Recent Posts

SPF ?all

I was updating my SPF library and discovered that the example code snippets didn’t work any more, as at some point in 2024 AOL switched their SPF record from “(lots of stuff]) ~all” to “(lots of stuff) ?all”. Nothing particularly surprising, folks change their setups occasionally. I updated the example code to expect a neutral response rather than softfail and all the tests pass.

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Upcoming webinar on Gmail and inbox signals

I’m thrilled to announce I’m sitting down at the beginning of April to talk about inboxing in 2026.

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Recent Writings and Events

I don’t know about you, but we’re more than 6 weeks into 2026 and I can’t figure out where all the time has gone. It’s been a much busier January than I’m used to. I’ve been working on a lot, including a project I’ve been trying to get off the ground for a while. I’m really excited it’s finally taking shape and I hope to be able to share it with folks in the next month or so.

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Not Business as Usual

I don’t know what to say about what’s happening in the US, but I know I can’t stay silent, either. I don’t have anything inspiring to say here. I just cannot keep silent and pretend it’s all business as usual. I’m saddened, I’m horrified, I’m sick about what the government of the US is doing to citizens and non-citizens alike.

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Don't send customer-generated content

I just got this email:

SPF is valid. It passes DKIM for zoom.us.

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IPv4 and IPv6

There are two Internets

There are two separate Internets, the Old Internet and the New Internet. They might travel over the same ethernet cables or wifi, but they’re quite separate and rarely directly interact with each other.

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Let's Talk Reengagement

I appear to have written a lot about about re-engagement on the Email Geeks slack channel the last few days. The problem with slack is it’s not great at archiving or keeping information in an accessible, searchable manner. So, I’ve pulled together the answers, rearranged it, made it slightly more coherent and a little less stream of consciousness, so I can reference this when the topic comes up again.

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Folding email headers

Why are my DKIM signatures failing at Microsoft?

There are several reasons why your DKIM signatures might be failing at Microsoft, but perhaps not at other major providers. Many of them are triggered by sending mail that’s “badly structured” in some way. This is one of them.

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Undisclosed Recipients

To: Undisclosed recipients:;

Very occasionally you’ll see something in the To: header of an email that isn’t the email addresses you expect, instead it’s the string Undisclosed recipients:;. What does that mean?

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B2B Spam: Strapi, Unstructured and Reo

About a year ago I was rebuilding this blog, moving it from WordPress to … something else. I evaluated several content management systems for that, and one of them was Strapi.

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