October 2017: The Month in Email

October was a busy month. In addition to on boarding multiple new clients, we got new desks, I went to Toronto to see M3AAWG colleagues for a few days, and had oral surgery. Happily, we’re finally getting closer to having the full office setup. 

What is an office without a Grover Cat? (he was so pleased he figured out how to get onto it at standing height).

All of this means that blogging was pretty light this month.
One of the most interesting bits of news this month is that the US National Cybersecurity Assessments & Technical Services Team issued a mandate on web and email security, which Steve reviewed here.
In best practices, I made a brief mention about the importance of using subdomains rather than entirely new domain names in links and emails and even DKIM keys.
We’ve talked about engagement-based filters before, but it’s interesting to note how they’re being used in business environments as well as consumer environments.
We also put together a survey looking at how people use Google Postmaster Tools. The survey is now closed, and I’ll be doing a full analysis over the next couple of weeks, as well as talking about next steps. I did a quick preview of some of the highlights earlier this week.
Finally, a lot of industry news this month: Most notably, Mailchimp has changed its default signup process from double opt-in to single opt-in. This caused quite a bit of sturm und drang from all ends of the industry. And, in fact, a few days later they announced the default double-opt-in would stay in place for .eu senders. I didn’t get a chance to blog about that as it happened. In other news, the Road Runner FBL is permanently shuttered, and Edison Software has acquired Return Path’s Consumer Insight division. Also worth noting: Microsoft is rolling out new mail servers, and you’ll likely see some new — and potentially confusing — error codes.
My October themed photo is behind a cut, for those of you who have problems with spiders.

We also went camping with friends mid-month and had a tarantula wander through the campsite Sunday morning.
We also saw a bald eagle circling over our campsite, but I didn’t have my phone, or camera out so I didn’t get a picture. Likewise, I missed a shot of the fox crossing the road on our way out.

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Microsoft is still in the process of rolling out new mail servers. One thing that is new about these is some new codes on their error messages. This has led to questions and speculations as to what is going on.

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IPv6 and authentication

I just saw a post over on the mailop mailing list where someone had been bitten by some of the IPv6 email issues I discussed a couple of months ago.
They have dual-stack smarthosts – meaning that their smarthosts have both IPv4 and IPv6 addresses, and will choose one or the other to send mail over. Some domains they send to use Office 365 and opted-in to receiving mail over IPv6, so their smarthosts decided to send that mail preferentially over IPv6.
The mail wasn’t authenticated, so it started bouncing. This is probably going to happen more and more over the next year or so as domain owners increasingly accept mail over IPv6.
If your smarthosts are dual stack, make sure that your workflow authenticates all the mail you send to avoid this sort of delivery issue.
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Catching up from MAAWG SF

Had a great time a M3AAWG last week. So many familiar faces and a lot of new ones, too. I’ve got a lot of interesting stuff that I can share with readers over the next few days.
One of the things I have received permission to share is the new Office 365 IP delisting link. I botched the first time I posted it, so I’m going to try again. Office 365 IP Delisting Page. Many thanks to the Microsoft guys for getting this together for people.
While I’m talking about Microsoft, there is a bit of a problem with folks signing up with their FBL. Some people are finding that the process gets stuck and FBLs aren’t enabled. MS is aware of the issue and they are working on fixing it. As I know more I’ll share.
Unsurprisingly, authentication was a big topic of conversation, both in the hallways and in the sessions. There were some strong opinions stated. I think, though, that we’re pretty clear that we’re going to get to a more authenticated world. But we have some different opinions on how and how fast that’s going to happen.

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