Subject: [Asrg] Teaching my boss to email politely

From: Erik Hollensbe <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 29 Jan 2010 19:27:32 -0500

I honestly don't know if this is the best place for this posting; I 
apologize if I have offended anyone by sending here.

Without going into too much detail, my boss, who is zealous, but 
well-meaning about his pursuit managed to get us blocked from several 
services by sending an announcement to users that we were public (users 
previously were met with a site where we talked about what we were doing 
and to fill out a form when we were live; a total opt-in process).

Anyhow, after a lot of nun-like scolding from me I want to give him a 
somewhat complete discussion of how email becomes spam, that's light 
enough on the technical end so he can understand it.

I want to do this because he's not going to stop sending newsletters, 
and I honestly think both him and I want to do our customers (and those 
interested and uninterested in our product) right, he's just a little 
more than oblivious to these kinds of things.

My searches on the internet only lead me to services that would be happy 
to *check* our emails, or teach us how to fake out the filtering systems 
(which is *not* what I want), but don't really go into techniques like 
group-flagged bayesian filtering or RBLs (content and host-based) or 
DomainKeys/SPF, etc. I'm looking for a resource which adequately 
explains the latter topics so he can digest and really understand what 
is going on without having to understand what MX records are or have a 
few months in computational linguistics under his belt.

I don't know where most of you come from culture-wise in this industry; 
but in my world it's still very much about teaching people how to fish 
instead of handing them the finished product. It would be beneficial to 
both him and us (as mail administrators) to have this information 
centrally available.

Thanks for any help you can give me; again, if this is the wrong place 
for it, I'm genuinely sorry.

-Erik

---

From: "Chris Lewis" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 30 Jan 2010 00:22:02 -0500

> both him and us (as mail administrators) to have this information 

This may be the wrong place, but, some of the information below becomes 
useful upon occasion:

There's a couple of different levels to this, season to suit.  Level 3 
and above gets you into progressively more severe damage to the 
bottom-line.  That tends to get attention paid.

Level 1: for those who are "instructable" and non-tech:

http://www.mail-abuse.com/an_listmgntgdlines.html is a recent version of 
a highly regarded document of best practices (and why) at a 
general/conceptual level.  Been around for a very long time.  Many 
people quote it in situations like this.

Level 2: for those who are instructable and want tech details: see the 
MAAWG Sender Best Practices document at http://www.maawg.org.

Level 3: for those who need a stick: you'll get blocked by the sites 
that you care most about, if not a significant chunk of the Internet. 
Big sites are good at it.  If a big site notices you, you always lose.
So don't go there.

Level 4: bigger stick: It is becoming illegal in increasing numbers of 
jurisdictions (eg: EU or AU) to send unsolicited email.

Level 5: for those who need a very large stick: If Bill C-27 passes 
(it's damn close), every time he sends unsolicited email to a Canadian 
(and how can you tell whether a .com is a American or Canadian?), he 
could be on the hook for a fine of up to $250K _apiece_.  And no, he 
can't assume that the three branches of the Canadian government 
responsible for C-27 will be too busy to go after him.  Bill C-27 means 
he can get PRA/class action suits on his head _too_.

To paraphrase Clint:  "Does he feel lucky?"

I never have to go no further than "don't do that, or spamhaus will 
block us" (level 3).   That always ends it.  Not that I have to do that 
often.  Our marketers don't need me to tell them that spam is bad. They 
just occasionally need me to point out who the fraudsters are.