validity
Validity (and before that, Return Path) has long offered access to various bits of reputation data to email users via DNS, primarily utilized via a particular SpamAssassin plugin. Checks include whether or not an IP address is on the Validity Certification whitelist, on the “Validity Safe” (aka Habeas) whitelist, or is on the “Validity RPBL” (Return Path Reputation Network Blacklist). Validity’s Tom Bartel recently posted to the Mailop list indicating upcoming changes/restrictions to that access, and I figured it would be good to pass that along here, to broaden the reach to help those who might miss this on Mailop. He writes: “I wanted to pass along an update regarding coming changes in 2024 to public query access for Validity reputation data in DNS. We’re finalizing implementation of necessary response codes (including in Spam Assassin) to enable this. It’s similar to the Spamhaus DQS changes a while ago. Any questions and/or
As talked about previously, ISP feedback loops are in flux in 2023. Validity, who manages the backend FBL processes for a large number of mailbox providers via their “Universal Feedback Loop”, has indicated that they’re moving from a free to a paid model. Free access will provide aggregrated metrics via a dashboard, but no full feeds of raw complaints. Meaning, if you want to be able to directly log (or unsubscribe) all complaints, you or your ESP or CRM tool will need to pay Validity for that access. I pondered here, what of Abusix? An anti-spam/security software vendor founded in 2009, they had indicated that they were considering offering their own “FBL processing” service. And indeed, that is now taking shape. I reached out to Tobias Knecht and Steve Freegard from Abusix to ask them about this new service. They told me that they felt they already had appropriate infrastructure
I realize that talking about ISP feedback loops can just lead to a lot of blank stares from folks. Not because they’re stupid, by any means. But because for the most part, FBLs are such a basic, foundational part of an email sending platform, and most of those platforms long ago “just dealt with it” — meaning dealt with the set up and management of feedback loops many years ago (almost 20 years, in some cases), that a lot of marketers haven’t ever been required to set up or manage feedback loops themselves. Indeed, some modern email sending or relay platforms just manage the feedback loop stuff for you, automatically, suppressing complainers and generating reporting. So some newer platform maintainers may not have ever even set up and managed ISP feedback loops.Question number one: If nobody really knows about or remembers this, and if new platforms perhaps don’t even bother
As noted recently, Validity plans to start charging for ISP feedback loop complaint feeds. Free users will get some sort of aggregate dashboard that is perhaps similar to what one sees in Google Postmaster Tools, but it sounds as though there will be no individual complaints fed, and no opportunity to log or unsubscribe complaints or complainers.If some number of sending platforms decide not to pay this fee, and thus stop receiving spam complaint feeds, this is likely to have an impact on the email ecosystem. How much of an impact? To understand that, we should start by identifying the potential beneficiaries of ISP feedback loop complaints:The end user. In most cases, a “report spam” complaint results in that end subscriber getting unsubscribed from a particular sender. The mail stops. Now, the mail will not stop, perhaps allowing the user to report spam again and again, possibly causing more negative
History Return Path was a major driver for the establishment of Feedback Loops (FBLs) back in the mid to late 2000s. They worked with a number of ISPs to help them set up FBLs and managed the signup and validation step for them. In return for providing this service to senders and receivers, they used this data as part of their certification process and their deliverability consulting. Return Path had a strong corporate ethos of improving the overall email ecosystem that originated from the CEO and permeated through the whole organization. In 2019 Validity acquired Return Path and within two months closed two offices and laid off more than 170 employees, many who are industry leaders and long time colleagues. In 2020 Validity acquired 250OK, one of their major competitors. Over the next year they then ended long term agreements with ESP partners, sued competitors and significantly raised prices for
Email feedback loops have a long history as a component of the sending, receiving and handling of email messages en masse. I vaguely recall that AOL was the first entity to set up what we commonly think of as a feedback loop — with their now-common process to register your sending IP addresses with the ISP, and if anybody complains about your mail, the ISP will send you a report back with the full headers and source (with perhaps a bit of it redacted at the instruction of some lawyer) so that you can count, report on, and review these spam reports. Review of that data could identify bad senders, identify bad lists, and help stop mail to people who don’t want the mail. (Indeed, the Wayback Machine shows mention of AOL’s Feedback Loop all the way back in 2004.)As that feedback loop mechanism grew in popularity, various other ISPs
An email feedback loop (aka ISP feedback loop or complaint feedback loop) is a spam reporting mechanism implement by an internet service provider (ISP) or mailbox provider (MBP) that allows spam complaints to flow back to the sender or sender’s email platform. Those forwarded “report spam” notifications allow the sender or sending platform to unsubscribe those who complain and also to provide sender feedback to understand which clients, lists or campaigns are causing the highest number or percentage of spam complaints.ISPs and MBPs already collect and correlate spam complaint data for their own uses. When you click the “report spam” button in Gmail, or Outlook.com, Yahoo, or elsewhere, those services capture and log your complaint, to feed into their internal spam filtering systems, to generate reputation-related metrics about the sender. Senders who generate more spam complaints are more likely to find themselves blocked, or to find their mail relegated to the spam…
If you monitor ISP feedback loop complaints, you may have noticed that the level of spam complaints received was greatly reduced over the weekend, as it appears that the Validity-run Universal FBL system seems to have stopped sending feedback loop complaint reports at some point on Saturday.Validity’s Universal Feedback Loop (FBL) is a system that handles ISP feedback loop complaint processing and forwarding for more than two dozen mailbox providers.I’m assuming that this likely afftected all of the FBLs managed by Validity, which includes: BlueTie, Comcast, COX, Fastmail, Italia Online, LiberoMail, Virgilio, Laposte.net, Liberty Global, UnityMedia, UPC, Locaweb, Mail.ru, OpenSRS, Rackspace, Seznam.cz, SilverSky, Swisscom, Synacor, TIM, Telenet, Telenor, Telstra, Terra, UOL, Virgin Media, XS4ALL, Yandex, and Ziggo.Validity appears to be in the process of restoring service as of Monday morning, March 21st and complaints appear to be flowing again. Spam reports could show a spike (temporary increase in volume) as…
Validity’s Mathieu Girol has announced that Telecom Italia will now be offering an ISP Feedback Loop through the Validity Universal FBL service. If you manage feedback loops for an ESP or email sending platform, you’ll want to go sign up for this ASAP!The domains this new ISP FBL covers are: tim.it, tin.it, alice.it. And here’s all the different ISPs and companies covered via the Validity FBL service:And if you’re new to deliverability and FBLs, perhaps wondering exactly what is an ISP Feedback Loop and what does it do, click here for more details.