It sounds like your problem is with the way providers handle email and not email itself.
No. Providers handle mail this way because they have no choice to do so.
You are stuck between two major Issues.
On one hand you can have your anti-spam very lenient and receive pretty much everything. But if you do you will get more phishing and malware ridden mails. So the users will be exposed to one of the most dangerous vector of infection.
On the other hand you can have a super aggressive spam filter but some mail will be dropped. Whether an email notifications or the contract of the year for a business. It’s no matter. It might never be delivered.
And since we have to block millions of spam mail everyday we have to block them silently because if you respond to certain malicious SMTP server online they will just spam you.
In reality businesses are used to email so that’s what is commonly used.
But it’s far too unreliable to communicate with clients of that business. You can’t just have an important contract sent as an attachment by mail with some chance that it will be silently dropped at some point.
The simple fact that you can send an information to someone by email and it might be silently dropped without you ever being aware of it should IMO have led to the conclusion that it should never be used for anything remotely critical.
If it’s important it shouldn’t be an email. The reality is millions of dollars worth of business conducted solely through email conversations. And also a very lucrative business of spam.
Even businesses are often spammers or as they may call it “gray mail”.
No email providers will guarantee you a 0% fault spam filtering.
Not Gmail either.
As much as I hate Gmail, at least they are pushing for everyone being required to use SPF and DKIM. That alone will eliminate a huge portion of the spam problem.
It’s a good thing Gmail does that but it helps only their users right now (since February’s changes). If your business communicates with thousands of small domains on small providers it will take another decade for every SMTP server to fix their s***. And even then there will still be spam.
What’s the difference between a spammer going through all the hoops of creating a mail domain and a new business ?
They both would have “legit DNS records” but would both have trouble sending mail to Gmail at first.
Because Gmail cannot know if you are a spammer that setup a new disposable domain or a serious actor in email that just wants to communicate with you.
Truthfully Email is a terrible protocol that cannot be fixed with yet another layer of duct tape. You will never have any guarantee your mail is delivered. There is plenty of communication systems that’s will tell you it’s delivered or not.
Again, your problem is with the way providers handle email. It would be perfectly possible to deny email that’s flagged as spam, then the sender would get a bounce notification. “Dropping them silently” (which actually means accepting them and delivering them to a spam folder in this context) is a choice that providers make. It’s already general practice to deny email from an IP address that’s been blocklisted.
Also, spammers aren’t going to spend the money to buy and set up domains if each one is blocklisted before it makes a profit. My own email service will mark something as spam if it fails FCrDNS, SPF, and DKIM. Gmail went one step further and doesn’t even consider FCrDNS.
And again, any communication method will have a spam problem if it is popular enough and it allows non-two party consent messaging. Email’s popularity is the reason it has a spam problem, not its protocol design. And any distributed system cannot guarantee delivery. If my server tells your server it’s delivered, you just have to trust it, no matter what protocol you’re using.
No. Providers handle mail this way because they have no choice to do so.
You are stuck between two major Issues.
On one hand you can have your anti-spam very lenient and receive pretty much everything. But if you do you will get more phishing and malware ridden mails. So the users will be exposed to one of the most dangerous vector of infection.
On the other hand you can have a super aggressive spam filter but some mail will be dropped. Whether an email notifications or the contract of the year for a business. It’s no matter. It might never be delivered.
And since we have to block millions of spam mail everyday we have to block them silently because if you respond to certain malicious SMTP server online they will just spam you.
In reality businesses are used to email so that’s what is commonly used.
But it’s far too unreliable to communicate with clients of that business. You can’t just have an important contract sent as an attachment by mail with some chance that it will be silently dropped at some point.
The simple fact that you can send an information to someone by email and it might be silently dropped without you ever being aware of it should IMO have led to the conclusion that it should never be used for anything remotely critical.
If it’s important it shouldn’t be an email. The reality is millions of dollars worth of business conducted solely through email conversations. And also a very lucrative business of spam.
Even businesses are often spammers or as they may call it “gray mail”.
No email providers will guarantee you a 0% fault spam filtering.
Not Gmail either.
It’s a good thing Gmail does that but it helps only their users right now (since February’s changes). If your business communicates with thousands of small domains on small providers it will take another decade for every SMTP server to fix their s***. And even then there will still be spam.
What’s the difference between a spammer going through all the hoops of creating a mail domain and a new business ?
Not much. Both mynewlegitEmailDomain.com and SpammerWho UnderstandsDNS.com are essentially the same for a spam filter.
They both would have “legit DNS records” but would both have trouble sending mail to Gmail at first.
Because Gmail cannot know if you are a spammer that setup a new disposable domain or a serious actor in email that just wants to communicate with you.
Truthfully Email is a terrible protocol that cannot be fixed with yet another layer of duct tape. You will never have any guarantee your mail is delivered. There is plenty of communication systems that’s will tell you it’s delivered or not.
Again, your problem is with the way providers handle email. It would be perfectly possible to deny email that’s flagged as spam, then the sender would get a bounce notification. “Dropping them silently” (which actually means accepting them and delivering them to a spam folder in this context) is a choice that providers make. It’s already general practice to deny email from an IP address that’s been blocklisted.
Also, spammers aren’t going to spend the money to buy and set up domains if each one is blocklisted before it makes a profit. My own email service will mark something as spam if it fails FCrDNS, SPF, and DKIM. Gmail went one step further and doesn’t even consider FCrDNS.
And again, any communication method will have a spam problem if it is popular enough and it allows non-two party consent messaging. Email’s popularity is the reason it has a spam problem, not its protocol design. And any distributed system cannot guarantee delivery. If my server tells your server it’s delivered, you just have to trust it, no matter what protocol you’re using.