There are a lot of things all of us in the deliverability, abuse and blocklist space have heard, over and over and over again. They’re so common they’re running jokes in the industry. These phrases are used by spammers, but a lot of non-spammers seem to use them as well. The most famous is probably “I’m sure they’ll unblock me if I can just explain my business model...
Kevin Senne posted over on the Oracle blog about how we need to stop caring about SenderScore and why it’s not as useful a metric as it used to be. I can’t argue with anything he’s said. I think there is way too much focus on IP reputation and SenderScore. There’s so much more to deliverability than just one or two factors. In fact, if you’ve been to any of my recent...
Earlier today I approved a comment from Mike on a post about problems at AOL from 2012. The part of the comment that caught my attention: SMTP error from remote mail server after end of data: 521 5.2.1 : AOL will not accept delivery of this message. Mike also mentioned his IP reputation is good, when he checks at AOL so he doesn’t understand why mail is being blocked. I think the big clue...
The Department of Defense is breaking HTML links in mail to .mil domains. This is part of the DoD’s attempt to curtail phishing. a great majority of intrusions into Pentagon networks are the result of the kind of human error that is exploited in phishing attacks, in which seemingly trustworthy e-mail links are used as attack vectors to hijack user computers, install malware or steal...
During the Q&A last week, I mentioned an example of a type of filter trying to demonstrate how complex the filters are. There was some confusion about what I was saying, so I thought I’d write a blog post explaining this. Background This story came from another deliverability person, let’s call her ESPer. One of their customers (Customers) is using a 3rd party service that...
I had a great time answering questions at the 2015 All About eMail Virtual Conference & Expo today. Thanks so much to everyone who participated and asked questions. They were great and I’m sorry we didn’t have more time. I did get some questions on twitter (@wise_laura) afterwards. One was about an example I gave to explain how filters are complex. There have been rumors going...
Live! Tomorrow! the 2015 All About eMail Virtual Conference & Expo. 12:30 Eastern, 9:30 Pacific. Come hear Ken ask me about email and contribute your own questions!
Want to ask about spamtraps? Purchased lists? How about engagement? Just want to listen to what myths other people are interested in asking about? Come and listen.
There seems to be an uptick in phishing attacks that have an impact on ESPs recently. Your CEO The most critical one is targeted spear-phishing attacks that claim to be internal documents sent by senior staff within the company, e.g. from the company CEO. It’s likely that the attached documents will compromise and backdoor your machine, and from their most of your internal network, using an...
Someone mentioned on a mailing list that mail “from” intuit.com was being filed in the gmail spam folder, with the warning “Our systems couldn’t verify that this message was really sent by intuit.com“. That warning means that Gmail thinks it may be phishing mail. Given they’re a well-known financial services organization, I’m sure there is a lot of...
When you spend most of your day working on email and spam issues, it starts to cross into all aspects of your life. In October, I was amused by authors who find names in spam, SMTP-related t-shirts on camping trips, and spam that makes you laugh. Maybe I need a vacation? We were quite busy with conference presentations and client work this month, but took time to note the things that captured our...
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