Yahoo Blocks Venerable Email List Over False Positives

RomulusNR writes "Yahoo has stopped delivering This Is True, Randy Cassingham's 14-year-old mailing list, because too many Yahoo readers have mistakenly or carelessly flagged it as spam. Yahoo readers make up over 10% of True's readership, slashing the ad revenue that keeps it going. And Yahoo doesn't negotiate with spammers. As Randy describes it: 'The yahoos... ask to be put on True's distribution, then confirm that request, and... then click the "This is Spam" button when they don't recognize the mailing or simply don't want it anymore. Yes, those yahoos have screwed thousands upon thousands of others who really do want my newsletter. Too bad: Yahoo is listening to the yahoos instead: they're blocking it. To them, we're "spammers" and no protestations from "spammers" count.' The irony is that This is True is one of the first profitable mailing lists, predating Yahoo! Mail by almost three years."

we need a receipt after confirmation

When somebody subscribes to one of my mailing lists, and confirms, we need a token from the mailbox provider which, when included on an incoming email means that the email is NEVER spam. Spam reports get converted into unsubscribe requests.

But there's no standard for this.

Oh, grow up.

Spam filtering is a problem for all mailing lists. Simple solution: use newsfeeds instead.

I gave up on my Yahoo email account

I've had it for nearly 10 years. However, Yahoo's delivery of email into my account is sketchy at best.

.

Why can gmail (my new free email provider) do such a better job than Yahoo did?

idiots who click on "this is spam"

most of them think it's a way of unsubscribing from a list.

Causes blacklisting for domains and hosting companies. I had a guy who forwarded his email address to an external address, then clicked on "This is spam" for every message. My IP was in the header so I got blacklisted. I had to scare the shit out of him to get him to stop "now that I've warned you, if you continue, I'll sue and take your house." Needless to say the customer did not renew, saved me the trouble of TOSsing him.

Yahoo is dead, get out while you can

I gave up on Yahoo several months ago after an unknown person hijacked my account and changed the password. I don't log in from other computers, I only log in from the Mac in my bedroom, so it's not like I was creating a risk. I was paying Yahoo for a personalized "business" email address, yet it took three hours of phone calls, several emails and over three days to get them to turn my account back over to me. At one point, they told me they could not verify my identity with my name, phone number, mailing address and the credit card number they were billing. They said they couldn't unlock the account without me telling them what my security question was (which I chose 10 years ago), and the answer to that question. I told them, "that's not how security questions work. You ask me the security question and unlock my account when I provide the correct answer." When I finally did get back into my account, I discovered the hijacker had been contacting women through Yahoo personals posing as me, and in some cases telling them to "reply to my other Yahoo address." There were a few different addresses he was pointing people to. I notified Yahoo about this and asked them to investigate the fraud, and they told me it wasn't a priority for them. I migrated everything important to Google, and called Yahoo to cancel my account and transfer my personalized domain, but after hours of waiting on the phone, again, and again, they tell me they don't have the ability to release my domain. It's like dealing with a car salesman. As the company fails, it resorts to shadier practices to hold onto what it has, like AOL before it.

Such irony

The irony is that This is True is one of the first profitable mailing lists, predating Yahoo! Mail by almost three years.

What's ironic about it?

[rhetorical question to highlight "irony" word abuse]

systemic problems with yahoo inbox delivery

I stopped using Yahoo about 4-5 years ago because of problems with inbox delivery. After many tests, their mail servers would respond that the message was Sent when in fact it was never delivered. I've tested it about 20-30 times since then and have the same issues. Even if you send mail from supposedly vanity domains like Gmail.com, the mail still never gets delivered. Yahoo has had problems before with the profiles.yahoo.com site getting infiltrated by spammers about 5-7 years ago, a problem they never solved. It seems like the problems don't go away -- they only get worse. This story is just one example.

AOL has a similar problem

I run a relatively small (2,000 subscribers) email discussion list for hardware store owners. I'm signed up as a mailing list provider with AOL's mail system, and I receive notifications when subscribers submit my list messages as spam. Apparently AOL's DELETE and REPORT AS SPAM buttons are relatively close together, though I can't verify this. I do know that I get notifications from AOL that a user has reported a message as spam, and when I contact the user they tell me it was a mistake and they didn't realize they had reported the message as spam.

My guess is that you have to reach a fairly high "critical mass" of spam reports before AOL will actually take action and block list messages. I've never had my list blocked by AOL (or Yahoo for that matter) so the occasional erroneous report doesn't seem to have much effect.

I wonder if Yahoo has a similar program for mailing list admins?

Re:So, what is the problem?

The person being hurt is the mailing list owner, who isn't a customer of Yahoo. The Yahoo subscribers, who marked it as spam will be quite happy, they're no longer receiving this email they forgot subscribing to. The remaining Yahoo subscribers may or may not notice they ceased receiving it. Many will assume that the mailing list has closed all together.

So I don't see any market pressure to force Yahoo's hand. Other than what little publicity the mailing list owner can generate.

Re:So, what is the problem?

If no one is upset over its absence, then it indeed was spam. The determination of spam is based on whether you want it to continue or not. The lack of complaining subscribers suggests it wasn't.

Huh? It's an OPT IN MAILING LIST, with a very deliberate signup process, you can't inadvertently or accidentally sign up. You have an interesting definition of what spam is, well not so much interesting as stupid.

Re:So, what is the problem?

An unsubscribe process takes more clicks then hitting 'mark as spam'. That's all the reason people need to use the spam button. Can you honestly say you've never done it?

Um, yes, actually. I'm kind of shocked that you even consider it a valid option. Does it not occur to you that this has the potential to impact other people, too? I mean, I can be as lazy as the next person sometimes, but how hard is a couple fucking clicks of a mouse?

Re:So, what is the problem?

I agree that people shouldn't mark as spam things they voluntarily signed up for (unless attempts to remove oneself from the list fail).

However, I think this also points out a way in which email could be made better. There should really be a standardized way to unsubscribe from mailing lists, so that every mail client automatically shows an "unsubscribe" button inside any mailing list email. The problem with current unsubscribe methods is that they require too much effort (even clicking a few links is "too much effort" in comparison to the "spam" button... moreover many sites make you go through numerous confusing web-forms). Also, an integrated "unsubscribe" button in an email client would send the "please unsubscribe" signal, and simultaneously add the address to a personal blacklist (but not add it to the spam detection list).

If you make it easy for people to use, then they will. The present problem arises largely from people's laziness. But you can't prevent people from being lazy, so instead the tools should adapt to people's common usage.

Some sites make it deliberately hard

If something has single click unsubscribe then i'll happily use that.

However too many sites expect that you figure out what username and password you used to sign up and then somehow manage your subscriptions via their website.

If i cant get off a list in under 30 seconds, then i'll spam filter it in google

Re:So, what is the problem?

As someone who's been on Randy's list for 10+ years, I can tell you it's easier to remove yourself from his list than anything else. It's literally just one click to unsubscribe.

In fact, it's easier to get off his list than it is to get on.

Some people do pay for the upgraded "Premium" This is True, and those people are not getting a paid-for-service.

What if yahoo decided that announcements from /. were spam? What if you were a subscriber?

Re:So, what is the problem?

I want my spam filter to be accurate. I would not mark something "spam" if it were not actually spam - and certainly not if it were from a mailing list I deliberately subscribed to.

That's a terrible idea, and the fact that people do it irritates me. I'm sure it's the reason Google's spam filter is not as accurate as it used to be.

Re:So, what is the problem?

The reason people don't use the unsubscribe link is due to trust. Do you trust a spammer? Why would you when they've demonstrated they're untrustworthy. Even if they're not a spammer, you believe they are so the thought process is the same.

You click the Spam button instead. You trust your email provider more than a spammer. That's why.

Part of the problem...

If the site was so bad that you only visited it once, why did you give them your friggin' email address?

They didn't just grab it out of thin air, you know. You're the one that went through their registration process and agreed to their terms of service, in which case any email they sent to you WASN'T unsolicited and WASN'T spam.

In short, you're one of the idiots who're causing all of the problems. Just click the "unsubscribe" link at the bottom of the email next time.

Re:So, what is the problem?

You gave them their e-mail addresss. They disclose how they will use your e-mail address if you provide it.

The messages are solicited.

Unsolicited is not a codename for anything I don't want.

Unsolicited means they found you and contacted you without you directly providing them with your contact information to 'subscribe' or as part of a business transaction.

Generally, solicited messages cannot be considered spam, except under extreme circumstances.

(Where the contact information is misused to send a massive volume of messages over a short period of time, without permission, for instance)

Re:Mailing list receipts

the REAL story here is ... "How do I poison the yahoo spam list to ignore email from large, legitimate companies?" ... because it seems to be working well by accident. Maybe someone could monetize this? (Of course, that makes it a denial of service attack, and probably not legal... but...)

Re:Mailing list receipts

I wish we had some widespread way of verifying a mailing list subscription, or cessation thereof.

Don't RSS feeds accomplish this because people can subscribe and unsubscribe at will? I'm on the mailing list of several missionaries from my church but would much prefer them to just open a blog and let me subscribe via RSS instead of sending me emails. Easier for me (fewer emails to check), easier for them (no need to maintain a large database of contacts & email addresses, many of which are probably out of date.) With RSS feeds, nothing is ever out of date and you can be sure everyone that is supposed to be getting your content actually is getting your content. I guess the only disadvantage of RSS feeds is that one has to be reasonably technologically savvy to even know what they are, let alone use them.

Re:double standard

I'm all the time clicking "this is spam" on stuff that Yahoo sends to my yahoo account, but I still get it. What's up with that?

Me, too. They also started throwing all the moveon e-mails and tor e-mails into the spam folder as well. So is yahoo not delivering the mail at all, or just throwing it straight into folks spam folder?

Re:double standard

Hint: People are deliberately signing up for MoveOn lists, then flagging it as spam.

This is not news - it's a pretty well-known competitive dirty trick.

Re:List-Unsubscribe?

Umm... no.

I get a lot "to unsubscribe, mail to blah@blub..." spam. The reason is simple, when you do unsubscribe from the spam list, they know it's a valid and still active mail address.

You have no idea how much that increases your value as a spam target!

So when spamfilters automatically write to some unsub address instead of flagging something as spam, be prepared to be flooded with spam.

Re:List-Unsubscribe?

Isn't Yahoo in an ideal position to make this sort of probing useless? Just redirect all non-existent traffic with an unsubscribe header to a daemon that requests to be unsubscribed... then if you keep getting mail, you either ignore it or you use it, since you have the largest pool of honeypot email addresses on the planet.

Likewise they could in theory hit unsubscribe on behalf of their customers and then grab the resultant traffic. Of course, this is more open to attack, as the attacker can just switch email addresses. But if you're also unsubscribing all non-existent traffic, I'd say this will actually begin to get a lot more expensive for the would-be spammer than Yahoo, and the spammer would just stop trying to brute-force Yahoo.

Re:Bulk mail is still spam, even if it's "wanted"

Bulk mail is still spam, even if it's "wanted"

Actually, no it isn't. Unsolicited mail is spam, a mailing list you consciously signed up for isn't. Just because you're too lazy to properly unsubscribe and thus reach for the 'This Is Spam' button to make it disappear doesn't make it spam.