ArchiveJanuary 2013

Mini Cooper and their email oops

I haven’t been able to track down any information about what happened, but it seems MINI USA had a major oops in their email marketing recently. So much so that they’re sending out apologies by snail mail. Pictures of the apology package appeared on Reddit earlier this week, and include a chocolate rose, some duct tape and a SPAM can stress reliever. It’s a great example of a...

8 things that make your mail look like spam

In the comments of last week’s Wednesday question John B. asked Can you elaborate on specifics of “configure machines to not look like spam ware”? There are a lot of things that spamware does that is different from a lot of standard MTAs. Here are a list of things that may make your mail look like it is running spamware to a receiving server. Using weird values for HELO/EHLO, like a bare IP...

New player in the DMARC space

Over on the DMARC-Discuss list, Comcast announced they had turned on DMARC validation and companies that publish DMARC records should start receiving reports from Comcast.

A Spam Blast from the Past

A couple of days ago an ex-employee of Opt-In Inc., was kind enough to do a Reddit AMA answering questions about their experience working with Steve Hardigree in the “legitimate” email marketing industry, back in the early 2000s. The whole thing is worth a read, but I thought I’d share some of his more interesting answers here. Everyone knows everyone The spam business was super...

Address leak leads to phishing

A number of people in the industry are reporting getting phishing emails to addresses they used at DocuSign. There were initial reports of a DocuSign data breach back in December. Now it appears DocuSign is being used as a phishing target. At 8:40AM PST this morning, 1/24/2013, DocuSign became aware of new malware spam emails that are being sent as if it was coming from the DocuSign service. An...

How difficult is it to get on whitelists?

Today’s question comes from Leslie J. Just how difficult is it for a small business that runs a highly compliant mailing system to find their way onto whitelists at the big freemail/spam filter providers? It seems utterly impossible meaning man hours are completely wasted messing around with subjects and content when if the same business sends the very same message through any number of...

Email verification – what are we verifying

One of the ongoing discussions in the email space is the one about address verification. Multiple companies have sprung up to do “real time” email address verification. They ensure that addresses collected at the point of sale are valid. But what does valid mean? In most of these contexts, valid means that the addresses don’t bounce and aren’t spam traps. And that is one...

Another one bites the dust

NASK (the Polish domain registry) has taken over a number of domain names used in spreading viruses and infections. The domain names were used to spread and control dangerous malware known as “Virut” . NASK’s actions are aimed at protecting Internet users from threats that involved the botnet built with Virut-infected machines, such as DDoS attacks, spam and data theft. The scale of the...

Does CAN SPAM require multiple opt-outs on emails?

Today’s Wednesday question comes from M. B. My company sometimes sends mail to our list on behalf of 3rd parties. A recent 3rd party told us that CAN SPAM requires the email contain their opt-out link as well as ours. Is this correct?” The FTC’s most recent rulemaking says specifically that this sort of multiple opt-out is confusing for the consumer and the only company that...

Looking for questions

After a brief hiatus, I’d like to bring back the Wednesday question series. I have a few questions from before the hiatus that I’ll be answering over the next few weeks. But I’d like a few more to answer.
So bring on your questions. Send them to me at Jan15@contact.wordtothewise.com, tweet them to me @wise_laura or drop them here in the comments.
 

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