The End of Email Cometh? 150
RebRachman asks: "Has the inevitable finally happened? After years of dismissing as alarmist all the commentary about how spam and security concerns will eventually render email useless, is it actually happening to us? I don't know about you, but for the past three days, all of our staff (we are a virtual company of 20 telecommuters) and clients have been unable to get email to one another reliably. Attachments disappear or become garbled, mail disappears into the great beyond, or arrives hours after it has been sent, even within the same ISP. We've resorted to sending one another an IM every time we send an email to confirm that the messages are arriving alright. In extreme cases we have even reverted to using a telephone handset to ensure that clients have received everything that was sent. Is it only a matter of time before we all resort to file transfer by P2P? (And if so, what are we going to do with these firewall boxes?)"
Well.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Funny that, out of a job because they were too good at it...
Re:Well.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Funny that, out of a job because they were too good at it...
It's a common hazard for insufficiently-evolved parasites. The ideal for a parasite is to extract the maximum amount of resources from the host without causing the host permanent harm; parasites that have just moved to a new type of host usually take too much, and end up killing the host.
Overhyped? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Overhyped? (Score:3, Interesting)
ugh!!!
here you go: (Score:5, Interesting)
* because of all those frigging trojans that zipped up attachments of infectious exes. also, it stops people mailing things in password-protected zip files.
* because it's not instant messenger. your email systems could probably do with tweaking, as well
* because they're FREE, FFS
* because people are either idiots or want to attempt to get around spam filters.
that wasn't so hard.
Re:here you go: (Score:2)
Re:Overhyped? (Score:2)
Re:Overhyped? (Score:3, Funny)
But it's no gopher.
Leaving messages (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Leaving messages (Score:3, Interesting)
though it's not a client feature (Score:2)
So far I've had very little IM spam, thankfully! Mostly spammers seem to use Yahoo to harvest email addresses at the moment.
If you've an always-on connection and you leave the client running, any IM network can get messages while you're away. Otherwise offline messaging would have to be supported in the infrastructure (and not just the by the client). So that
Is it really so bad already? (Score:5, Informative)
About the only problem I've ever had with email -- that wasn't my fault, anyway -- is overzealous spam filters. The simple solution to this is to install your own filters, set the threshhold relatively high, and check your junk mail folders periodically. Never should you blackhole email if you value its timely delivery. Anyway, the latest spam filters are good enough that this isn't much of a problem anymore.
Re:Is it really so bad already? (Score:5, Insightful)
I would suspect that the problems your experiencing may be due to various poor implementations of mail servers at your customer's end. Many corporations today that have recently jumped onto the internet have minimal IT support staff, and implement something that "just works". There are usually few considerations for anti-spam controls, content security (viruses, porn), and effective backup procedures.
Yeah, I agree. (Score:5, Interesting)
Umm... I've been using e-mail for 20 years, and I plan on using e-mail for another 20 years. Every single time I've had a problem with e-mail, I've fixed it.
IF you're getting too much spam, change your e-mail address. Its as simple as that. Yes, it really is that simple. If you "can't" do this because too many people have your 'old' address, well then its not e-mail thats broken, its your management of it
Really, I consider the reaction and subsequent 'conclusion that e-mail is going away' to be utterly ludicrous, and I truly question the motives of anyone who adopts that point of view.
Technology doesn't die; only mans desire to reliably, standardly sustain it goes away
Re:Yeah, I agree. (Score:2)
If you've truly been using it for that long, you are also more likely to have the skills to fix email problems. Again, the average person to use email isn't. Thus, the demise.
Re:Yeah, I agree. (Score:2)
I wonder when
Must be all those damned terrorists.
Re:Yeah, I agree. (Score:2)
That's absurd. I suppose your solution to telemarketers is to change your phone number frequently? And the way to avoid getting too much junk mail is to move every year or so?
I've been handing out business cards with my current address for eight years. I
Re:Yeah, I agree. (Score:2)
I've used email since 1985. (OK, it was VMS MAIL before I was on the Internet.) Tremendously valuable. But I'm just about to give up on it.
It's not just the spam. The fact is, I get very little real email nowadays. I'm not sure why. I think many of my friends have given up on it. At work (I'm a software engineer), it's maybe 10 messages a day. I recall in 1992 keeping stats and learning that I was processing more than 100 real messages a day (no spam).
And the spam is a huge problem. I'm getting
Re:Is it really so bad already? (Score:5, Interesting)
The biggest problem with all this is that we get no notification that something was blocked. I find out later when someone asks why I havent responded. That, and my never having received a single spam at this address, even in the years before the front-end filter. Others complained, but I never posted my work email to public newsgroups either.
That's what hotmail is for.
Re:Is it really so bad already? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Is it really so bad already? (Score:2)
That's exactly what it does. Nobody gets notification (except a helpdesk log, if I ask). They swallow all email company-wide, and spit out everything it determines to be SPAM. Essentially, it's all /dev/null to them at that point.
I complained and asked for a pass-through or at least some notification, but couldn't with this system. Other have complained as well, so I'm not the only one noticing.
zerg (Score:5, Funny)
p2p is not going to solve your messaging problems. *SPRITZ* bad use of buzzword, no. *SPRITZ* what did I just tell you?! Your post provides close to zero information other than "email suxx0rz omg p2p". It's as bad as the llamas who come here seeking legal advice.
Who is in charge of administrating your email server? (servers?) What email clients are you using? Can you send & receive email normally from your personal accounts? Who is providing your other "virtual" (wtf) services? Which IM client are you using? Have you looked at Jabber for your messaging, including setting up your own private Jabber servers?
Gmail? I think not! (Score:2, Informative)
As much as I love Gmail, it is not adequate for a be-all, end-all email service.
gmail isn't all smiles and sunshine... (Score:1)
This website does a good job summing it up:
gmail creepy [gmail-is-too-creepy.com].
Re:gmail isn't all smiles and sunshine... (Score:2)
Re:zerg (Score:2)
haha (Score:3, Funny)
meh, email is over as we know it anyway..
Who runs your servers???` (Score:2, Insightful)
Do your run your own servers? If so, perhaps you should look into a rebuild of the whole mail/anti-spam system.
If you pay someone to run this system, then i'd be looking for another ISP or other provider.
The only thing killing email is this kind of thinking.
It's getting there. (Score:2, Interesting)
Gave up a long time ago (Score:5, Insightful)
I gave up on email two years ago. Yeah, I still have an account that I almost never check. SpamAssassin does a fine job of keeping most things at bay but I'm tired of dealing with it. All SA does it sort it. I still have to double check it and delete it. What a waste of time. I've tried getting my own domain, setting up email accounts for different companies, etc. I tried hiding my email address from web sites. I even tried switching addresses. It's worse than ever now. With all the viruses and spyware, I know that some of them are harvesting email addresses from users Outlook mailboxes and sending them to spammers. I have clients or acquaintances that get infected and even though I've created email addresses just for them to email to, I start getting spammed within a few weeks of their box getting infected.
People say it's an arms race, and they are right. It's definitely a race and I'm fucking exhausted. My hat is off to those of you who can keep up with it all.
</rant>
On the other hand, instant messaging has become an email replacement for me. It's quick, and I can usually send files with it. Either that or I use my cell phone for communication (ringer set to vibrate, thank you). Phone plans are inexpensive now and most include long distance as part of the package. It's much easier, and more pleasant, to talk to my friends and family that are on the other side of the country. I stay in touch with a lot more people these days than I used to just four years ago, thanks in part to my cell phone.
Re:Gave up a long time ago (Score:2)
Re:Gave up a long time ago (Score:2)
I think e-mail will be here for a long time, as finally literally just about everyone on the planet has e-mail access, even if at a coffeeshop. You got phones, you got e-mail, what
Re:Gave up a long time ago (Score:4, Informative)
If you're using sendmail you should give milter-sender a look.
Re:Gave up a long time ago (Score:4, Insightful)
I wonder if the US military network has problems with spam. Generally nothing in America gets taken seriously until it starts messing with the military. Then the problems are given serious thought by serious people with unlimited resources. The successful approachs are then brought into the corporate environment and then the media. Then they filter into general American society.
A broad example would be the systematic racism and segration against the African-American people that didn't really start to change in American society until it started to drasticily undermine the military's ability to function in the late 1960's. The approaches that worked to reduce institutional racism in the military were adopted by big corporations (slowly, but surely) and are working their way throughout the society. Things are really different now in this area than they were fifty years ago.
But if you seriously want to get rid of spam, start feeding into the military networks. Let them deal with it in their own simple direct and time-tested manner.
Re:Gave up a long time ago (Score:4, Funny)
"Kablooie"?
(Sounds like a plan!)
Re:Gave up a long time ago (Score:4, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Gave up a long time ago (Score:2)
Re:Gave up a long time ago (Score:1)
I doubt spammers would target
Re:Gave up a long time ago (Score:2, Funny)
Wow, you're right! I haven't received a single Iraqi spam since the US took out Saddam.
Re:Gave up a long time ago (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:1)
Oh no the end of the world is here! (Score:5, Insightful)
we can't get attachments!
our isp or servers suck!
oops, we were at fault!
can i recind my slashdot article?
where do i get modded as troll?
give me a break, people have been saying it's the end of the email/BSD/MAC/intarweb for ages now and it's getting old. rehire some new tech staff that know what the heck to do or learn to do it yourself properly.
good god WTF is wrong with people.
Re:Oh no the end of the world is here! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Oh no the end of the world is here! (Score:1)
*shrug*
Re:Oh no the end of the world is here! (Score:2)
Re:Oh no the end of the world is here! (Score:2)
No kidding, this is like if my mom wrote an article about 'The End of Printers' because she couldn't get her new Lexmark to work.
Email will not die... (Score:3, Insightful)
By open I mean something that can receive a message from a person you haven't had a contact with before.
Any system that would eliminate the spam requires some sort of "web of trust". To establish a web of trust, you need to close the system and limit it only to trusted users. Apart from all possible problems related to the web of trust, the system will be always either too restrictive, if it's effective, or too ineffective, if it's not so restrictive.
IM is already taken over by spammers in some degree - it's just a matter of time and the number of users for that process to accelerate. Anything else will suffer from the same problems - you let unknown people call/message/email you - you get spam. You restrict yourself only to known people, you filter spam out, but lock out everyone who might potentially need to contact you but doesn't belong to your personal web of trust.
So, the bottom line is that every new application will suffer from either spam or restriction, and because of that it doesn't pay off to switch to a different system.
PS: Viruses are not anything that started with email. Email just happens to be a convenient medium of the time, but they were proliferating quite fine with floppy disks, as they are now with email. P2P will (already has in many cases) the exact same problem - people sending around unchecked files, viruses taking over control of P2P programs and multiplying themselves, and so on and so forth.
How to really fix spam problem? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Email will not die... (Score:2)
What about hashcash postage? It lets you get mail from people you don't know, and it doesn't require a web of trust.
Any system that would eliminate the spam requires some sort of "web of trust". To establish a web of trust, you need to close the system and li
Re:Email will not die... (Score:2, Insightful)
If I see spam with casinohotnews as sender, and I know it's from them, I'll just block them on my machine.
If I see that someone uses a hotmail account to send me mail, and I can trust it is from hotmail, I ask MS to handle the problem.
The one horrible thing with today's mail protocols is that you can pretend you are someone else. It would have been so easy
Re:Email will not die... (Score:2)
The one horrible thing with today's mail protocols is that you can pretend you are someone else. It would have been so easy to add a handshake in there: So you claim you are, af62co@spamking.com, ok, pls verify that, before I even think of showing your mail to the recipient.
I may be missing something here, but I do not know what. Anyone who can tell me where I go wrong?
Handshake's breaks when you have to store and forward. Sure, the server you're connected with might be ok - but you're effectively
Re:Email will not die... (Score:2)
That's precisely what SPF is, but it operates on domain granularity. You want it for users, you need digital signatures, and PKI is its own collosal headache with no easy answers.
Of course a problem with SPF is that yes, you know casinohotnews.com is the sender. And in the next message, you know that hotcasinonews.com is the sender, then it's hotcasinosnews, then casinoshotnews, then casinohotinfo, and so on, each coming from a fresh set
The problem is the ANTISPAM software (Score:4, Informative)
Quit using your ISP's antispam features, if you cannot turn them off yourself, demand that your ISP turn them off for you.
Then install POPFile [sourceforge.net] and take ownership of your own email.
Have your customers/others do the same.
It's the job of ICANN & IANA to get a grip on the SPAM issue,
they are issuing numbers and access to authorities that do not deserve it,
and have not fulfilled thier roles as governing bodies.
Re:The problem is the ANTISPAM software (Score:1)
Is the sky falling, Chicken Little? (Score:5, Insightful)
Everyone has e-mail troubles, but to assume that it's because of the evil spammers and "security concerns" inherent in e-mail is ridiculous, and borders on negligent. If your server is internal, you need to find a new sysadmin. If it's external, you need to find a new host. If the person running your server knows what he/she's doing, this sort of thing rarely (if ever) happens.
No offense intended, but what you've said is the rough equivalent of saying "The car that I drive too fast, too often, don't change the oil in, and paid my neighbor's 16-year-old kid who takes autoshop to fix has finally stopped working. That must mean that internal-combustion engines are at the end of their life!"
If you aren't just talking about environmental impact, what's the solution? Give up on cars, or find someone who actually knows how to maintain them?
I'm a little disappointed in the editors for allowing this story. :-(
aim does pretty good at p2p (Score:2)
just my 2cents .. but it is possible.. its also a lot better than p2p.. but if I had to do p2p, I'd have
what does spam and security have to do with it? (Score:2)
the end of of email? come on people... our phone service was screwed up all day but it's not exactly the end of it.
Gmail (Score:2, Insightful)
Gmail has a few
Re:Gmail (Score:2)
Blah. But I like it other than that. Hopefully they'll have that worked out in the near future.
Re:Gmail (Score:1)
I see this as a good thing since rather than having 1 email listed in my inbox per forum post, I've got 1 per forum thread. This works with vBulletin, but it may work differently with other forum systems depending on the subject line they use for notification.
hides "quoted text" which actually is the important part of the email...
Why do you need the quoted text when you have your original message above the reply? Again I see that
Hire good admin (Score:2, Insightful)
Hire good part-time admin. Get better MUA. Really. Looks like e-mail works fine for everyone but your company.
There's no certain answer... (Score:2)
The biggest thing that's changed in the age of spam is that a lot of people now install spam and virus filters that do not have a 0% false positive rate. If your filter scores attachments higher, it may be
i disagree (Score:2)
my email to yahoo mail, especially with
their recent bump to 100meg and 10meg
attachments. Their spam filter is excellent,
though I still have to check for false
positives, which are quite rare, though my
email use is rather minimal. If everyone
used yahoo or gmail or somesuch, that would
pretty much prevent spam and allow for pretty
accurate filtering.
Of course, being web-based is excellent, as
I was able to access email the exact same way
from Finland as from here in the
Hey (Score:5, Insightful)
I know of a company that had similar email problems, like 2 hour waits and other unreliabilities, and the problem was that spam to no longer existing email addresses was being bounced back and forth between their server and whatever fake server was specified in the return address. Email would pile up into the thousands and they'd have to log into the server and delete the bad messages from the queue.
Basically, the problem may be a full smtp queue, possibly either by bouncing messages or spammers using your server.
If you're losing emails entirely, that's generally supposed to be nearly impossible unless the messages are being filtered, they're being deleted manually (lazy solution to full queue problem), the server is full, or the receiving server was unreachable for every delivery attempt.
How does this get posted? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:How does this get posted? (Score:2)
a credit card. Whose do you think they'll use?
email problem? (Score:5, Insightful)
In other news... (Score:5, Funny)
I don't know about you, but for the past three days, I haven't been able to get my car to start. The engine won't turn over, and oil is leaking from somewhere under the hood.
I've resorted to taking the bus to work every morning. In extreme cases I've even had to walk! Is it only a matter of time before we all resort to telecommuting? (And if so, what are we going to do with all of those gas stations?)
Re:In other news... (Score:1)
No, actually its time.. (Score:4, Informative)
end cometh - it should never have started! (Score:2)
If you have *any* kind of tech nounce then you should know that attachments are stupid
"hey lets convert this binary file to 7 bit ascii and send it via email"
why not say "lets convert this binary to bar code and fax it"
SMTP - Small Message Transfer Protocol
FTP - File Transfer Protocol
HTTP - Hyper Text Transfer Protocol
MIME - Multile Incompatible Message Extensions
If you don't respect the conventions, how the hell can you expect the conventions to respect you!
SMTP doesn't and never has guaranteed messa
Re:end cometh - it should never have started! (Score:1)
err.. actually its Simple Mail Transfer Protocol. While that doesnt change your point, you should at least get the name right.
Re:end cometh - it should never have started! (Score:1)
I think it actually makes my point *more* prevelent, MIME and Simple are two phrases that should ever sit together unless it's to say "MIME is anything but Simple"
Re:end cometh - it should never have started! (Score:2)
Re:end cometh - it should never have started! (Score:2)
I used to type in full listings from magazines.
I have also have vinyl records with code on (even those floppy ones) that you stick through a n A/D.
The BBC used to distribute code via teletext also, you hooked up a decoder and downloaded it.
I think computing was more fun back then if my rose colours specs are correct.
High expectations... (Score:4, Insightful)
E-mail has never pretended to be reliable. Once your mail is sent to an alien mail-server, anything can happen, so you're daft if you're using it for anything mission critical. Of course, you do get what you pay for. I've used free email services that have taken hours, even days to propagate an email.
Always call if emails are important (Score:5, Insightful)
Ok, email basics here.
Emails are a queued store-and-forward system. Even with the advent of Pretty-Much-High-Speed-To-Everywhere Internet, it can still sometimes take *days* to get an email to it's recipient and there's still no "problem" as such - it's just overloaded queues, a slow link, or a connectivity issue. Email was designed to try, try, again, so in most cases it will get *enevtually* through. In the cases it cannot, you'll either get a fairly instant reply (eg "no such user") or you'll get "soft" warnings after a few hours and a hard error a few days later.
If your emails are important , or contain stuff that must be acted on in a certain timeframe, do not rely on it magically appearing in their inbox 3 seconds after you send that 2 meg attachment. Always contact them via some other channel and confirm delivery.
Re:Always call if emails are important (Score:4, Interesting)
If it takes "days" without any notification, then something most certainly is wrong -- if not broken, at least overloaded, and will be broken soon. If you know neither side is supposed to be queueing mail out or in, then mail should arrive immediately (modulo some sort of minutes-long polling/refresh interval in the delivery agent). Email does not typically travel through a dozen hops any more than you would expect your flights to have a dozen layovers. This is not 1988 anymore.
But it sure isn't spam that's the problem here, and even if it is, it's no excuse for email to be silently lost. The article simply demonstrates incompetence in action. But hey, it's also evolution in action: the company that can manage to keep email running will be more likely to keep their clients. The circle of life continues
Re:Always call if emails are important (Score:2)
I think you're confusing email with Instant Messaging. Try not to confuse the two.
There is no such thing as "guaranteed instant delivery" in email, and there never was. We don't need to replace SMTP (which works fine), with something "faster", just because people demand instant access to emails the second they click
Re:Always call if emails are important (Score:2)
Condescending much? I talk about systems, I get lectures about protocol. Wrong tree, I'm in this one over here. The typical design of a mail system allows for nearly instantaneous delivery. And that delivery delays of days have never been normal. I'm sure there's some fella running a mail gateway that requires him to tunnel it over RFC1149 (IP over Avian Carrier Transport) that might see a week's delay when the pigeons g
Alternatives (Score:1)
Waste [sf.net]
Kdx [haxial.com]
Jabber [jabber.org]
FTP (Score:2)
Sounds like you have a crappy "hosting service" (Score:2)
I have run my own domain since 1996, and I've never experienced the trouble you describe.
email is not dead... and isn't flawed (Score:4, Insightful)
* 50% of the phone calls I get are from sales people.
* 80% of the snail mail I get is marketing junk. The other 20% are bills.
* 25-30% of TV time consists of commercials.
* 10% of the email I see is spam. The other 200 spams go directly to Thunderwhatever's junk folder where I occasionally check them, then purge them.
Brain dead system administrators, stupid users who fill in every form possible online and wanton use of internet explorer are really the cause of the spam problem. Show me someone who gets thousands of spams, and I'll show you somoene who has posted their email address to a public website or usenet or has clicked on install for some popup marketing tool for IE.
Re:email is not dead... and isn't flawed (Score:1)
White lists, black lists, strict mail filters. Are you sure you're e-mail went through? The best way to be sure is to call.
Re:email is not dead... and isn't flawed (Score:2)
You by a Tivo or whatever and you can skip the ads and see back-to-back program. If the station increases their ad/content ratio, you still don't see the ads but the reception is slower.
Thunderbird may filter spam, but it is still cluttering up your mail server *and* your bandwidth. If you are on a slow/expe
Re:email is not dead... and isn't flawed (Score:2)
I haven't gotten a telemarketing call in at least six years. I simply signed up for the DMA's telephone preference service (free) and had my phone number unlisted ($0.25 per month).
This was much higher for me. When I moved into my house, I was receiving 110 mail-order catalogs a week (more near Christmas). Several bills were lost in the pages. My trash/recycling company said
...file transfer by P2P... (Score:1)
Let us not forget that email was the original file transfer by P2P back before we all decided to rely on someone else to run our sendmail services.
Just like USENET (Score:2)
Cost of Free Email (Score:4, Insightful)
Lately, my AM radio statio has been playing self-serving advertisements playing up the fact that, unlike cable TV, movies in theaters, etc, radio is still free.
Free, that is, and they don't mention, if you don't mind wasting your time polluting your unconscious mind with the drivel of commercial culture for close to 50% of the listening experience.
Likewise, if you get your email from a provider that locks the front gates enough with good spam protection, it's acceptable.
But "free" email accounts are typically so spam infested that the true cost becomes apparent.
Imminent death of email predicted (Score:2)
... Film at 11.
I suggest you either switch ISP, or host your own mail server with a competent sysadmin.
Personnally, I never used email as much as I do today. The volume of spam suck, and the time wasted pampering SpamAssassin and other spam counter-measure is insane, but so far the gain still outweight the effort for the vast majority of people apparently.
P2P is not the answer (Score:1)
Phone: Emergency Use Only! (Score:2)
Good God! That must have been an extreme case to warrant actually speaking to another human being!
Let's hope it doesn't happen again.
Transitory problems (Score:2)
If you're having one of the rare problems where the problem isn't going away, contact your ISP. If they can't/won't fix it, then fire them! There are plenty of companies which have no problem delivering email. My best luck has been, believe it or not, with Y
Email working fine for us... (Score:2)
Let's see where we're at today...
Hmm, 42,600 people on this campus alone (there's 2 others!), and no one's bitching very loudly. We even do pretty decent spam checking.
Don't post to
.. wait! this sounds familiar! (Score:2)
Newsgroups: alt.current-events.net-abuse
Path:
ucsbuxb.ucsb . edu!library.ucla.edu!news.ucdavis.edu !csus.edu!csusac!
charnel.e cst.csuchico.edu!olivea!spool.mu.edu!howland.resto n.ans.net!
news.sprintlink. net!news.tyrell.net!ttyt1.tyrell.net!user
From: Inside@tyrell.net (Mark Eberra-Network Adm.)
Subject: An Open Letter To The Internet From Mark Eberra
X-Nntp-Posting-Host: ttyt1.tyrell.net
Message-ID:
Sender: news@tyrell.net (*)
Organization: Inside Connections(tm) Commercial Network
Date: Thu, 9 Mar 1995 00:02:5
Why aren't you running your own mail server? (Score:2)
Why are you relying on an ISP for mail services? Why are you using existing IM networks? You should be running these yourself. Get a domain. Run a DNS server. Run an SMTP/IMAP server. Manage it all in-house. Install a messaging server and keep your business IM off the public networks.
E-mail isn't broken. Your e-mail configuration/setup/infrastructure is.
Don't blame the tools when the
hmmmmmm port 25 blocked (Score:2)
Is your amazing telecommuting company of ~20 people or so a spam circle? Or are you just using crap residential cable to handle your 'business' email?
Email is fine, your setup/admin is hosed.
What are you doing wrong? (Score:2)