jueves, julio 24, 2008

A ruinous business model - MessageLabs

On occasion it happens that email I send to people in some organizations gets bounced with no other explanation than a brief message saying "rejected" and a reference to MessageLabs.

One may assume that something in the MessageLabs machinery has decided that your email is noxious: a reputation filter, some blackhole list in which your domain name or your IP address appear, what have you. These things happen even for the most orderly users in the best administrated organizations.

So, like we did in the heyday of the Open-Relay data base, and with many other message-blocking databases, you want to go to the provider and clear your reputation? Or at least ascertain that, and probably why, your servers are indeed blocked?

No ways with MessageLabs: only if you are a client. No access otherwise except to some pretty lame propaganda-blurby stuff. Count me as one less prospective client.

1 comentario:

  1. Hello A,

    Address filters, like the Credit Rating Agencies in Banking and Finance, go by some routine criteria and once an email address gets into their records, messages from that address gets blocked by several servers. Often it takes the sender time to realize that his or her email address has been blacklisted, and By Whom? The average internet user might not know.

    Like Message Labs, there are multiple filtering mechanisms. With many of these filter databases, it could be a frustrating process to get the record set straight. Even if it is set straight, it might take time to take effect.

    One solution could be to move towards transparency in Message filtering mechanism, and a community administered central ? mechanism to contest the record created with conventions to make the process of challenges swift.

    ResponderBorrar