Yahoo FBL Down

We’re seeing multiple reports that the Yahoo feedback loop stopped working some time in the past couple of days. If you’re not seeing reports, it’s not just you.

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FBL updates

Roadrunner shifted the release date for their new FBL to December 14th.
Despite rumors, the Yahoo FBL is not actually accepting new participants.

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Who pays for spam?

A couple weeks ago, I published a blog post about monetizing the complaint stream. The premise was that ESPs could offer lower base rates for sending if the customer agreed to pay per complaint. The idea came to me while talking with a deliverability expert at a major ESP. One of their potential customer wanted the ESP to allow them to mail purchased lists. The customer even offered to indemnify the ESP and assume all legal risk for mailing purchased lists.
While on the surface this may seem like a generous offer, there aren’t many legal liabilities associated with sending email. Follow a few basic rules that most of us learn in Kindergarten (say your name, stop poking when asked, don’t lie) and there’s no chance you’ll be legally liable for your actions.
Legal liability is not really the concern for most ESPs. The bigger issues for ESPs including overall sending reputation and cost associated with resolving a block. The idea behind monetizing the complaint stream was making the customer bear some of the risk for bad sends. ESP customers do a lot of bad things, up to and including spamming, without having any financial consequences for the behavior. By sharing  in the non-legal consequences of spamming, the customer may feel some of the effect of their bad decisions.
Right now, ESPs really protect customers from consequences. The ESP pays for the compliance team. The ESP handles negotiations with ISPs and filtering companies. The cost of this is partially built into the sending pricing, but if there is a big problem, the ESP ends up shouldering the bulk of the resolution costs. In some cases, the ESP even loses revenue as they disconnect the sender.
ESPs hide the cost of bad decisions from customers and do not incentivize customers to make good decisions. Maybe if they started making customers shoulder some of the financial liability for spamming there’d be less spamming.

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Yahoo.com on FCC wireless "do not mail" list

Update: As of mid-morning pacific time on 10/7 yahoo.com has been removed from the FCC list.
As part of CAN SPAM the FCC maintains a list of wireless domains that require proof of permission to send mail to. Recently, various email folks noticed that yahoo.com was added to this list.
According to the law, senders have 30 days to meet the permission standards for any recipients at domains on the FCC list. In practical terms what this means is that the FCC and Yahoo have 30 days to fix this error and get yahoo.com off the list. Based on conversations with people who’ve talked to Yahoo and the FCC this is in the process of happening.
This isn’t the first time a non-wireless domain has been added to the FCC list.
As a sender what should you do with your yahoo.com subscribers?
Right now, nothing. There is a 30 day grace period between when a domain goes on the FCC list and when senders need to comply. I have every expectation that this will be removed in less than 30 days.
But what if it’s not?
In that case you will need to segregate out yahoo.com subscribers in 30 days and not mail them until the domain is removed from the FCC list. While I can’t actively suggest ignoring the law, it’s unlikely that the FCC is going to start coming after senders for mailing yahoo.com addresses once the 30 days are up.
More information: Al Iverson’s Spam Resource.

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