Feedback Loop (email)
Encyclopedia
A feedback loop sometimes called a complaint feedback loop, is an inter-organizational form of feedback
by which an Internet service provider
(ISP) forwards the complaints originating from their users to the sender's organizations. ISPs can receive users' complaints by placing report spam buttons on their webmail pages, or in their email client, or via help desk
s. The message sender's organization
, often an email service provider, has to come to an agreement with each ISP from which they want to collect users' complaints.
Feedback loops are one of the ways for reporting spam
. Whether to provide an FBL is a choice of the mailbox provider. End users should report abuse at their mailbox provider's reporting hub, so as to also help filtering. As an alternative, competent users may send abuse complaints directly, acting as mailbox providers themselves.
In rare cases, these feedback loops may not be based on user reports. For example, they may be based on automated virus detection, or similar mechanisms.
Although it may seem like a bit of a waste unsubscribing users who complain once, in the long term it will pay dividends. By unsubscribing users who complain once you are reducing the likelihood of them complaining again, this means your overall complaint rate per IP or domain is kept low which is the key metric that ISP’s use to choose whether or not to deliver your messages. By keeping your complaint rate low from your messages to ISP’s which have feedback loops they are much more likely to allow your messages straight through to the inbox ensuring you continue to get your emails to the subscribers who actually want to receive them.
ESPs
, when playing the sender's role, are very sensitive to how sending mail on behalf of their customers may affect their reputation. Monitoring the complaint rate is one of the ways they can control what their users are sending.
is being transferred in a feedback loop, it may seem that the spam button defeats that reason. Users have to trust their ISP for not getting into agreements with spammers, in the strict sense of the latter term.
s, whose design is inherited by ARF, an abuse report consists of a human readable part, followed by a machine readable part, and the original message. The report is characterized by a Feedback-Type field whose values may indicate one of abuse, fraud, virus, or other (more types are registered at IANA
).
Microsoft, who use the name Junk Mail Reporting (JMR), also use their own format.
Feedback
Feedback describes the situation when output from an event or phenomenon in the past will influence an occurrence or occurrences of the same Feedback describes the situation when output from (or information about the result of) an event or phenomenon in the past will influence an occurrence or...
by which an Internet service provider
Internet service provider
An Internet service provider is a company that provides access to the Internet. Access ISPs directly connect customers to the Internet using copper wires, wireless or fiber-optic connections. Hosting ISPs lease server space for smaller businesses and host other people servers...
(ISP) forwards the complaints originating from their users to the sender's organizations. ISPs can receive users' complaints by placing report spam buttons on their webmail pages, or in their email client, or via help desk
Help desk
A help desk is an information and assistance resource that troubleshoots problems with computers or similar products. Corporations often provide help desk support to their customers via a toll-free number, website and e-mail. There are also in-house help desks geared toward providing the same kind...
s. The message sender's organization
Organization
An organization is a social group which distributes tasks for a collective goal. The word itself is derived from the Greek word organon, itself derived from the better-known word ergon - as we know `organ` - and it means a compartment for a particular job.There are a variety of legal types of...
, often an email service provider, has to come to an agreement with each ISP from which they want to collect users' complaints.
Feedback loops are one of the ways for reporting spam
Spam reporting
Spam reporting, more properly called abuse reporting, is the activity of pinning abusive messages and report them to some kind of authority so that they can be dealt with. Reported messages can be email messages, blog comments, or any kind of spam....
. Whether to provide an FBL is a choice of the mailbox provider. End users should report abuse at their mailbox provider's reporting hub, so as to also help filtering. As an alternative, competent users may send abuse complaints directly, acting as mailbox providers themselves.
Reporting process
- Spencer sends a message to Alice.
- Alice complains to Isaac (her ISP) about the message, e.g. by hitting the report spam button.
- Isaac encapsulates the message as either an Abuse Reporting FormatAbuse Reporting Format-History:A draft describing a standard format for FBL reports was posted by Yakov Shafranovich in April 2005 and evolved to the current RFC 5965. AOL, who pioneered the field in 2003, initially used a different format, and converted to this de facto standard in 2008...
MIMEMIMEMultipurpose Internet Mail Extensions is an Internet standard that extends the format of email to support:* Text in character sets other than ASCII* Non-text attachments* Message bodies with multiple parts...
part, or (less commonly) a standalone message/rfc822 MIMEMIMEMultipurpose Internet Mail Extensions is an Internet standard that extends the format of email to support:* Text in character sets other than ASCII* Non-text attachments* Message bodies with multiple parts...
part, and sends it to Spencer (if Spencer has signed up to receive that feedback.)
In rare cases, these feedback loops may not be based on user reports. For example, they may be based on automated virus detection, or similar mechanisms.
Advantages
The gain for the email system as a whole may appear questionable, since the report spam button is said by some to often be used improperly. However, benefits to each involved party are possible.Advantages for senders
Marketers striving for their mail to be delivered have a twofold advantage: they can remove subscribers that don't want to receive that kind of advertising (listwashing), and they can analyze the complaint rate and hence how their advertising meets market expectations.Although it may seem like a bit of a waste unsubscribing users who complain once, in the long term it will pay dividends. By unsubscribing users who complain once you are reducing the likelihood of them complaining again, this means your overall complaint rate per IP or domain is kept low which is the key metric that ISP’s use to choose whether or not to deliver your messages. By keeping your complaint rate low from your messages to ISP’s which have feedback loops they are much more likely to allow your messages straight through to the inbox ensuring you continue to get your emails to the subscribers who actually want to receive them.
ESPs
E-mail service provider
One type of email service provider is an organization which provides email servers to send, receive, and store email for other organizations and/or end users. Such an ESP may provide the service to the general public for personal email or it may provide the service only to its members One type...
, when playing the sender's role, are very sensitive to how sending mail on behalf of their customers may affect their reputation. Monitoring the complaint rate is one of the ways they can control what their users are sending.
Advantages for ISPs
ISPs delivering unwanted messages dissatisfy their users. Thus they deploy spam filters. However, spam filtering is not an exact science and rough operations may result in incorrect behavior. Getting to terms with legitimate senders can mitigate some of the resulting inconveniences.Advantages for users
The spam button brings some fuzzy functionality. Automatic unsubscribe is an example. For years, end users have been told not to trust email unsubscribe links, so many users hit the spam button as an alternative to unsubscribing. Consequently, report spam may act as unsubscribe in some cases. One of the reasons not to hit unsubscribe links is to avoid confirming that the message had been received and opened. As it is difficult to know exactly what personally identifiable informationPersonally identifiable information
Personally Identifiable Information , as used in information security, is information that can be used to uniquely identify, contact, or locate a single person or can be used with other sources to uniquely identify a single individual...
is being transferred in a feedback loop, it may seem that the spam button defeats that reason. Users have to trust their ISP for not getting into agreements with spammers, in the strict sense of the latter term.
Criticism
- The feedback loops fail to meet the generic anti-spam criterion of not generating more email messages. Even if the amount of feedback is just a fraction of the amount of messages that an ESPE-mail service providerOne type of email service provider is an organization which provides email servers to send, receive, and store email for other organizations and/or end users. Such an ESP may provide the service to the general public for personal email or it may provide the service only to its members One type...
sends out, most ESPs are not yet organized for handling it. This is mitigated by the fact that feedback loops are voluntary (opt in e-mailOpt in e-mailOpt in email is a term used when someone is given the option to receive "bulk" email, that is, email that is sent to many people at the same time. Typically, this is some sort of mailing list, newsletter, or advertising...
) for both the sender and receiver of the feedback. - Using the same button for both abuse reports and list unsubscribe implies guesswork by the (automated) help desk. For example, it does not ease reporting to a list owner that a specific post in the (non moderated) list is actually spam.
- Setting up FBLs requires filling out web forms. This can be inconsistent from one FBL to another.
- Some FBLs provide no option for communicating feedback automatically to multiple parties: the sender, the ESP (if one is involved), or the upstream datacenter/network address provider -- as currently construed by the Federal Trade Commission's (FTC) "Follow the Money" strategy.
- There is no convenient way for a sender to automatically and repeatedly verify that a FBL is operating correctly without tarnishing the sender's deliverability. Furthermore, manual FBL testing for low-volume senders significantly degrades the sender's SenderScore as calculated by ReturnPath.
- There is no convenient mechanism for discovering new FBLs.
- Work has begun at www.maawg.org on an "FBL 2.0" initiative to resolve these issues.
Abuse feedback reporting format
The Abuse Reporting Format (ARF) is the standard format for FBL reports. Much like bounce messageBounce message
In the Internet's standard e-mail protocol SMTP, a bounce message, also called a Non-Delivery Report/Receipt , a Delivery Status Notification message, a Non-Delivery Notification or simply a bounce, is an automated electronic mail message from a mail system informing the sender of another...
s, whose design is inherited by ARF, an abuse report consists of a human readable part, followed by a machine readable part, and the original message. The report is characterized by a Feedback-Type field whose values may indicate one of abuse, fraud, virus, or other (more types are registered at IANA
IANA
IANA is an initialism that may stand for a number of things:*the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority, an organisation that oversees IP address, Top-level domain and Internet protocol code point allocations*the Iranian Agriculture News Agency...
).
Microsoft, who use the name Junk Mail Reporting (JMR), also use their own format.
Feedback loop links for some email providers
- AOL http://www.postmaster.aol.com/Postmaster.FeedbackLoop.html
- Bluetie/Excite http://feedback.bluetie.com/
- Comcast http://feedback.comcast.net/
- Cox http://fbl.cox.net/
- Earthlink (email only): fblrequest at abuse.earthlink.net
- Fastmail http://fbl.fastmail.fm/
- Hotmail https://support.msn.com/eform.aspx?productKey=edfsjmrpp&page=support_home_options_form_byemail&ct=eformts&scrx=1
- Mailtrust (Rackspace.com): http://fbl.mailtrust.com/
- OpenSRS/Tucows http://fbl.hostedemail.com/
- Outblaze (mail.com): email ONLY: postmaster at outblaze.com
- Rackspace http://fbl.apps.rackspace.com/
- RoadRunner/Time Warner Cable http://feedback.postmaster.rr.com/
- Synacor http://fbl.synacor.com/
- Tucows (OpenSRS): http://fbl.hostedemail.com/
- United Online/Juno/Netzero http://www.unitedonline.net/postmaster/whitelisted.html
- USA.NET http://fbl.usa.net/
- Yahoo! http://feedbackloop.yahoo.net/index.php (requires DomainKeysDomainKeysDomainKeys is an e-mail authentication system designed to verify the DNS domain of an e-mail sender and the message integrity. The DomainKeys specification has adopted aspects of Identified Internet Mail to create an enhanced protocol called DomainKeys Identified Mail...
or DKIM) - Zoho.com http://fbl.zoho.com/
External links
- What are feedback loops (fbl’s) and how can they help my deliverability?
- Mutual Internet Practices Association has an /arf section
- Messaging Anti-Abuse Working Group mentions feedback loops in various published documents
- abusix UG (haftungsbeschränkt) offers automated abuse handling software and consulting for ISPs
- Word to the Wise's ARF page has some software tools
- GeakeIT's FBL Automation Solution has a solution to automate the collection and database processing of FBL emails.