Re: [ietf-smtp] why I'm discussing the spam filtering problem

Bron Gondwana <brong@fastmailteam.com> Tue, 06 October 2020 06:01 UTC

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Date: Tue, 06 Oct 2020 17:01:12 +1100
From: Bron Gondwana <brong@fastmailteam.com>
To: ietf-smtp@ietf.org
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Subject: Re: [ietf-smtp] why I'm discussing the spam filtering problem
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On Mon, Oct 5, 2020, at 15:06, Keith Moore wrote:
> On 10/4/20 11:48 PM, Scott Kitterman wrote:

>> On Sunday, October 4, 2020 10:18:08 PM EDT Keith Moore wrote:
>> 
>>> It's because I care about Internet email, and having it work well.  
It's because I hate to see Internet email lose out to FacedOut and
LockedBook and Tooter and Frop and most of the other profoundly
dysfunctional toys that people use for interpersonal messaging these
days.   It's because (and I'll probably regret saying this) RFC821,
RFC822, and their descendants have actually held up fairly well in terms
of functionality, especially in comparison to these toys, though there's
clearly a need for improvement by now.

I'd like to think that other people here also care about having Internet
email work well, but so far the loudest people just seem to be screaming
for their right to sabotage it.   Maybe there's some good intent and
good faith buried in those arguments, but it's hard to see.
>>> 
>> My advice would be stare harder.

In my view, email without spam filtering would be totally unusable.
> Well, in my experience, that depends.   I operate some accounts with no spam filtering, some with, using different accounts for different purposes.   That has worked fairly well for me.  I do get some spam on the unfiltered accounts, but not enough to be terribly bothersome, and it's certainly better to leave spam filtering off for those accounts than to risk losing a gig.

> (I have other accounts that get horrendous amounts of spam despite having spam filtering.   I'm phasing those out but it can take a long time to update everyone's idea of your email address.)


We reject or discard over 90% of email before it reaches the mailbox for our customers, and still one of the most common complaints is that too much spam gets through.

Brandon has of course worked on a much larger system, as have others in these discussions.

Mostly, given the choice between systems without spam filtering, and systems with spam filtering, people select the ones with spam filtering.  That's a reality that we need to grapple with if we want adoption.

Cheers,

Bron.

--
  Bron Gondwana, CEO, Fastmail Pty Ltd
  brong@fastmailteam.com