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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It doesn't matter what you say

“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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The coming changes

Yesterday I talked about how I’m hearing warnings of a coming paradigm shift in the email industry. While these changes will affect all sender, ESPs in particular are going to need to change how they interact with both ISPs and their customers.
Currently, ESPs are able to act as “routine conveyers.” The traffic going across their network is generated by their customers and the ESP only handles technical issues. Responsible ESPs do enforce standards on their customers and expect mailings to meet certain targets. They monitor complaints and unknown users, they monitor blocks and reputation. If customers get out of line, then the ESP steps in and forces their customer to improve their practices. If the customer refuses, then the ESP disconnects them.
Currently standards for email are mostly dictated by the ISPs. Many ESPs take the stance that if any mail that is not blocked by the ISPs then it is acceptable. But just because a certain customer isn’t blocked doesn’t mean they’re sending mail that is wanted by the recipients.
It seems this reactive approach to customer policing may no longer be enough. In fact, one of the large spam filter providers has recently offered their customers the ability to block mail from all ESPs with a single click. This may become a more common response if the ESPs don’t start proactively policing their networks.
Why is this happening? ISPs and filtering companies are seeing increasing percentages of spam coming out of ESP netspace. Current processes for policing customers are extremely reactive and there are many ESPs that are allowing their customers to send measurable percentages of spam. This situation is untenable for the filtering companies or the ISPs and they’re sending out warnings that the ESPs need to stop letting so much spam leave their networks.
Unsurprisingly, there are many members of the ESP community that don’t like this and think the ISPs are overreacting and being overly mean. They do not think the ISPs or filtering companies should be blocking all an ESPs customers just because some of the customers are sending unwanted mail. Paraphrased, some of the things I’ve heard include:

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Engagement based delivery makes testing tricky

Yesterday I wrote about how important recipients are to achieving good delivery. The short version of yesterday’s post is that delivery is all about engagement, and how the ISPs were really focusing on engagement and proving custom user experiences.
This is great, for the user. Take the common example where a commercial list has some highly engaged recipients and a bunch of recipients that can take or leave the mail. The ISP delivers the newsletter into the inbox of the highly engaged recipients and leaves it in the bulk folder of less engaged recipients.
With user focused delivery people get the mail they are interested in where they can read it and interact it. People who have demonstrated a lack of interest for a topic or a sender don’t see that mail.
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I have to wonder, too, where this leaves delivery monitoring services in the future. If delivery is personalized, how can you know that the delivery monitoring addresses are representative any longer? Is there even a “representative” mailbox any longer?

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