ArchiveApril 2015

A series of tubes

The Internet and pundits had a field day with Senator Stevens, when he explained the Internet was a series of tubes. I always interpreted his statement as coming from someone who demanded an engineer tell him why his mail was delayed. The engineer used the “tube” metaphor to explain network congestion and packets and TCP, and when the Senator tried to forward on the information he got...

Don't like opt-outs? Target your program better.

I get a LOT of spam here. Most of it is marked and trivial to get rid of. Some of it is what I would call semi-legitimate. It’s a real product, but I never asked to receive any information from this company and am not actually part of their demographic. For one time things I just hit delete and move on. Life is too short to complain or opt out of every spam I get. (Tried that, got more...

Best practices … what are they?

“We follow all the best practices!” is a common refrain from many senders. But what does best practices really mean? To me the bulk of best practices are related to permission, technical setup and identity. Send opt-in mail. Follow the SMTP spec. Authenticate your mail with DKIM. Publish a SPF record. Don’t hide you domain whois behind privacy protection services. Honor...

March 2015: The month in email

Happy March! We started the month with some more movement around CASL enforcement from our spam-fighting friends to the north. We noted a $1.1 million fine levied against Compu-Finder for CASL violations, as well as a $48,000 fine to Plentyoffish Media for failing to provide unsubscribe links. We noted a few interesting things: the fines are not being imposed at the maximum limits, violations are...

Old Lists and RadioShack

RadioShack is putting their assets up for sale including more than 65 million customer records and 13 million email addresses. Many are up in arms about the sale of personal data including the Texas Attorney General and AT&T who both want the data destroyed. Part of the controversy is that RadioShack’s privacy policy states the collected data will be only used by RadioShack and its...

What to do when an important email bounces

Some emails are more important than others. I know, I know, all emails are important, but really, some are more important than others. I’ve recently been decluttering by the simple expedient of enrolling in paperless statements for some of our accounts. We have a 1TB NAS, I’m not going to run out of storage space and I will have so much less paper to deal with. Plus, electronic...

Yahoo FBL Down

We’re seeing multiple reports that the Yahoo feedback loop stopped working some time in the past couple of days. If you’re not seeing reports, it’s not just you.

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