Feedback loop (email)

Marketers striving for their mail to be delivered have a twofold advantage: they can remove subscribers that don't want to receive that kind of advertising (listwashing), and they can analyze the complaint rate and hence how their advertising meets market expectations. By unsubscribing users who complain, marketers reduce their overall complaint rate per IP or domain, ensuring that targeted mail is much more likely to reach subscribers who actually want to receive it.{{cite web |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120306033428/http://www.emailmanual.co.uk/?p=98 |archive-date=6 March 2012 |url-status=unfit |url=http://www.emailmanual.co.uk/?p=98 |title=What are feedback loops (fbl's) and how can they help my deliverability? |accessdate=15 July 2009 |publisher=Email Manual |date=2009-07-15}}

ESPs, when playing the sender's role, are very sensitive to how sending mail on behalf of their customers may affect their reputation. Monitoring the complaint rate is one of the ways they can control what their users are sending.{{Cite web |url=http://www.returnpath.com/wp-content/uploads/resource/your-reputation-holds-the-key-to-deliverability/deliverability_081508.pdf |title=Your Reputation Holds the Key to Deliverability |date=2008-08-18 |publisher=ReturnPath |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130511031422/http://www.returnpath.com/wp-content/uploads/resource/your-reputation-holds-the-key-to-deliverability/deliverability_081508.pdf |archive-date=11 May 2013 |url-status=dead |access-date=16 November 2008}}

1. Spencer sends a message to Alice.
2. Alice complains to Isaac (her ISP or MP) about the message, e.g. by hitting the report spam button.
3. Isaac encapsulates the message as either an Abuse Reporting Format MIME part, or (less commonly) a standalone message/rfc822 MIME part, and sends it to Spencer if Spencer has signed up to receive that feedback.{{cite mailing list |url=http://www.irtf.org/pipermail/asrg/2008-November/003611.html |title=FeedBack loops |access-date=18 November 2008 |author=J.D. Falk |date=2008-11-11 |mailing-list=ASRG mailing list |publisher=IRTF}}

As sketched above, the process implies that Spencer, besides being the author (or sender) of the message, is connected to the postmaster responsible for his mail domain. Subscribing to an FBL usually involves the postmaster's authorization. An FBL subscriber may or may not forward abuse reports to the relevant authors. If no subscribers exist for a given mail domain, Isaac can omit sending an abuse report at all. In fact, subscriptions have to be done one by one, a laborious task that mail domains not engaged in mass mailing may want to skip. {{IETF RFC|6650}} addresses the latter shortcoming by proposing auto-subscribe just-in-time FBLs, which can be started by sending an unsolicited abuse report with further directives (at a minimum, a way to unsubscribe).{{cite IETF |title=Creation and Use of Email Feedback Reports: An Applicability Statement for the Abuse Reporting Format (ARF) |rfc=6650 |editor=Murray Kucherawy |date=June 2012 |publisher=IETF |accessdate=28 June 2012 |quote=Feedback Providers MUST provide a way for report recipients to request that no further reports be sent.}}

Ipsos noted that a majority of respondents to a survey on spam reporting marked messages as spam based solely on the subject and sender data.

For years, end users have been told not to trust email unsubscribe links, so many users hit the spam button as an alternative to unsubscribing.{{cite web |url=https://www.clickz.com/getting-in-the-feedback-loop/85353/ |title=Getting in the Feedback Loop |accessdate=16 November 2008 |author=Derek Harding |date=2006-09-07 |publisher=ClikZ}} Consequently, report spam may act as unsubscribe in some cases.{{cite mailing list |url=http://www.irtf.org/pipermail/asrg/2008-November/003647.html |title=FeedBack loops |access-date=18 November 2008 |author=John Levine |date=2008-11-13 |mailing-list=ASRG mailing list |publisher=IRTF}} One of the reasons not to hit unsubscribe links is to avoid confirming that the message had been received and opened.{{cite web |url=http://www.spamhaus.org/removelists.html |archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20090309002609/http://www.spamhaus.org/removelists.html |archivedate=2009-03-09 |title=Spam Unsubscribe Services |accessdate=16 November 2008 |publisher=The Spamhaus Project |date=2007-01-19 }}

The Abuse Reporting Format (ARF) is the standard format for FBL reports. Much like bounce messages, whose design is inherited by ARF, an abuse report consists of a human readable part, followed by a machine readable part, and the original message. The report is characterized by a Feedback-Type field whose values may indicate one of abuse, fraud, virus, or other (more types are registered at IANA).

Microsoft, who use the name Junk Mail Reporting (JMR), also use their own format.{{cite web |url=http://mail.live.com/mail/services.aspx |title=Services for Senders and ISPs |publisher=Microsoft |accessdate=11 November 2011}}

Google's Gmail is beta testing a non-traditional FBL with select ESPs.{{cite web |url=http://www.maawg.org/members/meetings_archives |title=Best Practices for Senders: A Gmail Perspective (slides 47, 48) |date=2014-02-20 |publisher=MAAWG}} Gmail uses their own format—an aggregate report that reveals spam rate per notable sender. SendGrid reports that the Gmail FBL, developed and launched by Julian Tempelsman and Sri Somanchi, is effective at identifying spam that other anti-spam systems miss.{{cite web |url=http://sendgrid.com/blog/gmails-spam-feedback-loop-sendgrids-experience/ |title=Gmail's Spam Feedback Loop: SendGrid's First-hand Experience |publisher=SendGrid |date=2014-03-28 }}

• Abuse Reporting Format
• Spam reporting

{{reflist|30em}}

• [https://fbl.returnpath.net/ Universal Feedback Loop Service]
• [https://www.m3aawg.org/fbl-resources Messaging Anti-Abuse Working Group - list of FBL´s]
• [http://wiki.asrg.sp.am/wiki/Feedback_loop_links_for_some_email_providers Feedback loop links for some email providers]
• [http://mipassoc.org/arf Abuse Feedback Reporting Format (ARF) ]
• [https://buzzforbusiness.com/customer-feedback/ Importance of Customer Feedback]

{{Spamming}}

Category:Email

Category:Anti-spam

Category:Complaints organizations