[anti-abuse-wg] When email verification behavior is abusive

On Wed, 18 Jul 2018 12:45:35 +0100
Richard Clayton <richard at highwayman.com> wrote:
> In message <3C775DA1-20AE-441E-B30E-38243F420D24 at blacknight.com>,
> Michele Neylon - Blacknight <michele at blacknight.com> writes
> 
> >What's any of this got to do with RIPE and this WG?  
> 
> the issue of mail bombing ... people getting 20K+ emails in their
> mailbox, each of which is individually quite acceptable is something
> which the industry has been struggling with for well over a year
> 

and so this still begs the question - what is the arbitrary number?
20k? or 20k+ and over what time?

The first thing to understand is if it is abuse at all. 

It seems as if both Richard and Michele agree and do not think that the
arbitrary number of 5 verification emails in ten minutes to a victim email
address, is abuse or abusive behavior.

If in fact this is the case and the general consensus is that sending
500 verify your email address emails to a victim mailbox in ten minutes
is not abuse, and the average person would only think it is abuse if
they receive over 20 000 emails per day, then I guess I am wrong and I
need to think about that, as in my opinion anything past 3 verify emails
in 24 hours is abusive...

Still it would be interesting to know if this is actually the case. If
nothing under 20 000 "verify your email address" emails per day from
the same IP number / resource is not abuse - Then it would be good to
know that the members of this abuse WG think that I am silly with my
daily limit of three.

My clients do consider more than three 'verify your email address' emails 
from the same service, as spam and abuse...

So if I am wrong, then there is also a big disconnect between what this
list thinks and what the real world thinks...

Andre