Archive2017

Authentication is about Identity, not Virtue

I just got some mail claiming to be from “Bank of America <secure@bofasecure.com>”. It passes SPF: Received-SPF: Pass (sender SPF authorized) identity=mailfrom; client-ip=185.235.176.160; helo=bofasecure.com; It passes DKIM: Authentication-Results: mx.wordtothewise.com (amavisd-new); dkim=pass (1024-bit key) header.d=bofasecure.com The visible RFC 822 From address is strictly...

Organizational Domain

We often want to know whether two hostnames are controlled by the same person, or not. One case for that is cookie privacy in web browsers. We want pages at www.blighty.com and images.blighty.com and blighty.com to all be able to set and read cookies for each other – so a user only needs to log in once for pages or images on all of them to work well together.  So we allow all of them to...

November 2017: The Month in Email

We’re in the thick of the busiest time of the year for email. It’s been so busy, in fact, that we’ve seen some slowdowns and delivery issues across the email universe. It may be worth thinking about alternate strategies for end of year promotions beyond Black Friday and Cyber Monday. I was delighted to chat with Julia Angwin for her ProPublica piece on subscription bombing and abuse prevention...

Email Marketing Trends from Freshmail

[#INFOGRAPHIC] Email marketing trends 2018

It’s always an honor to be asked to provide quotes and thoughts with experts in the field. Sometimes the day to day gives me tunnel vision, but things like this give me the opportunity to think more globally. Hands down, though, the best part is seeing the final product and hearing what other folks have to say.
Go check out the full infographic.

About that DMARC "exploit"

A security researcher has identified a rendering flaw that allows for “perfect” phishing emails. From his website: Mailsploit is a collection of bugs in email clients that allow effective sender spoofing and code injection attacks. The spoofing is not detected by Mail Transfer Agents (MTA) aka email servers, therefore circumventing spoofing protection mechanisms such as DMARC...

Deliverability is critical for marketing

It is increasingly clear that successful email marketing programs measure and emphasize deliverability. No longer is deliverability the crisis management team called when everything breaks. They’re part and parcel of an effective email marketing team. Today I watched a bit of the EIS livestream where acquisition marketers were discussing their processes. Everyone of them talked about things...

Microsoft MXs changed over

Today on MailOp it was announced that the migration of Microsoft freemail domains to the office 365 backend. Over the next week the mx*.hotmail.com mail servers will stop working. Check your settings, folks, and make sure you’re correctly querying DNS before sending.

Vodafone New Zealand: sorta shutting down

Vodafone NZ is shutting down mail handling for the following domains as of today, Nov 30, 2017. clear.net.nz es.co.nz ihug.co.nz paradise.net.nz pcconnect.co.nz quik.co.nz vodafone.co.nz vodafone.net.nz wave.co.nz According to their website, this is primarily  due to an elderly platform that’s not meeting the needs of their users, including long mail delays and too much spam. The FAQ they...

Not fooling anyone…

A question came up on the Women of Email Facebook page about sending cold B2B emails. This is one of those areas I have strong opinions about, mostly because I am so tired of getting deceptive and unending messages from folks. Realistically, cold emailing isn’t going to stop just because recipients hate receiving it. We haven’t wiped out spam in 20+ years, we’re not going to...

It's not a technical problem

You can’t technical your way out of the bulk folder. I wrote that a year and a half ago, and it’s even more true today. Filters at the big webmail providers continue to evolve to meet new threats and new spamming techniques. Sending technically perfect mail won’t get your mail into the inbox. Recipients have to want the mail and interact with the mail for good delivery.
 

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