Email system provision is unregulated in the UK.

vofs007

Trinitrotoluene wrote: »

Can you explain how this will work, technically. Don't say "something can be worked out", because it can't unless the fundamental structure of e-mail changes globally.

Keeping it simple it could work as follows:

1. This would be a service provided by Regulated UK Email providers. Probably a UK based ISP.
2. You would get an email fred@ispA.net or similar
3. The service provider that owned ispA.net would be obliged to maintain that email address.
4. You wish to move to another ISP say ispB and retain your email address.
5. As part of the MAC process (or similar) ispA would be obliged to
to register that your emails would be forwarded to ispB.
6. If you moved to ispC, ispA would again be required to forward to ispC. There would be no need to go ispA to ispB to ispC.
Note that A, B, and C would have to be UK regulated.

7. Sending emails would be less complicated and I am sure you should be able to work that out for yourself.

8. Confining it (initially) to the UK would not need global structural email changes.

9. Note that this is not an essential feature of a regulated email regime but is given as a possible consumer friendly benefit.

If you read some of the posts above a similar mechanism is described.

wealdroam

Only four days before that petition closes.

Not one person has signed it in the last month.

Are you still hopeful that another 99,976 will sign it?

Good luck.

System

vofs007 wrote: »

Keeping it simple it could work as follows:

1. This would be a service provided by Regulated UK Email providers. Probably a UK based ISP.
2. You would get an email [EMAIL="fred@ispA.net"]fred@ispA.net[/EMAIL] or similar
3. The service provider that owned ispA.net would be obliged to maintain that email address.
4. You wish to move to another ISP say ispB and retain your email address.
5. As part of the MAC process (or similar) ispA would be obliged to
to register that your emails would be forwarded to ispB.
6. If you moved to ispC, ispA would again be required to forward to ispC. There would be no need to go ispA to ispB to ispC.
Note that A, B, and C would have to be UK regulated.

7. Sending emails would be less complicated and I am sure you should be able to work that out for yourself.

8. Confining it (initially) to the UK would not need global structural email changes.

9. Note that this is not an essential feature of a regulated email regime but is given as a possible consumer friendly benefit.

If you read some of the posts above a similar mechanism is described.

How would ISP B know to accept emails for fred@ispa? One of the very first checks that a mail server does is that the recipient domain is valid I.E. ispb.com. If they have to check every single incoming recipient against every different domain now hosted on that server it would quickly bring the system to it's knees and that is before they start checking that the recipient account is hosted at that ISP

Nilrem

!!!!!! wrote: »

How would ISP B know to accept emails for fred@ispa? One of the very first checks that a mail server does is that the recipient domain is valid I.E. ispb.com. If they have to check every single incoming recipient against every different domain now hosted on that server it would quickly bring the system to it's knees and that is before they start checking that the recipient account is hosted at that ISP

It would also kill the current DNS system deader than a dodo.

As emails would have to have some form of central directory that would be massively more complicated (and liable to failure) than the current DNS setup to cope with forwarding the emails to the now correct ISP or host.
Either that or they would have to be relayed from every ISP you've ever used until it reaches your current one - how many ISP's have gone bust in the UK in the last 10 years again?:) (I'm not even going to consider the ones that have changed hands and names).

It's massively more complex to do than a telephone number, and there are enough problems with a very simple by comparison 11-14 digit purely numerical system when it comes to changing the provider of your phone (the phone and mobile sections have fairly regular threads about a telecoms company failing to port a mobile number or land line to a new provider).

Besides anything else telephone numbers tend to be about one per person, with a nice, easy to deal with, billable user at the end of every number.
Email addresses are currently given away free by most providers, or you get a bunch of them with your internet account which means that potentially you end up with rather than one customer account linked to say 5 address at one billing/contact address, with 5 accounts and 5 billing/contact addresses*.

I can see it being "fun" and "interesting" (as in the old proverb), to deal with, with the far greater chances of something going wrong and you not receiving your email, and the opportunities it would give spammers who would no doubt love to be able to forward their spam that much easier.



*It would also kill off any chance for home users to run their own email systems, especially if they gave friends dedicated addresses on their system (I can imagine the paperwork I would probably have to do, given I have about 20-30 email aliases on my server feeding into about 10 actual addresses - different aliases for different purposes/shops/type of shop).

securityguy

!!!!!! wrote: »

How would ISP B know to accept emails for fred@ispa? One of the very first checks that a mail server does is that the recipient domain is valid I.E. ispb.com. If they have to check every single incoming recipient against every different domain now hosted on that server it would quickly bring the system to it's knees and that is before they start checking that the recipient account is hosted at that ISP

No it wouldn't. "Virtual Domain" support has been in Cyrus for about ten years, in Sendmail for at least long, Postfix since its early days, and so on. Every domain vendor is doing it: when people say "just get your own domain", how do you think the registrars handle the forwarding of "user@vanity.dom.ain" to "mr.vanity@gmail.com"?

All it requires is that when you do the initial lookup of the recipient in your local user database, you index on the whole contents of the RCPT TO:, rather than just the lpart. The changes to the typical mailer to support it are a few tens of lines, and it has no effect whatsoever on performance.

As I said pages ago, there are multiple reasons why the bloke's proposal is absurd. But stop making up technical non-reasons why it can't be done, because it can.

System

Virtual domains are normally hosted at 1 MX though, where [EMAIL="fred@ispa.com"]fred@ispa.com[/EMAIL] is on the same server as [EMAIL="freda@ispa.com"]freda@ispa.com[/EMAIL], not scattered across multiple, unconnected servers. Unconnected in this scenario meaning not in the same MX/cluster/Provider

That is the point. You would no longer have to look up the domain to check hosting and reject if not found but have to use the complete email address. That is adding quite an overhead.
You are no longer talking about virtual domains but really getting into the nitty gritty of virtual email addresses where [EMAIL="fred@ispa.com"]fred@ispa.com[/EMAIL] is not hosted on the same server as [EMAIL="freda@ispa.coV"]freda@ispa.com.[/EMAIL] This means that EVERY mail connection needs to be checked to a greater depth with the inherent overhead in time, server load etc

vofs007

tronator wrote: »

I think nobody knows what is being proposed, apart from maybe 24 people

I am interested to know what you think is unclear about the petition.
I reproduce it below:
"
Ofcom currently have no powers to regulate e-mail systems with the result that ISPs and Communications arbritration services have no regulations to meet or responsibility to protect consumers. The government should recognise the importance of email as a communication system and change the 2003 Communications Act to require Ofcom to regulate e-mail system provision."

Do not be confused by some of the technical discussions above that are making speculative assumptions about what regulation may entail. This issue is primarily about consumer protection about which this forum is mainly concerned.

You may also like to look at
http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/news/shopping/2014/03/how-should-consumer-complaints-be-handled-the-government-wants-to-know

securityguy

!!!!!! wrote: »

Virtual domains are normally hosted at 1 MX though, where [EMAIL="fred@ispa.com"]fred@ispa.com[/EMAIL] is on the same server as [EMAIL="freda@ispa.com"]freda@ispa.com[/EMAIL], not scattered across multiple, unconnected servers. Unconnected in this scenario meaning not in the same MX/cluster/Provider

That is the point. You would no longer have to look up the domain to check hosting and reject if not found but have to use the complete email address. That is adding quite an overhead.
[/quite]

Scenario one: looking up the left hand side of the @ sign in a database and routing mail accordingly (like, say, a university does to route user@whatever.ac.uk to iota various departments, or a multi-national does to route user@company.com to individual countries).

Scenario two: looking up the whole email address.

Are you seriously saying that in 2014 database performance is dependent on whether the key is ten or twenty characters long?

You are no longer talking about virtual domains but really getting into the nitty gritty of virtual email addresses where [EMAIL="fred@ispa.com"]fred@ispa.com[/EMAIL] is not hosted on the same server as [EMAIL="freda@ispa.coV"]freda@ispa.com.[/EMAIL] This means that EVERY mail connection needs to be checked to a greater depth with the inherent overhead in time, server load etc

What greater depth? Assume I've run large-scale email services for a living for thirty years, and be as technical as you like. Explain why virtual domains affect performance. The vast majority of virtual domain customers are hosted remotely from the MX, so it's precisely the same scenario at Namesco. I simply don't understand this "checked to a greater depth" thing you're inventing. Yes, actually building the database of [email]user@ispx.com->user@ispy.com[/email] is a massive task, but you're claiming that the lookup into the Aliases map is a major cost. It just isn't: you look at the RCPT TO:<> tag and look it up in a database. The number of entries, and their size, are irrelevant.

tronator

vofs007 wrote: »

I am interested to know what you think is unclear about the petition.
I reproduce it below:
"
Ofcom currently have no powers to regulate e-mail systems with the result that ISPs and Communications arbritration services have no regulations to meet or responsibility to protect consumers. The government should recognise the importance of email as a communication system and change the 2003 Communications Act to require Ofcom to regulate e-mail system provision."

Do not be confused by some of the technical discussions above that are making speculative assumptions about what regulation may entail. This issue is primarily about consumer protection about which this forum is mainly concerned.

That's the point, everybody has to speculate what you mean in your petition. There's no single word about what aspect of emails you want to be regulated.

Keeping an email address of a domain you don't own for life is nonsense and doesn't need to be regulated.

Imagine there is a gym in the apartment block you live in and you're free to use it for as long as you live there. Do you still expect to use it after you moved out? And do you also expect Royal Mail to forward all your emails forever?

If you want an email address for life, get your own domain and host it with the email provider of your choice. There's nothing which needs to be regulated. Everything works perfectly as is...

debitcardmayhem

Oh dear, is this pointless thread still on-going. My email is hosted somewhere in Europe, I pay to use it to a company in the Cayman Islands, which as far as I can tell is owned by someone in New Zealand and the spam I get is from .ru .ro .co.ck etc domains,what can offtheirheads (aka) ofcom can do ....answer on the back of the fag packet or check their expenses when they travel to various countries to ask them to sign up to a global agreement on regulation, but not global warming or talking out of their donkey cross-breeds. please please move this thread to the moneysavers arms, we may get some pictures to go with it.:money: