Links for 1/7

Chris K. at Bronto blogs about in-store address collection and delivery issues. Chris is right, the Spamhaus issue isn’t going away any time soon. And companies collecting addresses in store / at point of sale really need to figure out how to make sure that their data capture is accurate. That means addressing everything from customers giving the wrong address to typos and other transcription errors.
Gene M. at Forbes asks Is Constant Contact the Best E-Mail Marketing Service?. I’m not sure Constant Contact is the best, but it’s nice to see that some people do realize that the occasional compliance incident just means that the ISP is actually monitoring things.
Matt B from Return Path posts his predictions for the new year. While I don’t always do predictions, I agree with all of his.
The Next Web says that Yahoo users are being compromised by an XSS exploit. I have noticed a lot more virus from Yahoo users over the last 2 days, including one person who said their account was broken into while she was on the ski slopes. It may not be exactly an XSS hack, but something is broken at Yahoo and the spammers seem to be somehow getting around Yahoo’s outbound filters.

Canada publishes updated proposed regulations for CASL
More on the Yahoo exploit

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Motion to dismiss in Penkava v. Yahoo case

Earlier this month Yahoo filed a motion to dismiss in the Penkava v. Yahoo. This is the class action lawsuit where an Alabama resident is attempting to sue Yahoo for violation of the California wiretapping law.
Here’s the short synopsis.
People send mail to Yahoo. Yahoo “creeps and peeps” on that mail so they can profit from it. Plaintiff doesn’t like this, and thinks that he can use the California Invasion of Privacy Act (“CIPA”), (Cal. Penal Code § 630, et seq;) to stop Yahoo from doing this. Additionally, there is a whole class of people who live in every state but California who have also been harmed by Yahoo’s actions. The plaintiff would like the court to make Yahoo stop doing this. (First Amended Complaint)
Yahoo’s motion to dismiss is actually pretty dry and there aren’t really any zinger pull quotes that make sense without reading the whole 35 pages. The short version is that what Yahoo is doing is not a violation of California law, it is simply handling email as it has to be done to get it to recipients. Plus, California law cannot apply to mail sent from a non-CA resident to a non-CA resident because that would violate the dormant commerce clause. The class as defined makes no sense. Finally, the plaintiff continues to send mail to Yahoo addresses knowing the mail is being “scanned” and that is implicit permission for Yahoo to do it.
In the initial complaint there was an allegation that Yahoo’s behaviour was a violation of Federal and/or California Wiretapping laws. These allegations appear to have been dropped in the First Amended Complaint.
Right now there is a hearing scheduled for March 13, 2013. I’ll keep an eye on the filings.

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Penkava v. Yahoo: wiretapping

According to stipulations filed yesterday Penkava and Yahoo! have agreed to go to private arbitration. This will happen before September 1, 2013. Also filed yesterday was an agreement that Yahoo! has until September 7, 2012 to respond to the complaint.

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Return Path partners with Symantec

Today Return Path announced a partnership with Symantec to improve their anti-phishing product. Return Path is incorporating the Symantec Trusted Domain List into their authentication and filtering product to help customers protect their brands. Press Release
Phishing scams affect everyone, and having a brand that is used in phishing can reduce consumer trust in that brand. Protecting brands in email has been one of the more difficult challenges facing the email community. With the adoption of DKIM and DMARC by major brands and ISPs it has become easier to track and address phishing.

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