer/81126#spam-rate https://support.google.com/mail/answer/81126#spam-rate - with an upper limit being 0.3%.
I do really like what Google has been doing to drive adoption of technologies in email like DKIM, DMARC, TLS, etc. I'm not trying to be critical generally. I'm just surprised by this claim.
Perhaps what's an industry first is telling senders their complaint rate [1], and establishing a clear and transparent threshold on it? (Most of the time, complaint rate thresholds are not documented publicly and transparently). So providing this level of transparency may in fact be an industry first.
What would also be a huge step forward, if Gmail is doing this, is migrating to a concept of email reputation that is entirely based on the sender's domain name (and not their IP address). Reading between the lines in their documentation, this seems to be the case (e.g., the requirement to set up SPF and DKIM) -- and calculating statistics like the complaint rate at that level -- though I can't tell for sure. With DKIM being required for all traffic, hopefully IP-based reputation will be a thing of the past.
[1] Senders should be able to calculate their own complaint rate as long as receivers provide a feedback loop, which most large senders do AFAIK, though unsophisticated senders might not have their own tooling to do this.
- lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 3y ago> How is this an industry first? Google is referring to Google as an industry[0]. This is an industry first, and as a result, you should feel slightly uncomfortable with the idea. 0: I actually have no idea. I wouldn’t be surprised if the author is just using it as an idiom, despite the fact that it otherwise has a literal meaning which has contextual significance.
- philistine 3y agoI absolutely do not believe Google will hold themselves to the threshold they announced. Gmail will remain an inscrutable black box ... by design.
- jabart 3y agoGmail doesn't provide the raw FBL (Feedback loop) data. It's only available in Google Postmaster which has an API for domains you have already setup and have to web scrape to set new domains. Validity took over FBL for a lot of providers and just recently announced you will only get statistics or pay a yearly fee to get the raw FBL data. I also handle support for an email marketing platform. Users 100% will mark an email as spam then ask that company why they stopped receiving emails. Some will even use the unsubscribe link, write that they receive too many emails, then email asking why they stopped receiving email. It's an imperfect system.