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Change advice on email blocking

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Bob Mottram 2016-03-23 21:11:18 +00:00
parent 428253c24f
commit 3242c4ce75
2 changed files with 41 additions and 5 deletions
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17
doc/EN/faq.org
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@ -268,9 +268,22 @@ For now a self-signed certificate will probably in most cases protect your commu
* Why not use the services of $company instead? They took the Seppuku pledge
[[http://seppuku.cryptostorm.org][That pledge]] is utterly worthless. Years ago people trusted Google in the same sort of way, because they promised not be be evil and because a lot of the engineers working for them seemed like honest types who were "/on our side/". Post-[[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nymwars][nymwars]] and post-[[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM_%28surveillance_program%29][PRISM]] we know exactly how much Google cared about the privacy and security of its users. But Google is only one particular example. In general don't trust pledges made by companies, even if the people running them seem really sincere.
* Why does my email keep getting rejected as spam by Gmail/etc?
Welcome to the world of email. Email is really the archetypal decentralized service, developed during the early days of the internet. In principle anyone can run an email server, and that's exactly what you're doing with Freedombone. Email is very useful, but it has a big problem, and that's that the protocols are totally insecure. That made it easy for spammers to do their thing, and in response highly elaborate spam filtering and blocking systems were developed. Chances are that your emails are being blocked in this way. Sometimes the blocking is so indisciminate that entire countries are excluded. What can you do about it? Unless you control the block list at the receiving end probably you can't do anything. There is zero accountability for such blocking, and you can't just contact someone and say "hey, I'm not a spammer". This system works well for the big internet companies because it effectively centralises email to a few well-known brand names and keeps any independent servers out.
Welcome to the world of email. Email is really the archetypal decentralized service, developed during the early days of the internet. In principle anyone can run an email server, and that's exactly what you're doing with Freedombone. Email is very useful, but it has a big problem, and that's that the protocols are totally insecure. That made it easy for spammers to do their thing, and in response highly elaborate spam filtering and blocking systems were developed. Chances are that your emails are being blocked in this way. Sometimes the blocking is so indisciminate that entire countries are excluded. What can you do about it? Unless you control the block list at the receiving end you may not be able to do much unless you can find an email proxy server which is trusted by the receiving server.
So the situation with email presently is pretty bad, and there's a clear selection pressure against decentralization and towards only a few companies controlling all email services. Longer term the solution is to have more secure protocols which make spamming hard or expensive. Bitmessage is one such system. As an immediate practical workaround you could try buying a domain name and then linking it to your dynamic DNS account (freeDNS, etc) in the hope that the blocking is against dynamic DNS domain names, but there is no guarantee that will work and often blocking may be based upon IP address ranges about which there is little you can do.
Often ISPs will run their own SMTP mail server which you can use for proxying, typically called /mail.ISPdomain/. On the administrator control panel there is an option to set the details for outgoing email from the Mutt client.
#+BEGIN_SRC bash
ssh username@mydomainname -p 2222
sudo control
#+END_SRC
Select *Outgoing Email Proxy* and enter the details for your ISP SMTP server.
This may work, at least when using Mutt, and admittedly if it does then it's a compromise in which you are using some infrastructure which is not controlled by the community - with all of the usual hazards which go along with that.
The current arrangement with email blocking works well for the big internet companies because it effectively centralises email to a few well-known brand names and keeps any independent servers out, or creates dependencies like the one just described in which you become a second class citizen of the internet.
So the situation with email presently is pretty bad, and there's a clear selection pressure against decentralization and towards only a few companies controlling all email services. Longer term the solution is to have more secure protocols which make spamming hard or expensive.
#+BEGIN_EXPORT html
<center>

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@ -3,7 +3,7 @@
"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" lang="en" xml:lang="en">
<head>
<!-- 2016-02-27 Sat 22:07 -->
<!-- 2016-03-23 Wed 21:10 -->
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=utf-8" />
<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1" />
<title></title>
@ -720,11 +720,34 @@ For now a self-signed certificate will probably in most cases protect your commu
<h2 id="orgheadline19">Why does my email keep getting rejected as spam by Gmail/etc?</h2>
<div class="outline-text-2" id="text-orgheadline19">
<p>
Welcome to the world of email. Email is really the archetypal decentralized service, developed during the early days of the internet. In principle anyone can run an email server, and that's exactly what you're doing with Freedombone. Email is very useful, but it has a big problem, and that's that the protocols are totally insecure. That made it easy for spammers to do their thing, and in response highly elaborate spam filtering and blocking systems were developed. Chances are that your emails are being blocked in this way. Sometimes the blocking is so indisciminate that entire countries are excluded. What can you do about it? Unless you control the block list at the receiving end probably you can't do anything. There is zero accountability for such blocking, and you can't just contact someone and say "hey, I'm not a spammer". This system works well for the big internet companies because it effectively centralises email to a few well-known brand names and keeps any independent servers out.
Welcome to the world of email. Email is really the archetypal decentralized service, developed during the early days of the internet. In principle anyone can run an email server, and that's exactly what you're doing with Freedombone. Email is very useful, but it has a big problem, and that's that the protocols are totally insecure. That made it easy for spammers to do their thing, and in response highly elaborate spam filtering and blocking systems were developed. Chances are that your emails are being blocked in this way. Sometimes the blocking is so indisciminate that entire countries are excluded. What can you do about it? Unless you control the block list at the receiving end you may not be able to do much unless you can find an email proxy server which is trusted by the receiving server.
</p>
<p>
So the situation with email presently is pretty bad, and there's a clear selection pressure against decentralization and towards only a few companies controlling all email services. Longer term the solution is to have more secure protocols which make spamming hard or expensive. Bitmessage is one such system. As an immediate practical workaround you could try buying a domain name and then linking it to your dynamic DNS account (freeDNS, etc) in the hope that the blocking is against dynamic DNS domain names, but there is no guarantee that will work and often blocking may be based upon IP address ranges about which there is little you can do.
Often ISPs will run their own SMTP mail server which you can use for proxying, typically called <i>mail.ISPdomain</i>. On the administrator control panel there is an option to set the details for outgoing email from the Mutt client.
</p>
<div class="org-src-container">
<pre class="src src-bash">ssh username@mydomainname -p 2222
sudo control
</pre>
</div>
<p>
Select <b>Outgoing Email Proxy</b> and enter the details for your ISP SMTP server.
</p>
<p>
This may work, at least when using Mutt, and admittedly if it does then it's a compromise in which you are using some infrastructure which is not controlled by the community - with all of the usual hazards which go along with that.
</p>
<p>
The current arrangement with email blocking works well for the big internet companies because it effectively centralises email to a few well-known brand names and keeps any independent servers out, or creates dependencies like the one just described in which you become a second class citizen of the internet.
</p>
<p>
So the situation with email presently is pretty bad, and there's a clear selection pressure against decentralization and towards only a few companies controlling all email services. Longer term the solution is to have more secure protocols which make spamming hard or expensive.
</p>
<center>