There’s a common bounce error from the Message Labs’ filtering appliance that goes no where.
501 Connection rejected by policy [7.7] please visit www.messagelabs.com/support
If you’re trying to troubleshoot a delivery problem and you find any reference to www.messagelabs.com/support, try http://www.symanteccloud.com/supportcentre/information/r_troublshooting instead. That link provides a little more information.
A lot of filters started out just as filters against spam. But over the years they’ve morphed into more general blocks against dangerous or problematic email. There’s a lot of crime and bad behavior on the internet, much of it using email as a conduit or vector. Filtering is so much more than stopping spam now. It’s as much, or more, about stopping crime.
Email filters are essential to protect us from scammers. Sometimes I forget this, and then I read about a grandmother getting swindled by a Nigerian scammer and ending up dead.
There are real consequences to poor filtering and there is real crime facilitated by email. It’s easy to forget this as we deal with the email that gets caught in filters when they shouldn’t.
Filters are one of the first lines of defense against online crime.
Not only does filtering stop crime, but they also keep email working. An unfiltered mail stream is an ugly, unreadable, unworkable mess.
A couple questions in the previous discussion thread about the Google privacy case. Both concern permission granted to Google to scan emails.
Google’s stance about this is fairly simple.
Gmail users give explicit permission for their mail to be scanned.
People who send mail to Gmail users give implicit permission for their mail to be scanned.
The plaintiff’s lawyers are alleging that some subset of gmail users – specifically those at Universities that use Google apps and ISP customers like CableOne – did not give explicit permission for their mail to be scanned by Google. They’re also arguing no senders give permission.
In addition to the lack of permission, the plaintiffs lawyers are arguing that Google’s behaviour is in violation of Google’s own policies.
Google thinks scanning is part of the ordinary course of business and they’re doing nothing wrong.
This is an interesting case. I think anyone who knows about email understands that the people who run the mail server have the ability to read anything that goes through. But a lot of us trust that most postmaster and admin types consider it unprofessional to look at mail without a decent reason. There are good reasons an admin might need to go into a mail spool.
Automated filtering is simply a part of life on the internet these days. Mails have to be scanned for viruses, spam and, yes, they are scanned for targeted advertising. I’m not convinced Google is outside the norm when they say that any emails sent through Google is personal information given too Google and therefore Google can use that information in accordance with their policies.
A colleague of mine was dealing with a client who is experiencing some difficulty delivering to the bulk folder. Said client spent much of a one hour phone call repeating “This is not how a free society works!!”
After the call my colleague commented, “I refuse to get ranty about filter systems.”
I know that filters, and the people who write and maintain them, are a frequent scapegoat for senders. The filters are always the problem, not anything the senders do.
Now, I’ll be the last person who will claim spam filters are perfect, they’re not. Filters sometimes do unexpected things, sometimes they do boneheaded things, sometimes they are broken.
We can’t forget, though, that filters perform a vital role in protecting users from malicious emails. Phishing emails, scams, fake products, viruses are a constant threat. Many end users don’t need to worry about this because filters are so good. But an unfiltered account can get thousands of scams and spams a day (ask me how I know).
Most of us in the delivery space can tell when a filter is working as intended and when there’s an underlying problem. And when the filter is working as intended there’s not a lot of use complaining about them. Ranting about filtering systems often delays a resolution. Senders that focus on what they can control tend to have more success reaching the inbox than those senders that focus on ranting about filtering systems.
Tilting at windmills doesn’t get the mail through.