[feedback-report] Request for information from ARF users

[Ricardo SIGNES]

* "Murray S. Kucherawy" <msk at sendmail.com> [2008-12-08T03:42:14]
> - what organization you represent

I'm the lead programmer at Pobox.com and Listbox.com.

> - how you're using ARF (generator, recipient, or both)

We receive, parse, and automatically act on ARF reports.  We are not yet
sending ARF reports.

> - whether or not you've got generator/parsing code that is open source, or 
> could be

Yes, we wrote and published the Perl library Email::ARF.

> - what kinds of reports you handle and how you handle them (manual or 
> automated)

Most of the reports we handle are from large ESPs whose users have (in most
cases mistakenly) reported opt-in mail as spam.  We automatically process those
as if they were opt-out request.  There are a few other common cases (user
turns of spam filtering, then reports us as having forwarded spam is another
big one).

> - any local extensions you've added

Because most large ESPs muck with addresses found in the headers, we've had to
improve our message fingerprinting to allow us to know how to act based on the
redacted message included in the ARF report.  This is an extension to our
mailflow, not to ARF.

> - how long you've been using it

We've been processing ARF formatted mail for at least a year and a half.

> - how many users benefit from your implementation (if you're allowed to say)

I can't say, but I think it's fair to say "quite a lot."

> - any other information that would explain to others why ARF is important to 
> your operation

The biggest benefit is how our internal systems for handling mail to our abuse
and requests addresses were able to change.  It used to be that we'd need to
add code for every feedback loop provider, and some providers did or did not
provide enough information for the program to then understand what problem was
occuring and fix it.  Now we have one report parser and all we have to do is
write the code to fix each detected problem type.

-- 
rjbs