Archive2010

GFI/SORBS – should I use them?

Act 1 • Act 2 • Intermezzo • Act 3 • Act 4 • Act 5 Management Summary, Redistributable Documents and Links In the past week we’ve demonstrated that the SORBS reputation data is riddled with mistakes, poor practices, security holes and operational problems, and that the quality of the end result is really too poor to be useful. Today I’m looking at how this information should affect...

GFI/SORBS – I'm blacklisted, now what?

Act 1 • Act 2 • Intermezzo • Act 3 • Act 4 • Act 5 Management Summary, Redistributable Documents and Links In the past week we’ve demonstrated that the SORBS reputation data is riddled with mistakes, poor practices, security holes and operational problems, and that the quality of the end result is really too poor to be useful. What does this mean to you though? There are really two aspects:...

GFI/SORBS considered harmful, part 3

Act 1 • Act 2 • Intermezzo • Act 3 • Act 4 • Act 5 Management Summary, Redistributable Documents and Links In the last few days we’ve talked about GFI’s lack of responsiveness, the poor quality of their reputation and blacklist data, and the interesting details of their DDoS claims. Today we’re going to look at (some of) the fundamental problems with GFI’s procedures and...

GFI/SORBS – a DDoS Intermezzo

Act 1 • Act 2 • Intermezzo • Act 3 • Act 4 • Act 5 Management Summary, Redistributable Documents and Links I’ve been stage-managing for a production of The Nutcracker this week, so musical terminology is on my mind. In opera, the intermezzo is a comedic interlude between acts of an opera series. This comedic interlude is about the “DDoS” – a distributed denial of service...

GFI/SORBS considered harmful, part 2

Act 1 • Act 2 • Intermezzo • Act 3 • Act 4 • Act 5 Management Summary, Redistributable Documents and Links Yesterday I talked about GFI responsiveness to queries and delisting requests about SORBS listings. Today I’m going to look at data accuracy. The two issues are tightly intertwined – a blacklist that isn’t responsive to reports of false positive listings will end up with a...

GFI/SORBS considered harmful

Act 1 • Act 2 • Intermezzo • Act 3 • Act 4 • Act 5 Management Summary, Redistributable Documents and Links A little over a year ago the SORBS blacklist was purchased by GFI Software. I had fairly high hopes that it would improve significantly, start behaving with some level of professionalism and competence and become a useful data source, in much the same way that the SpamCop blacklist turned...

Preferences pages

As often as I talk about how badly companies send mail, I think it’s always a good idea to highlight when I find companies doing good things. Today’s example of a company making me happy is Sur la Table. I’ve been on their mailing list for quite a while and do enjoy the offers and information they send. With the advent of the holiday cooking season, though, they’ve...

Email attacks

Ken has an article up today about the ongoing attacks against ESPs and email marketers. In it he says: Someone in permission-based email marketing should have sounded the alarm about the wedding-photo attacks months before Blumberg did. The attacks were being talked about on at least 2 different private lists. One made up primarily of email marketers and most of them didn’t seem to take it...

Happy Thanksgiving

I’m still catching up from being out last week, so no blog post today. I do, however, have tart to share. Mostly. Sorta. We ate it all.

ESPs being targeted

There has been an ongoing, concerted attack against ESPs recently. Today ReturnPath published some of what is known about the attack. This is an organized, deliberate, and destructive attack clearly intent on gaining access to industry-grade email deployment systems. Further, the potential consequences should ESP client mailing lists be compromised at this time of the year is unimaginable. If you...

Recent Posts

Archives

Follow Us