Re: Worsening google service reputation and abuse

[Tom Beecher via NANOG <nanog () lists nanog org>]

> Barry has a reasonable theory - that the economics of spamming is brittle -
> but it is just that: a theory.


Part of the theory itself is generally sound. If spamming isn't making
someone money, much less spam would be sent.

However, the assertion that the spam economy is 'fragile' doesn't really
hold up. The number of spam emails hasn't substantively decreased in a long
time. Year over year, it's generally flat to increasing. Even with all the
efforts to stop said messages, the senders are still clearly making enough
money to do it, and the people paying the senders to fire their stuff out
are still getting enough of a return on their money to keep using that
method. This is true even with spammer networks regularly being blocked /
sinkholed / etc. Such disruptions would impact a fragile economy a lot, but
since they are not, it's a very safe conclusion that things aren't really
that fragile to begin with.





On Sun, Aug 17, 2025 at 8:07 AM Marc Binderberger via NANOG <
nanog () lists nanog org> wrote:

> On Sat, 16 Aug 2025 17:24:04 -0700, Michael Thomas via NANOG wrote:
>
> > Barry has been going on about this idea for decades, I think. It
> wouldn't
> > work then, it won't work now.
>
> Until some idea suddenly works. Or an old idea becomes feasible.
>
> Frankly, many things we take for granted today would not exist with that
> "won't work" attitude. The better question (imho) to Barry is: how is your
> idea different from the already existing proposals?
>
> Barry has a reasonable theory - that the economics of spamming is brittle
> -
> but it is just that: a theory.
>
> And most of the (failed) proposals seem academic and avoid actual "costs"
> in
> terms of money. Or raise the real-world costs for everyone, if you need
> CPU
> cycles to participate in the email system. So Barry stepping out of this
> box
> and suggesting real economics as a factor is not unreasonable. I am not
> sure
> if there are more concrete details though (?).
>
>
> > Nobody can put up a coherent argument for why
> > the current cat and mouse situation isn't the acceptable balance,
>
> I guess "acceptable" can be defined as: Hey, I can always get a free
> personal
> account with gmail. And as a company I pay Google or Microsoft, save money
> on
> my IT staff. And good luck blocking "me" (i.e. Google, Microsoft).
>
> Maybe a problem if you are in the email business, fine with me, my domain
> is
> a private hobby. In fact, for all their "flaws", seeing the insanity of
> the
> know-it-all experts (some here on the list) I think I prefer Google
> requesting some reputation steps and a webpage explaining it. The
> alternative: being blocked for "Excessive Spam - Come back when you have
> fixed it". No further details. Sure, private domain, private VPS, no
> BL/score
> listing that I can find ... fortunately that blocking was just a Cc: to
> one
> of my posts, so I could not care less. The acceptable state of the mail
> system today!
>
> So there you may have an argument: that the increasing number of
> mechanisms,
> lists, tricks make the mail system less work-able and more broken. But I
> have
> no crystal ball, if email will finally break or will keep going - I don't
> know. Would be just sad if it breaks (but I have a gmail account as a
> backup
> ;-)
>
> Marc
>
>
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