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PaperclipPerfector  17d ago (text post)   2907 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for January 19, 2025

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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Did something happen to reduce the amount of spam email that gets sent? I've been getting a flood of spam mail for almost 20 years (ever since giving my email address to McDonald's) but in the last few years, it has slowly declined to the point that I now have only received 9 spam email in the last month. Has something changed to reduce the amount of spam, or is my email address just slowly disappearing from lists of active email addresses from years of not clicking on links in spam emails?

TL;DR, strongly suspect it's the coalition of big players that has been steadily increasing their requirements to accept mail, culminating with DMARC enforcement almost a year ago.

It is my understanding that major email providers now have blacklists of known spam senders, so that, if you would get an email from such a sender, the email never even shows up in your spam folder, but instead is silently deleted. (Legitimate websites, such as Questionable Questing, sometimes have trouble getting themselves removed from these blacklists.)

The big players are slowly moving to effective whiteallow lists. It's already the case that most isps block outbound port 25 traffic by default. Then, if you get that unblocked, you need them to modify your pointer record to pass the spamhaus DNSBL, which requires static IP and a business class isp contact. This is table stakes. Then, it's all about meeting security and finally reputational requirements, but even that is IMO inching from "trust but verify" to "distrust until proven". Though if spam really is declining then this may ease.

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