The problem with letters in text format
LWN Subscribers Article
The Mozilla Manifesto declares the organization’s commitment to certain principles, including user privacy and the right of an individual to control their work on the Internet. As a result, when Mozilla recently announced its intention to remove support for text format in mailing lists — to track the receipt of letters from recipients — the reaction was, to put it mildly, not entirely positive. The text format was left, but the reasons why they wanted to cancel it have not disappeared anywhere. They point to problems that individual email senders face.
In September, Michel Warter announced a rejection of the text format of letters (the announcement was published on the mozilla-governance mailing list). It soon became clear that the community was a bit skeptical about this idea, so Warter explained the reason for the change:
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The spam nature of the Internet makes all email recipients filter the stream. Only the most unknown and secret e-mail addresses can be opened for unfiltered mail traffic without driving a person crazy. Much of the filters are based on content analysis, but many of them, especially in some large web-based email providers, also take into account the “reputation” of the sending domain.
Some aspects of domain reputation are quite logical and understandable. If sending large amounts of spam is noticed from a specific IP address, it will quickly be added to various blacklists. If an IPv6 address is used, then blocking can cover a significant portion of the address space, causing significant damage; This is why the LWN server is configured to send letters over IPv4, if possible. The use of IP addresses of home Internet users is often limited — if they are allowed to send email at all. Each owner of their own mail server agrees that the reputation score largely depends on a random factor.
One of the indicators used to calculate such an assessment by some sites is the number of emails sent to clearly inactive addresses, which is considered a sign of spam. It seems that this is where Mozilla has problems. One way to solve this problem is to track which recipients actually read their mailing list. Any subscriber who does not read letters for a long time will be automatically unsubscribed. Theoretically, then email providers will consider letters from this source as really interesting and will stop obstructing their paths.
Of course, the problem is that the “feedback loop” mentioned in the Warter message is required for tracking. This feedback is implemented in the form of tracking images embedded in the message body, which are downloaded from the sender's server. The implications for privacy are obvious: not everyone wants the sender of the letter to know when the letter is read and where the reader is at this time. The requirements of disclosing such information seem to contradict the Mozilla Manifesto # 4: "The security and privacy of a person on the Internet is a fundamental property and cannot be considered as an option." But if you do not comply with these requirements, as Warter said, then we will encounter problems delivering all of Mozilla's email.
There are other problems with tracking pictures, starting with the fact that attentive users, who care about privacy, generally disable the loading of such images by default. Your editor himself recently received a complaint from a financial company that does not read her letters. In fact, the letters were read, but they were not allowed to call home and report this fact. There is a high probability that in the future the popularity of such locks will increase. Not everyone wants to become part of the unwanted "feedback loop."
In this particular case, it seems that they have found an acceptable compromise after all - and the text format of the letters will be preserved. But once a year, subscribers to the text format of the newsletter will receive a letter asking to click on the link to confirm that they wish to receive the newsletter further. This will allow Mozilla to screen out inactive readers, maintaining a reputation rating and not introducing compulsory surveillance.
The fact that even principal organizations like Mozilla feel the need to implement tracking is an indicator of the not-so-good state of the e-mail system, although there are already plenty of such indicators. The more difficult it is to pass a reputation check, the more users will have to switch to a small number of large email providers (who have no problems with the “feedback loop”) just to work normally. For example, at each stage of the Linux kernel merger, one or more developers have problems delivering pull requests to Linus Torvalds to his Gmail account. It is not clear how to solve the problem with e-mail, but it is obvious: you need to do something.
The Mozilla Manifesto declares the organization’s commitment to certain principles, including user privacy and the right of an individual to control their work on the Internet. As a result, when Mozilla recently announced its intention to remove support for text format in mailing lists — to track the receipt of letters from recipients — the reaction was, to put it mildly, not entirely positive. The text format was left, but the reasons why they wanted to cancel it have not disappeared anywhere. They point to problems that individual email senders face.
In September, Michel Warter announced a rejection of the text format of letters (the announcement was published on the mozilla-governance mailing list). It soon became clear that the community was a bit skeptical about this idea, so Warter explained the reason for the change:
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Unfortunately, text letters do not provide the same feedback loop as HTML letters. Of course, many consider it a boon. But the unintended result of the absence of such signals is the negative impact on the rating of our reputation: because of the use of text format, we are often included in gray / black lists, and this usually means that we cannot send an email to anyone * until the problem is resolved.
The spam nature of the Internet makes all email recipients filter the stream. Only the most unknown and secret e-mail addresses can be opened for unfiltered mail traffic without driving a person crazy. Much of the filters are based on content analysis, but many of them, especially in some large web-based email providers, also take into account the “reputation” of the sending domain.
Some aspects of domain reputation are quite logical and understandable. If sending large amounts of spam is noticed from a specific IP address, it will quickly be added to various blacklists. If an IPv6 address is used, then blocking can cover a significant portion of the address space, causing significant damage; This is why the LWN server is configured to send letters over IPv4, if possible. The use of IP addresses of home Internet users is often limited — if they are allowed to send email at all. Each owner of their own mail server agrees that the reputation score largely depends on a random factor.
One of the indicators used to calculate such an assessment by some sites is the number of emails sent to clearly inactive addresses, which is considered a sign of spam. It seems that this is where Mozilla has problems. One way to solve this problem is to track which recipients actually read their mailing list. Any subscriber who does not read letters for a long time will be automatically unsubscribed. Theoretically, then email providers will consider letters from this source as really interesting and will stop obstructing their paths.
Of course, the problem is that the “feedback loop” mentioned in the Warter message is required for tracking. This feedback is implemented in the form of tracking images embedded in the message body, which are downloaded from the sender's server. The implications for privacy are obvious: not everyone wants the sender of the letter to know when the letter is read and where the reader is at this time. The requirements of disclosing such information seem to contradict the Mozilla Manifesto # 4: "The security and privacy of a person on the Internet is a fundamental property and cannot be considered as an option." But if you do not comply with these requirements, as Warter said, then we will encounter problems delivering all of Mozilla's email.
There are other problems with tracking pictures, starting with the fact that attentive users, who care about privacy, generally disable the loading of such images by default. Your editor himself recently received a complaint from a financial company that does not read her letters. In fact, the letters were read, but they were not allowed to call home and report this fact. There is a high probability that in the future the popularity of such locks will increase. Not everyone wants to become part of the unwanted "feedback loop."
In this particular case, it seems that they have found an acceptable compromise after all - and the text format of the letters will be preserved. But once a year, subscribers to the text format of the newsletter will receive a letter asking to click on the link to confirm that they wish to receive the newsletter further. This will allow Mozilla to screen out inactive readers, maintaining a reputation rating and not introducing compulsory surveillance.
The fact that even principal organizations like Mozilla feel the need to implement tracking is an indicator of the not-so-good state of the e-mail system, although there are already plenty of such indicators. The more difficult it is to pass a reputation check, the more users will have to switch to a small number of large email providers (who have no problems with the “feedback loop”) just to work normally. For example, at each stage of the Linux kernel merger, one or more developers have problems delivering pull requests to Linus Torvalds to his Gmail account. It is not clear how to solve the problem with e-mail, but it is obvious: you need to do something.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/340276/
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