Spamhaus rising?

Ken has a good article talking about how many ESPs have tightened their standards recently and are really hounding their customers to stop sending mail recipients don’t want and don’t like. Ken credits much of this change to Spamhaus and their new tools.

Is their increased vigilance pissing you off? If so, your anger is misplaced. They are reacting quite sensibly to market conditions apparently imposed by Spamhaus. Ken Magill

While I agree with Ken that the ESPs are reacting to market conditions. Where we disagree is the idea that these conditions are imposed by Spamhaus. I don’t think all the uptick in ESP enforcement and compliance activity is the result of Spamhaus’ actions. I believe that many of the mass market ISPs are changing how they detect unwanted mail, and are fine tuning filters to reduce the amount of unwanted mail that shows up in the inbox.

One of the big changes is better tools for handling huge data sets. Bigger ISPs handle billions of messages a week. Even just collecting and storing the mail is a giant task. Storing it in a useable form was almost out of the question. But over the last few years there have been significant improvements in the speed and affordability of hardware to handle very, very large datasets. Likewise, there have been algorithm and software improvements in mining that data for useful correlations.

In practical terms, ISPs and filtering companies like Spamhaus don’t have to focus on complaints or trap hits or “simple” measurements. They can draw complex correlations and look at mail in a way that was simply impossible 2 or 3 years ago. This means they can better identify senders who had previously been able to slide in under the filters.

Spamhaus rolled out tools to monitor their spam feeds in a different way and have been listing a lot more “legitimate” senders because of it. ISPs are rolling out tools to better filter “greymail” and keep users inboxes full of mail that the users actually want.

One of the trends I’m noticing is that direct marketers are getting more aggressive. Whether it’s a response to the years of recession or a response to the slowly warming economy, I can’t tell. But there are a lot of direct marketers who are no longer afraid to break the law. For instance, my cell phone is getting multiple telemarketing calls a week, despite being a cell and despite being on the do not call list. My inbox is full of unsolicited email carefully engineered to get past standard filters, much of which violates CAN SPAM. I’m even getting the occasional unsolicited fax.

The increase in listings by Spamhaus are one example of the filtering screws being tightened. But it’s not just Spamhaus that’s driving this; ISPs and filtering companies are also filtering more aggressively. I’m seeing a lot more emphasis being placed on content and a good IP reputation is no longer a ticket to the inbox. Content must be clean and recipients have to want mail for it to get into the inbox.

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Legitimate mail in spamfilters

It can be difficult and frustrating for a sender to understand they whys and wherefores of spam filtering. Clearly the sender is not spamming, so why is their mail getting caught in spam filters?
I have a client that goes through this frustration on rare occasions. They send well crafted, fun, engaging content that their users really want. They have a solid reputation at the ISPs and their inbox stats are always above 98%. Very, very occasionally, though, they will see some filtering difficulties at Postini. It’s sad for all of us because Postini doesn’t tell us enough about what they’re doing to understand what my client is doing to trigger the filters. They get frustrated because they don’t know what’s going wrong; I get frustrated because I can’t really help them, and I’m sure their recipients are frustrated because they don’t get their wanted mail.
Why do a lot of filter vendors not communicate back to listees? Because not all senders are like my clients. Some senders send mail that recipients can take or leave. If the newsletter shows up in their inbox they may read it. If the ad gets in front of their face, they may click through. But, if the mail doesn’t show up, they don’t care. They certainly aren’t going to look for the mail in their bulk folder. Other senders send mail that users really don’t want. It is, flat out, spam.
The thing is, all these senders describe themselves as legitimate email marketers. They harvest addresses, they purchase lists, they send mail to spamtraps, and they still don’t describe themselves as spammers. Some of them have even ended up in court for violating various anti-spam laws and they still claim they’re not spammers.
Senders are competing with spammers for bandwidth and resources at the ISPs, they’re competing for postmaster attention at the ISPs and they’re competing for eyeballs in crowded inboxes.
It’s the sheer volume of spam and the crafty evilness of spammers that drives the constant change and improvement in spamfilters. It’s tough to keep up with the spamfilters because they’re trying to keep up with the spammers. And the spammers are continually looking for new ways to exploit recipients.
It can be a challenge to send relevant, engaging email while dealing with spamfilters and ISPs. But that’s what makes this job so much fun.

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“What should we tell the ISP?” is a frequent question from my customers. The answer is pretty simple. It doesn’t usually matter what you tell the ISP. What matters are your actions.
If a sender is having delivery problems then the solution is not to call the ISP and talk to them about why the sender’s mail should not be delivered to the bulk folder. Instead, the solution is to evaluate the email and the address acquisition process and the list hygiene process. Identify where potential problems are and then resolve those problems.
Typically, the ISPs won’t need to be contacted. The changes to the email will register and delivery will improve. In some cases, particularly when there’s been some major mistake, contacting the ISP and explaining the mistake and what steps have been taken to stop the mistake from happening in the future may help resolve the issue faster. But if nothing has changed, then there’s no reason for the ISP to expect anything to change.
It doesn’t matter what you say. It matters what you do.

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