Gmail pilots new FBL

Yes, it’s true. Gmail announced last Thursday at M3AAWG that they were piloting a new Feedback loop.
The Gmail FBL is currently for ESPs only. The announcement during MAAWG was that only MAAWG ESP members were eligible. They are requiring a DKIM signature for the FBL, but ESPs using individual customer d= values can get a FBL based on IPs. They are also not providing ANY information that reveals the complainer. Gmail’s intention is only to give ESPs feedback so that ESPs can prevent abuse. They are not giving feedback so complainers can be removed.
The email has a .csv attachment that has 3 columns: date, identifier and complaint rate.
The identifier is an ESP provided customer identifier. One of the ESPs I talked to said they were adding an X-header into their emails.
I’ve heard from beta testers that there is a minimum of 100 complaints before you’ll get any report.
Reports are sent daily if there is sufficient traffic to trigger them.
If you’re a MAAWG member, check the senders list for the signup URL.

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Questioning standards

M3AAWG publishes documents summarizing and discussing current practices for stopping and preventing abuse. Some of these documents are focused on ISPs while others are focused on marketers. While M3AAWG is not directly nor officially a standards body, most of the documents have been written by members and reflect the best current practices for that document.
Members have been asked to leave the organization and some companies are denied membership because they are not in line with the organizational values. Some of these companies are ESPs or marketers, but some of these companies have been ISPs as well.
The standards written by M3AAWG are challenging for a lot of marketers to follow. These standards are written with the input of senders, but they all comply with the M3AAWG mission of stopping messaging abuse. Many ISPs believe that unsolicited email is abuse, thus M3AAWG standards say that all mail needs to be sent to recipients who request that mail. Purchasing lists, selling lists, and appending email addresses are all unacceptable activities for M3AAWG members.
I never really had much concern about the effectiveness of the M3AAWG process. Most of the big industry players are there and many of the ISPs have an aggressive anti-abuse attitude.
But last week I saw a blog post on a fairly major industry blog that listed a bunch of (made up, tasteless and sexist) things “overheard” at the recent M3AAWG conference (it’s been removed and I wouldn’t link to it anyway). The blog post made it look like no real work gets done at M3AAWG and that the attendees don’t work at the conference. I won’t claim that it’s a staid and quiet conference, but most attendees work very hard during the day.
The next day, the author tweeted:

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Brian Krebs wins the Mary Litynski award

A little late, but I’ve been in sessions most of today. M3AAWG announced this morning that Brian Krebs won the 2014 Mary Litynski award. This award is given to people who work tirelessly to make the internet a better place.
I first had the pleasure of listening to Brian give the keynote address at a MAAWG conference many years ago. His ability to infiltrate some major spam operations and online forums for criminals is amazing. He’s also had retaliation attempts, including being SWATed and having heroin delivered to his house.
If you get a chance to hear Brian speak, I strongly encourage you to do so. His knowledge is outstanding and his speaking style is entertaining. I’ve learned a lot from Brian over the years and I’m pleased he won this award and that M3AAWG recognized his contribution to stopping abuse online.
M3AAWG press release

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M3AAWG conference next week

Next week is M3AAWG 30 in San Francisco. We’ll be there and are very excited to see the familiar faces and meet new people.
I recently had someone ask me what would I recommend to someone going to their first M3AAWG conference. My recommendation to anyone in the sender or marketer space is to go to some of the talks that are not about email delivery. Go to the sessions that talk about malware or SMS or anything other than just email delivery. For anyone in the ISP space go to a session focused on mobile or email sending. Use this time to learn about something totally different than what you do every day.
Another question I get frequently from senders is if the people from the ISPs are open to sitting down and talking with senders about the senders’ email problems. Generally, the answer is no. Most of the time, the ISP has no knowledge of who you are and what mail you’re sending, so all they can say is “send me an email with the IPs and I’ll take a look at it.” That’s it.
We’ll be in the city starting Monday afternoon, and I always enjoy meeting readers. Stop by and introduce yourself.

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