ArchiveSeptember 2016

Ask Laura: Should we allow tagged addresses?

Hi Laura, First of all, I’d like to thank you for the amazing blog. It helps me a lot and I have much fun to read it. Now I have a question to the google alias addresses. As you must have known, Google offers alias addresses and you can put any thing between the local part and @gmail.com with a “+” sign What do you think, what should the onlineshops deal with such address for...

Vague reports of Yahoo problems

A number of people, on different forums, have been asking if anyone is seeing a higher bounce rate than usual with Yahoo. Not sure exactly what’s going on here. As I understand it, folks are talking with Yahoo about it. If I hear anything more, I’ll share. For now, though, if you’re seeing a small increase in Yahoo bounces (or other weirdnesses) others are seeing something odd...

Censorship and free speech online

One of the things I discovered yesterday while looking at Krebs on Security was that Google Alphabet has a program to provide hosting and dDOS protection for journalists.  Project Shield, as it’s called, is a free service for approved applicants that keeps up websites that might be taken down otherwise. Eligible organizations include those providing news, information on human rights and...

The Cyber and The Security

Cybersecurity has been on my mind lately. There is a lot of bad stuff going on, from giant dDOS attacks, to subscription bombing, to the ongoing low level harassment that some people have to deal with on a daily basis. I’ve written a lot about how I think marketers are going to have to step up and stop being a conduit for abuse. I do believe this. There are a lot of different issues to...

iOS List Unsubscribe Functionality

Al did a great post over on Spamresource about the how the new list unsubscribe function in the default mail client from iOS10. What’s been interesting to me is how much I’m hearing from ESP folks about how their customers want it gone. If you don’t know what we’re talking about, in the default mail client on iOS10, Apple is now offering a way to unsubscribe from list mail...

Global Suppression Lists

Global Suppression List. Pander File. Screamers List. Whatever you call it, it’s the list of email addresses you suppress from every mailing. If you’re an ESP, this is the list of people who you never, ever want to send email to – and I’m talking about ESP-wide global suppression lists here, not the suppression lists maintained per-customer. Global suppression lists are a...

Security issues affect us all

I’ve been talking about security more on the blog. A lot of that is because the security issues are directly affecting many senders. The biggest effect recently has been on companies ending up on the SBL because their signup forms were the target of a subscription attack. But there are other things affecting online spaces that are security related. Right now not much of it is affecting...

Use the form…

A lot of senders get frustrated with the time it can take to get a response from some ISPs. It’s totally understandable, for a lot of companies delivery problems are all hands on deck level problems. They want them fixed and they want them fixed IMMEDIATELY. They want feedback that their issue is being addressed. They want to know someone at the ISP knows there is a problem. I’ve...

Upcoming events

Next month I’ll be in London for the Email Innovations Summit. This will be an updated version of what you need to know to talk with technical folks. In early December I’ll be doing a DMA webinar discussing the subscription bombings. That’s still in the works. I’m looking at some events for next year. I am planning on being at M3AAWG in San Francisco in February. I’m...

Ongoing subscription form abuse

Last week Spamhaus posted information on the ongoing subscription attacks. They provided a more information about them that was not make public previously, including some information about the volume of mail some targets received. Today SendGrid also blogged about this, going into a little more detail about why senders should care about this. They also provided a number of suggestions for how to...

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