ArchiveFebruary 2008

February 28, 2008

Roadrunner turns images off by default

By laura
1 Min read
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28February

Earlier this week DirectMag published an article talking about RoadRunner blocking images by default. I did talk to someone over at RoadRunner and found out a few more details about this change. What is happening is that RR is rolling out a new web interface. This interface has both a bulk/spam filter and has images disabled by default. I do not expect sender to notice this change in the open...

February 27, 2008

Yahoo delays, part 3: Yahoo speaks

By laura
2 Min read
5 comments
27February

Yahoo is aware of the recent problems and have been working feverishly to fix them. A Yahoo employee posted to a mailing list earlier today, explaining some of the recent issues. The summary is: 1) The Yahoo delays are a result of a tighter spam filtering policy. The delays are the result of the system erroneously recognizing email as spam and deferring delivery. They do believe that retrying...

February 26, 2008

Yahoo delays, part 2

By laura
2 Min read
2 comments
26February

A number of people have posted to various mailing lists and made blog posts pointing to the Yahoo Mail blog post discussing recent problems Yahoo was having with mail. The general feeling seemed to be “AHA! That’s what is wrong!” Unlike many of my peers, I do not think this explains the delivery problems senders have been seeing while attempting to deliver mail to Yahoo. The...

February 20, 2008

Yahoo delays

By laura
1 Min read
10 comments
20February

You may have noticed increase in delays and rejections from Yahoo. I am certainly seeing a lot of customers complaining and hearing a lot of other delivery people commenting on problems getting mail into Yahoo. I have even heard from multiple ISPs that are struggling with full queues and delayed email. No solutions or suggestions right now, just that everyone is having problems right now. I...

February 20, 2008

Ironport response

By laura
2 Min read
1 comment

Last week I posted about a ESP that had a misconfiguration in their Ironport A60s that let spammers use the A60s to relay email to AOL. Earlier this week, Pat Peterson from Ironport approached me to talk about the problem and clarify what happened. Ironport has provided me with the following explanation. As part of a normal implementation a customer has a number of options they can choose from to...

February 19, 2008

How to be a spammer

By laura
3 Min read
2 comments
19February

JD had a comment on my Valentines day semi-fluff post, that really summed up the reality for senders. He said Make sure your mail doesn’t look anything like spam — not just in the text and formatting, but in all of your mailing practices. Good advice, your mail will not be blocked if it does not look like spam. What kinds of things do I mean? Here are things that spammers do, that often non...

February 14, 2008

Valentine's day semi-fluff

By laura
1 Min read
3 comments
14February

There comes an inevitable point in some of my longer term consulting gigs where my client asks me some version of the following question:
I still get spam in my inbox, so why is the email I send blocked?
So what is your best answer?

February 12, 2008

Articles I read today

By laura
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12February

It has been a rather busy day today, I do not have a full blog post. I did see a couple posts come across my RSS feeds. Both of them have content I want to talk about and discuss in a little more detail, as I think they touched on some very interesting issues. Network World has an article interviewing Mark Risher from Yahoo. The article discusses Yahoo’s use of DomainKeys as part of their...

February 11, 2008

ESP unwittingly used to send spam

By laura
3 Min read
3 comments
11February

Late last week I heard from someone at AOL they were seeing strange traffic from a major ESP, that looked like the ESP was an open relay. This morning I received an email from AOL detailing what happened as relayed by the ESP. IronPort Open Relay Vulnerability Systems Affected IronPort A60 running software version 2.5.4-005. According to IronPort, later devices and software versions using the...

February 7, 2008

Email authentication

By laura
1 Min read
3 comments
07February

The great folks over at MailChimp have compiled a list of which authentication methods (DK, DKIM, SPF and SenderID) are in use at which ISPs.
Good stuff and very clear showing who is using what authentication.

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