Written by Here at the Radical Agenda, we try to have a good time, but we never lose sight of the seriousness of the subject matter we deal with.
Because the subject matter is so serious, we take our ability to deliver messages very seriously. We are, consequently, hyper aware of the fact that there exists no shortage of malicious, dishonest people, who will do just about anything to stop that from happening.
If you’re subscribed to my email list, you know I never send you advertisements. Perhaps you find some of my messages more interesting than others, but you know that I am never frivolous.
I have a very important message that I want you to fully read and understand today, but since I recognize the value of your time, I will cut to the TLDR before I go on my long rant about spam, and spam filters, and how once reputable email providers have turned spam filtering into just another activist project for the Democrat Party.
If you are using any Microsoft or Google service for your emails, you’re getting screwed. My emails are being routinely sent to your spam folder without justification, as I will demonstrate exhaustively below.
I’m sure others are near as bad, but given the prominence of GMail and Outlook and Hotmail for communications, these are the most prominently featured problems in my daily experience. In the past I have had issues with AT&T and Yahoo, and Comcast, but with reasonable diligence I was able to reduce the issue significantly. Chances are, half or more of my messages are in your spam folder, and it is fortunate indeed that you have even gotten this message if you are finding this in your inbox.
You would not have this problem if you were using ProtonMail, or really any email service provider that was honest. Full disclosure, I have a relationship with ProtonMail in which I can earn money from you paying them, but you don’t have to pay them to get their service, and I would do this even if I did not have that relationship. You may know, that I already have been doing so. I’ve been singing their praises for more than five years and have only in the last couple of months gotten approved for this partnership. If you know anything about me, you are certain that I am motivated by higher ambitions than money.
I really hope you read this entire message, but if that’s enough for you to switch today, then I’ll ask that you sign up for ProtonMail through me today. You can do so, for free. It costs you nothing to get the account. The smartphone app is also free, and very easy to sue.
If you decide to pay for an upgraded service later, great. If not, also great. I just want you to have an honest and secure email provider, and we’ll talk more about that in a few minutes.
More information here https://surrealpolitiks.com/getpm
For nearly ten years, I’ve been giving my readers and listeners the opportunity to subscribe to an email newsletter. This is done in part as a means by which to overcome the social media censorship we have endured. Whenever I have something to tell you, I send out emails to all of my thousands of subscribers. Those messages are not supposed to be subject to the silly “algorithms” you hear big tech hucksters try to confuse legislators with, in their efforts to avoid regulation stemming their willful and malicious violations of Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. Email, unlike systems such as Facebook and Twitter, is a protocol, rather than a platform. It is by design supposed to deliver messages to people who mean to receive them, and not be subject to promotion or demotion by email providers. The message is supposed to show up in your inbox, and you decide what to do with it.
There is of course one exception to this. That exception is spam. Unsolicited email and unsolicited commercial advertisements more broadly, are a plague on the Internet. If measures were not taken to restrict them, the Internet would be an unusable cesspool of quack cures and degenerate filth. For this reason, a vast array of measures have been erected to combat spam.
I agree wholeheartedly with those measures.
For a number of years, it was my job to participate in the management of portions of those systems, when I worked in a New York City datacenter for a major Internet Service Provider. As the operations manager for that provider, it was among my duties to monitor network abuse reports. At the most extreme end, I worked with local, federal, and overseas law enforcement agencies to help track down and prosecute child predators, identity thieves, people who sold bogus drugs, and various other fraudsters. I saw horrible things I cannot unsee during that time, but I was, and remain, proud of this work. The far more mundane and routine problem was spam, though these issues were by no means mutually exclusive, and these issues we encountered daily. If we received reports of unsolicited emails coming from our network, it was my job to investigate.
Many such operations were so obvious it barely warranted asking questions. Others, were more clever. But landing one’s network on an email blacklist was a peril no ISP wanted to face. Reputable organizations like Spamhaus, as a notable example, understand the power they wield and work with providers such as the one I was employed with to narrow the impact of their measures. Other spam blacklist operations are less reputable, and less responsible. They take a small number of unverified and unverifiable reports of spam and block off large portions of network address space in response, knowing full well that they are damaging reputable businesses. Then these crooks charge money to those reputable senders within those network ranges to be exempted from the block as a means of extortion.
We did not want to be caught in the crosshairs of either, so we took spam complaints very seriously. We had no choice but to let some customers go because they would or could not conform to the best practices of email communications.
In concert, for reputable senders like us, there are measures one takes to show that they are responsible. Protocols have been established to prove that one is who they say they are, and to hold accountable those who abuse the SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol) system. Among them;
- Sender Policy Framework, or SPF
- Domain Keys Identified Mail, or DKIM
- Domain-based Message Authentication, or DMARC
- Transport Layer Security encryption, or TLS
Additionally, there are best practices which are less a matter of protocol than of respect. Among them;
- Double Opt in Subscription Confirmations
- One click unsubscribe links
- Providing a physical address of the sender in each message
- Providing the legal name of the sender in each message
Here at the Radical Agenda, we do ALL OF THESE THINGS, and then some, to demonstrate our stellar reputation for responsible email communications.
We go above and beyond, even these standards.
For example, we are subscribed to Microsoft’s Smart Network Data Service (SNDS). This is an interface to proactively monitor any problem with the IP addresses associated with our email servers.
The image below is a screenshot of the interface we monitor to make sure our email servers are not being restricted.
In addition, we are subscribed to Microsoft’s Junk Mail Reporting System. If any Microsoft user reports our messages as spam, we are supposed to be notified of it so we can deal with the offender.
Please note the implications of this. I am the only sender, but I am behaving with all the responsibility of an email service PROVIDER. It borders on unheard of for a blogger like myself to go through all of this effort. There is no reason I should have to do this, because I am responsible only for emails I am sending. Nobody else has access to these servers.
You can see my interface with Microsoft in the screenshot below.
Note the thresholds. If I receive 100,000,000 spam complaints, Microsoft is supposed to send me an email for each and every single one of them. They are supposed to send me the original message, so I can determine who is spamming from the network space I control.
I have been subscribed to this service since April, and I have received a grand total of…
ZERO Complaints.
Obviously!
Well, this actually isn’t obvious.
This website has been targeted by so much dishonest crap in its history, that it borders on miraculous that I am not receiving fake complaints. Apparently, the criminals who target us for censorship, have no need of this. They have direct access to the spam blocking systems themselves, and they don’t need to game the system. They control them directly.
The above indicates that there is no legitimate excuse for Microsoft to send our emails to your spam folders. They are doing so anyway, because Microsoft is taking a political position and using that political position to influence their spam filtering policies.
It would be a bit much for me to detail in this message, but I’ve uploaded to my website and will link below, two email chains I exchanged with Microsoft to stop them from junking my emails.
Even after this weekslong process, and even after they said that they had “implemented mitigation” they are still sending my emails to your junk mail folders.
As you can see, and as you’ll see in even greater detail below when I outline my problems with Google, there’s no justification for this.
What about Google?
What about Google, indeed.
They are not so easy to communicate with directly, so I have recently posted this message to their support forums. Below, I will show you exhaustive proof that what I said in this post is indisputably true.
Google provides a very helpful service called Postmaster Tools, not entirely dissimilar to that of Microsoft, for email service providers. Like I have done with Microsoft, I have signed up for this service.
Let’s see what Google has to say about my IP and Domain Reputations, regarding spam.
As you can see in the screenshot below, I operate a number of domains, all of which are registered and verified with Google. They know exactly who I am, and who is sending the emails from these and other domains further down the page outside of this screenshot.
Now, let’s look at the user reported spam rate for ChristopherCantwell.net, over the last 120 days.
This reached a peak of 1.5% in March of this year. Now, I consider this to be wholly unacceptable. When one sends thousands of emails and 1% of them are reported as spam, there is a problem that needs to be solved. I would not tolerate this on a routine basis from a user on my network.
But this happened immediately after I began sending newsletters, following three years in prison where I could not communicate with my subscribers. During those years I did not have access to my website, people entered their email addresses, but never received their confirmation emails. So I resent those confirmations when I got out of prison and got my email server back online. It is unsurprising that some number of those people either had malice in their hearts or forgot that they had signed up.
After this, you see the reports drop to zero or near zero.
Let’s take a closer look at the last 30 days.
Notably, it does not appear that Google offers a response lower than 0.6%. So, on near every email I send, there are zero reports. If anyone reports, the number jumps to 0.6%.
So, let’s take a look at how this impacts my IP address reputation.
Here you can see that, as I explained, once I started sending three year old confirmation messages, my reputation suffered, this is not unexpected. But you can see subsequent that my reputation immediately improves because the messages I am sending are not spam.
Though implied by the prior table, it is worth zooming in to the last 90 says, to see that my IP address reputation is 100% for this time period.
Now, let’s look specifically at the reputation of the ChristopherCantwell.net domain.
As expected, when I first began sending out confirmation letters, there is a reputation of “Medium” which I appropriately consider unacceptable, but it is by no means the mark of a spammer.
Immediately after this, my reputation is “High” which is to say, not generating spam complaints in any number Google considers problematic.
I mentioned earlier, several protocols which have been established to verify the authenticity of email senders. From the first messages I sent, you can see in the screenshot below, these have been 100% perfect, and have remained so throughout the duration.
And of course, if you know anything about me, it might go without saying that my emails are as secure as the protocol permits them to be.
Delivery error rates are another common indicator of spam, and in the screenshot below you can see that these have been 0% on all, days with the notable exception of a 0.1% error rate on April 17th.
For SurrealPolitiks.com, I’ll just share two screenshots, since they use the same mail server.
Here is the spam report rate for SurrealPolitiks.com over 120 days.
As you might expect from my earlier explanations, it is 0%. I only registered this domain subsequent to my release from prison, and it has only dealt with users who subscribed since then. So no users have forgotten about their signups and falsely reported spam as a consequence.
It might by now go without saying, that a domain with zero reported spam would have a high domain reputation, but I will share a screenshot to demonstrate this as well.
There is no question of the standard being applied.
It is, above all, worth noting, that even if a domain or IP address did not have such a stellar reputation as I, that GMail would happily deliver those messages directly to the inbox of subscribers. Spam filters are supposed to engage when a sender violates MULTIPLE anti-spam policies. If you use GMail, Hotmail, Outlook, or near any other email provider, spam has near certainly been delivered to your inbox, and most likely it has been delivered via far less reputable parties than those of your humble correspondent.
There is a reason that spam persists on the Internet, and it is because disreputable email makes it past spam filters all of the time. Whether it is phishing scams, or run of the mill product placement, spammers are if nothing else innovative, and they work tirelessly to profit from subverting the systems that make our communications possible
The Internet has rightly taken a collective stand against this, and we may applaud the efforts of honest actors who work day and night to prevent unsolicited advertisements from plaguing our daily lives.
But with all the vigor with which we stand against spam, we must likewise stand against political activism which abuses those systems. My political views are unpopular, to be sure, and I would not dare to suggest that 100% of my subscribers agree with my politics.
All I can say with certainty is that I have NEVER sent a promotional email to somebody who didn’t request one.
When you signed up for my mailing list, you were sent a confirmation message. To continue receiving my messages, you had to click a confirmation link.
If you changed your mind, you had only to click once, and you would never receive another email from me again.
In those rare instances where some lazy person preferred to report spam than to unsubscribe, and I was made aware of this, I click the unsubscribe link for them. They never got another message from me again, and therefore they never had an opportunity to make another false report. Unless of course, they signed up yet again, for that purpose, which I presume happens from time to time, but not nearly so frequently as one might expect, given how disreputable our enemies are.
But, fundamentally, this isn’t about me…
This is about you.
You signed up for my email list. You are the one who is being deprived of the thing you asked for. When I fight with these people, as I routinely do, I am protecting your right to receive the information you requested.
On social media, we have been told time and again that if we don’t like their content policies, that we should just start our own social networks. The old “learn to code bit” that has been the derisive means by which Democrats call their opponents stupid for far too long.
Well, as it turns out, we did start our own. We have started many, and each time they have had the slightest bit of success, they were attacked by the big tech companies like a “troubled teen” might attack an elderly woman in effort to deprive her of her purse.
But that, in truth, pales in comparison to their abuse of the spam filters. The whole entire point of email is that you choose what you get without these promotional and demotional gimmicks of the tech wizards and their depraved sick agendas.
Google has, for notably, launched a categorization system to move some emails to “Social” or “Promotional” for those emails less pertinent to a user’s daily life. Microsoft has the “Focused” inbox where they place their advertisements, which stands in some contrast to the place where they place all the political material they take issue with, the depths of the “other” inbox.
Even with these mechanisms in place, they are placing the emails YOUR REQUESTED in your SPAM folder, knowing, full well, as evidenced exhaustively by the data shown above, that my emails are NOT spam, and have NEVER BEEN spam.
If Google and Microsoft were honest actors, they could make a “Speech our Masters Disagree With Inbox” and divert your attentions toward the pornography and commercial advertisements they clearly prefer. Instead, they have categorically discarded these emails as spam, which is not just inaccurate, but transparently defamatory, and malicious.
For Google and Microsoft to say to you that my emails are spam, while telling me that they know they are not, is, or at least, ought to be, legally actionable defamation.
They are fortunate, and one doubts by mere chance, that their preferred ideology dominates the legal profession. They know, as well as anyone Right of Mitt Romney, that lawyers are not lining up around the block to represent oppressed political minorities, who stand for the rights and dignity of the only racial group in America not protected by our civil rights laws.
If they did this to a Black Lives Matter Group, or any kind of Jewish interest organization, they would find themselves on the business end of a very expensive lawsuit.
For people like you and me, they take full advantage of their outsized power against us, and commit what are in many jurisdictions outright criminal acts, and by the barest of standards, clear malicious defamation.
So, what can you do about it?
Glad you asked.
I actually don’t want you to stop using these systems. It would be far better that you continue to receive my emails, check your spam folder, and raise a complaint with your service provider every single time they maliciously hide my messages from you. Maybe, someday, they’ll get the hint. This has happened more than once.
If you sign up to receive my emails, and the emails aren’t delivered, you’ll be doing me a far favor greater by raising hell with your provider than anything I could hope to earn from a sales commission.
But, more to the point, you deserve, and in all seriousness, require, an honest and secure email provider.
I use ProtonMail. I pay for the premium level of service, and I consider it well worth twice what I pay for it.
ProtonMail doesn’t just deliver your email reliably, it handles your email securely.
The company that runs ProtonMail is based in Switzerland, and the Swiss, you may have heard, take privacy seriously. It used to be the case that a “Swiss Bank Account” was near cryptocurrency in its privacy protections. That all changed after 9/11, but it is still the case that you can get a Swiss Email Account that is not subject to American subpoena power.
ProtonMail stores your emails in such a fashion that the provider is incapable of turning over your messages in human readable format. They simply lack the technological capacity to comply. The whole entire point of the system is they do not have access to your messages, which stands in stark contrast to Microsoft and GMail, who consider your privacy a subject of some amusement.
I can tell you this from some experience. While I was under federal investigation, for crimes I WAS NEVER CHARGED WITH, the United States Government knowingly made demonstrably false claims about me to a federal court, and on the basis of these, demanded that Google hand over the following;
a. Subscriber/registration information to include name, emails, phone numbers, addresses, account creation dates, account status, registration IP address, means and source of payment (including any credit or bank account numbers);
b. Identifiers of associated devices (IMEI/MEID, serial number, SIM operator, cell operator, and model number, etc.), account identifiers, Android ID, Push Tokens
and/or Device Tokens, etc. associated with the Account(s);c. All IP Address logs for all services utilized by the Account(s), to include records of session times and durations, login/logout/intra-communication IP addresses associated with session times and date, methods of connecting, and log files;
d. Google Voice connection records to include voice calls, text messages, SMS/MMS, voicemails, etc.; IP logs; any call forwarding numbers and account backup telephone numbers; subscriber information; and billing information;
e. All Gmail address(es) associated with the identified Account(s) including any secondary or backup email addresses associated with the Accounts;
f. Web search history, including, but not limited to, mobile and desktop browser
searches;g. Downloaded, installed, and/or purchased apps along with activity/registration information for all associated devices;
h. Google Map locations which are saved and/or frequent locations, favorite and/or starred locations including, but not limited to, searches conducted using the Google Map and Waze services;
i. Google Hangouts connection records including, but not limited to, voice calls, video calls, text messages and/or chats, and voicemails; IP logs; any call forwarding numbers and account backup telephone numbers; subscriber information; and billing information;
j. Contacts stored using the service known as Google Contacts, including any contacts stored in the service known as Gmail, and any other service where contact lists are maintained;
k. Google Play Store transactions;
l. Records for associated YouTube accounts to include creation dates and IP logs; and
m. Additional accounts linked by cookies
ProtonMail got no such request. They could not have complied with it if they did.
If terrorists raided the ProtonMail offices, and held a gun to the wife of the ProtonMail CEO, and said “Give me his emails or I will kill your whole family” – a phenomenon hardly different from what the United States government did above – he would have no ability to comply with the request. The email is stored in a way that if you lose your own password, the password reset process causes you to lose access to your own stored emails.
When you communicate with other ProtonMail users, or users of other email systems configured to work with ProtonMail, your messages are sent “end to end encrypted”. End to End Encryption is the only truly secure manner in which to communicate.
When you log into GMail, for example, your communications with GMail are encrypted. But GMail can read your communications with others. Same thing with Microsoft.
When you log into ProtonMail, by contrast, necessarily if you are communicating with insecure email providers, ProtonMail cannot make those emails secure. But your emails with ProtonMail users and other secure email providers is simply beyond their grasp, and no matter who you communicate with, once your emails are stored in your inbox, they are beyond the reach of the ProtonMail company. They cannot read your emails, so they cannot turn them over to anyone else.
So, spam or no spam, this is a superior technology. It’s not even a close call.
Sign up today. It’s a no brainer.
There are limits on the free account. If you delete emails after you read them, you can use the account for free. If you’re like me, and you like to keep records, but you don’t want other people sifting through them behind your back, then the service is cheap enough. They also have a VPN service, encrypted data storage, a calendar service, you have a lot of options.
But, today, without undue delay, you should sign up for a ProtonMail email, and get the smartphone app, so that, at the very least, you’re not giving Democrat activists the chance to decide what messages you do and do not receive.
It’s free.
Stop wasting time, and just, do it.
Once you have a new responsible email provider, you’ll want to get back on my email list.
And, if you’re still on one of these criminal enterprises for whatever reason, you should still be on my email list, and every time they screw you over by junking the emails, you should raise hell with them about their malicious behavior.