Re: Let's try to be productive...

On Jan 6, 2014, at 5:33 AM, Richard Clayton <[email protected]> wrote:

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>=20
>>=20
>> On Jan 5, 2014, at 7:26 PM, Barry Shein <[email protected]> wrote:
>=20
>>> 1. High volume "bulk" mailers
>>> 2. Phishers
>>> 3. Direct fraudulent or trust appeals
>>> 4. High volume unsolicited email
>>> 5. What about email dictionary attacks and similar?
>>> 6. purely malicious or hard to discern very high volume email
>=20
> the problem with this "taxonomy" is that it is mixing up issues related
> to the nature of the sender, the nature of the content and the degree to
> which the email is targeted

+1.

> as such I don't see much value to it :(
>=20
> #4 for example (empty bodies) is generally believed to be malfunctioning
> software that would be sending you #1 type email if it wasn't so buggy
>=20
> In message <[email protected]>, Steve
> Atkins <[email protected]> writes
>=20
>> Other than that, all of the above. I=92d add malware emails
>=20
> which is a content issue ... since it generally comes under #1 or #2

Yes. But it=92s a special case - as it=92s unwanted mail that causes more u=
nwanted
mail, on a scale much more massive than the chain letters we used
to get so riled up about a couple of decades ago.

>=20
>> I have more concern about mail that=92s coming from senders
>> who send a mix of wanted and unwanted email, as opposed
>> to senders of 99%+ unwanted email, as it=92s much harder to
>> reliably mechanically mitigate. They=92re not really a large
>> fraction of the problem right now, though (other than exceptions
>> like Amazon, Yahoo and Google).
>=20
> again -- a mixing of issues. The reason you see a mixture of email from
> Yahoo, Gmail (etc) is that they provide service to hundreds of millions
> of people (each) and some of those people are more wicked than others
>=20
> However, if you see a mixture of email from Amazon, then their machine
> learning marketing system is malfunctioning

No, they=92re probably one of the worlds biggest hosting providers - and the
mail that comes from their hosting machines is very mixed, for much the
same reasons as Yahoo and Gmail (large volume of customers -> too
big to block -> laissez faire when it comes to all but the most egregious
spam issues -> abuse magnet, perhaps).

> BTW: no-one has mentioned the distinction so far (which matters
> considerably for senders like Gmail, Yahoo etc) between senders who
> exist solely to send spam ("mass reg" in the usual jargon) and those who
> are compromised (they re-used their password at a third party who was
> then popped).

Yup. ESPs, too, are very aware of that distinction.

Cheers,
  Steve

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