US Approves Google Plan To Let Political Emails Bypass Gmail Spam Filter (arstechnica.com) 94
The US Federal Election Commission approved a Google plan to let campaign emails bypass Gmail spam filters. From a report: The FEC's advisory opinion adopted in a 4-1 vote said Gmail's pilot program is permissible under the Federal Election Campaign Act and FEC regulations "and would not result in the making of a prohibited in-kind contribution." The FEC said Google's approved plan is for "a pilot program to test new Gmail design features at no cost on a nonpartisan basis to authorized candidate committees, political party committees, and leadership PACs." On July 1, Google asked the FEC for the green light to implement the pilot after Republicans accused the company of giving Democrats an advantage in its algorithms. Republicans reportedly could have avoided some of their Gmail spam problems by using the proper email configuration. At a May 2022 meeting between Senate Republicans and Google's chief legal officer, "the most forceful rebuke" was said to come "from Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), who claimed that not a single email from one of his addresses was reaching inboxes," The Washington Post reported in late July. "The reason, it was later determined, was that a vendor had not enabled an authentication tool that keeps messages from being marked as spam, according to people briefed on the discussions."
sigh (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:sigh (Score:5, Informative)
That's about the size of it.
Republicans accused the company of giving Democrats an advantage in its algorithms. Republicans reportedly could have avoided some of their Gmail spam problems by using the proper email configuration. At a May 2022 meeting between Senate Republicans and Google's chief legal officer, "the most forceful rebuke" was said to come "from Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), who claimed that not a single email from one of his addresses was reaching inboxes," The Washington Post reported in late July. "The reason, it was later determined, was that a vendor had not enabled an authentication tool that keeps messages from being marked as spam"
Re:sigh [over actual political agreement?] (Score:2)
Well, it's an okay FP notwithstanding the vacuous Subject, but I feel like you're looking a technical tree and ignoring the political forest. Sending political spam is something all of the politicians can agree on, and it scarcely matters that some of them are technical imbeciles in doing it.
Well, actually it does matter because they larger fools are going to ignore the unsubscribe requests and then prove that they were technically incompetent and therefore unable to honor those unsubscribe requests.
Solutio
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Minimum wage was a convenience to keep the proposed solution relatively simple and help justify the size-based penalty without calling for any proof of work or time.
I feel like I should have clarified that the onus should be on the legitimate senders of email to prove they are not spamming. Basically that means tracking ALL subscribe and unsubscribe requests. Seems obvious that this would force them to validate every subscribe request and honor every unsubscribe request, but it's increasingly hard to believ
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It's been suggested before that a system should exist to require that people not in your address book to make a [micro]payment in order to deliver mail to you. If you don't recognize the address, don't like the contents, or for any other reason, you can just keep the payment. You set the payment amount.
I can't think of a fairer way to handle the problem...
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My version of this idea would have involved a separate email system with a gateway to SMTP. The gateway would be closed by default. But ain't gonna happen.
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Lots of stupid things have been proposed, including that one.
The value in email is that everyone uses it. Without micropayments.
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The value in email is that everyone uses it. Without micropayments.
Letting other people decide what reaches your mailbox decreases its value when there are malicious actors in the system.
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You can block whatever you want but you will never get people to send you a micropayment to send you email. Including the next web site you sign up to, or your next hiring contact. Spending time thinking about non-solutions is pointless.
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They are talking about DMARC/DKIM. It's easy enough to setup.
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> They are talking about DMARC/DKIM. It's easy enough to setup.
You can have a completely clean IP, DMARC/DKIM, SPF, everything set up properly with a good mailing list package, no blacklists, and Google will still route you to Junk half the time unless you use a big mail provider, even for small local nonprofit group messaging (nothing commercial, even, though that shouldn't matter).
No support, no signaling, no query tool, obviously.
Google doesn't gain profit from open network protocols.
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That's true, but it's not an excuse for failing to set up DMARC/DKIM/SPF before whining about your spam being marked as spam.
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At a May 2022 meeting between Senate Republicans and Google's chief legal officer, "the most forceful rebuke" was said to come "from Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), who claimed that not a single email from one of his addresses was reaching inboxes,"
Damn it Google, when your software blocks emails from Florida Man, the correct response is: "Good, it's working as designed."
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On the other hand, outcomes shows disparity and discrimination. No need to trace cause and effect; it may be presumed.
I don't think that, but many do. In other contexts.
Re:sigh (Score:4, Insightful)
Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), who claimed that not a single email from one of his addresses was reaching inboxes," ... "The reason, it was later determined, was that a vendor had not enabled an authentication tool that keeps messages from being marked as spam,
"But my emails!" exclaimed Karen Rubio, complaining about self-inflicted problems.
Re:sigh (Score:4, Insightful)
It’s been said before but,
Gaslight
Obstruct
Project
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And it was wrong, given that Democrats saved the country from the political upheavals of Europe the last time Capitalism failed, in 1933
You are aware that both Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy were both capitalist countries. Several of Germany's biggest industrial titans today made out like bandits in WWII. Hitler himself was big on empowering industry quoting once "to make Germany as strong as Krupp steel". Mussolini said fascism is the combination of state and corporate power.
1933 was last time we allowed the far right to take over.
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Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy were communists and socialists. I thought everyone knew this, but apparently not. These are traits of the far left. Boy your face must be red given your rhetoric.
Democrats are capitalists too. I don't understand your point is or what that has to do with the far right? The right generally wants the government ot have less power. The left wants to give them more power. The irony is that they then complain about the police for enforcing laws with the power that was given to them.
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Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy were communists and socialists.
Lie and stupid both. if Nazi Germany was Socialist, China is a People's Republic. Both are matters of propaganda and both are lies.
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Ok but the joke is that the guy who posted his GOP acronym had named his account "ArchieBunker". Well, Archie Bunker is trashing the democrats in that video.
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Exactly
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The democrats are ruining this country:
The oligarchs are ruining this country. The politicians are just their tools.
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What I want to know is how Google will identify political emails.
Because it's obvious that if Republicans can't be assed to use a proper email forwarding system (e.g. MailChimp, etc), then pretty much any email can be marked as "political" and be used to bypass the spam filter.
Which means almost exclusively that spammers will use it to bypass the Gmail spam filters.
Of course, delicious irony could happen if Democrats decided to do proper email server setup and all that, making it easier for Google to identi
Re:sigh (Score:5, Informative)
What I want to know is how Google will identify political emails.
The Federal Elections Commission maintains a list of registered politicians/political parties /PACs/etc. Federal law requires registering with the FEC.
Google will use the list of email addresses provided by the FEC as a political email whitelist. No message from any of the listed emails will be filtered as spam.
Sucks for us end-users who don't want the political emails, but it gives Google a way to refute complaints of favoritism.
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I wonder... Can we get that list somehow and put it in our spam filter?
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Yes, according to the article.
bulk emails sent by the Pilot Participants to Gmail users would not be detected by Gmail's spam detection algorithms; instead, whether bulk emails are classified as spam would be determined based on direct feedback from the user." Users would be able to opt out of the messages.
If you believe them, of course.
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tell us you don't understand email authentication without saying you don't understand email authentication.
Tell us you didn't read the summary without saying you didn't read the summary.
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What I want to know is how Google will identify political emails.
The Federal Elections Commission maintains a list of registered politicians/political parties /PACs/etc. Federal law requires registering with the FEC.
Google will use the list of email addresses provided by the FEC as a political email whitelist. No message from any of the listed emails will be filtered as spam.
Sucks for us end-users who don't want the political emails, but it gives Google a way to refute complaints of favoritism.
Federal "Do Not Call" list works about as well as a roll of paper towels in an epic flood. How will this list be any different? be more successful?
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What I want to know is how Google will identify political emails.
The Federal Elections Commission maintains a list of registered politicians/political parties /PACs/etc. Federal law requires registering with the FEC.
Google will use the list of email addresses provided by the FEC as a political email whitelist. No message from any of the listed emails will be filtered as spam.
Sucks for us end-users who don't want the political emails, but it gives Google a way to refute complaints of favoritism.
Said list can be used to create a filter to block sender. Biggest issue is how to keep it up to date but I'm sure someone more familiar with vagaries of Gmail would be able to figure it out. The Republicans may have just shot themselves in the foot giving people an easier way to avoid their junk mail.
This is especially for those of us who aren't American (but have an American woman with a similar Gmail address who keeps signing me up for shit, I'm JSmith@gmail, she's JSmith1@gmail). Seriously, I have ema
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The FEC will create a political registry for verified organizations. Email providers can then use that registry to determine if a political email is spam or not. It says this right in the article. You could have answered your own question.
People may make fun of the buffoonery on why this fiasco started, but this will reduce fake/scammy political donation emails from getting through. It would allow stronger spam filters to be used on emails asking for political donations.
Re:sigh (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes, but have you considered the ramifications?
Say Mark Rubio registers his organization with the FEC. But then does absolutely nothing and just sends out emails. How can someone verify it came from Mark Rubio? Because his email is in the From header? Given he couldn't be bothered to set up authentication, you can't count on SPF or DomainKeys or other mechanism.
So anyone CLAIMING to be Mark Rubio can thus spam you, political or not, just going under the "political spam" exception. Because Mark Rubio is too stupid to make it possible to verify anything other than the From address.
Doesn't matter though, I expect to get inundated with Mark Rubio Viagra, Mark Rubio extended car warranties, etc. etc. etc.
The point is a fine one - how do you tell an email came from a politician and not a spammer? The From address is the same in both, and it's on the list of politicians - so political spam bypassing the filter?
Emails can be faked, and there doesn't seem to be any way to say "this email came from the politician and not someone faking his return email address".
Remember, this is a spam filter bypass. You can bet spammers will do everything they can to exploit it, and regular email has no way of saying "Yes this is an authentic message" without actually taking measures to make it possible to authenticate it.
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Given he couldn't be bothered to set up authentication, you can't count on SPF or DomainKeys or other mechanism.
You can count on SPF. If someone doesn't set it up, I don't want their email.
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Well that would be how the article spun it, certainly.
If it reinforces your personal beliefs, I guess that's enjoyable for you, isn't it.
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Re: sigh (Score:1)
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I think Google is trying to stay non-partisan and it's trying to stay within the guidelines set by the FEC. If you remember from the earlier /. article:
It would make campaign emails from such groups exempt from spam detection as long as they don't violate Gmail's policies around phishing, malware or illegal content. Instead, when users would receive an email from a campaign for the first time, they would get a prominent notification asking if they want to keep receiving them, and would still have the ability to opt out of subsequent emails. [link in summary]
Google is possibly trying to follow the guidelines similar to the exemptions in the Do Not Call registry:
4. What types of calls are not covered by the National Do Not Call Registry? The do not call provisions do not cover calls from political organizations, charities, telephone surveyors, or companies with which a consumer has an existing business relationship. https://www.ftc.gov/business-g... [ftc.gov]
If I get a single email from a PAC or campaign committee and can with a single click opt-out, I think that is an acceptable compromise to flagging all political email as Spam. Remember, you can always set custom filters for anything Gmail doesn't auto-f
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It might be acceptable to you, but some people remember that you should never visit 'unsubscribe' ULRs in spam, because you're just telling the spammer that this address is being listened to and is worth spamming. And how do you get a 'prominent notification and single click opt out' when your email is being forwarded to another account and accessed with a text-based email client, for instance?
No compromise with spammers. And it doesn't stop being spam just because the spammer is trying to sell a political
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So... conservatives could not follow the politically neutral rules like everyone else, so instead of setting up their servers properly they claimed persecution and demanded Google change? Now there is a perfect example of 'anything short of preferential treatment is discrimination', or 'how dare you try to apply rules to us! freedom!!!!'
Congress and the regulatory agencies are under Democrat control, in case you haven't noticed. So good luck with that argument.
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What does congress and regulatory agencies have to do with SPF and DomainKeys?
Oh goodie! (Score:2, Insightful)
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Too bad there are no other email providers that one might use.
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Or worse, Google won't be one-sided, and Leftist inboxes will be filled with Trump propaganda....
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The important - and unanswered - questions (Score:5, Interesting)
Can I, in gmail, still set up a manual filter and move all such email into my Junk folder? And, if I consistently flag such emails as spam as they come in, will gmail learn that I don't want them and start filtering them? Or - as I fear - does this amount to a "get out of jail free" card for all political spammers?
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How about Google offering a simple opt-out of this SPAM filter bypass?
But it IS spam! (Score:5, Insightful)
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Amen brother.
In my inbox anything remotely political is spam.
This is fine under only one condition: (Score:5, Insightful)
Give us the option to automatically mark all political emails as spam and auto delete them. Maybe keep it disabled by default, but when viewing a single email marked as politics it will let you know with a banner than you can perma-spam them all in whatever way you wish, by party or all of them.
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I agree. If messages are subject to this rule/exemption, then require a special code or marker somewhere, preferably the subject line, so that we can automatically filter/reroute such at our choice.
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You can write a rule right now. Any email that has "GOP" and "Donation", or "DNC" and "Donation" mark as read and delete it.
The question is, will you actually do that?
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Whois the customer? (Score:2)
Not you.
The politicians, possibly!
Hopefully such non-sense would not stick with Europe's GDPR.
Corruption!! (Score:1)
How does govt get to decide how GMail is run? (Score:2)
Isn't GMail a service provided by a company the way they want to provide it?
Why is some governmental body even relevant?
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Let's not limit it to the polical spam! (Score:1)
I kind of wish the discussion had gone higher, so I'll throw it out there: Why do we still have spam email?
Ancient, well-known problem, and yet we still can't do anything about it? I've written about my basic solution approaches a number of times. Must be something wrong there, though I'm still too dumb to figure it out. Therefore what's your solution? What would you change or do to make the spam go away?
Re:Let's not limit it to the polical spam! (Score:4, Insightful)
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NAK.
Can I opt out??? (Score:2)
Seriously, whether the FCC allows it or not, I don't want this crap in my inbox... It certainly will have no effect on who I vote for or who I give money to.
Obvious solution (Score:2, Troll)
Don/t use GMail.
Fuck that. (Score:4, Interesting)
Make another tab for that (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't use gmail (Score:2)
There are so many reasons not to use gmail. Reasons to use gmail are either laziness or poor judgement. So don't.
its time to deactivce my email (Score:2)
Can I get a new tab? (Score:2)
Primary, Social, Promotions, Political
get ready for it (Score:4, Funny)
Marco rubio recomend these PILLS TO GET YOUR JUNK BIGGER!
You know it's coming! :)
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Republicans are using this ONE CRAZY TRICK to get re-elected!!
All activist/lawyer/political email IS Spam! (Score:2)
Might pass Google Spam Filter (Score:1)
But will not pass my custom rules to go straight to the Trash folder.
it's inevitable (Score:1)
Double standard, postmaster woes (Score:2)
What a bunch of whining! (Score:2)
Just run your own server with your own spam filters. Google streamlined their "don't be evil" motto some years ago by dropping one word.
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If a single fundraising email reaches my inbox (Score:2)
I'm going back to hosting my own servers.
Blocked (Score:2)
Response (Score:2)
If you get political spam, send an email from a disposable address, or one which isn't monitored regularly and just used for sign-ups, or similar, to the sender or any link it gives for contact, telling them that you don't vote for spammers, and having received a spam email from this party, you will not be voting for them in the future.
Let them fear that they might be losing a vote every time they add an address to their lists.
Working correctly then (Score:2)
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Gmail is not worth it (Score:1)