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January 16, 2014

Target acquires email addresses, exposing more customers to data breaches

By laura

4 Min read

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16January

As most folks now know hackers broke into Target systems last December and stole financial and other data from 110 million customers. Target has been responding to this breach reasonably well. They’ve been notifying customers that were affected and they’re providing credit monitoring for affected individuals. They seem to be totally on top of protecting their customer’s data and...

January 16, 2014

Transcript of Google hearing

By laura

1 Min read

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I’ve not had a chance to read it, yet, but the transcript of the September hearing for the wiretapping case against Google is available. (pdf download)

January 14, 2014

Thoughts on "ISP relations"

By laura

2 Min read

1 comment

14January

I’ve been thinking a lot about the field of ISP relations and what it means and what it actually is. A few years ago the answer was pretty simple. ISP relations is about knowing the right people at ISPs in order to get blocks lifted. The fact that ISPs had staff just to deal with senders was actually a side effect of their anti-spam efforts. In many places blocking was at least partially...

January 13, 2014

First BACN, now SCRAPPLE

By laura

2 Min read

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13January

There is a lot of mail that goes out to recipients that’s not really spam, but isn’t fully wanted. To describe these different kinds of mail, people have invented pork-product related terminology. Ham and bacn are both used to describe wanted mail, although possibly not wanted right now. Now we have SCRAPPLE. It seems over the weekend a number of members of the Science Fiction Writers...

January 9, 2014

iMessage Spam

By laura

1 Min read

1 comment

09January

iMessage is the Apple messaging system that lets folks send short messages to one another over WiFi. In December I received my first iMessage spam. I’m not even really sure how to report it or how to report it to. Mobile spam is a hot button issue right now, but the tools just aren’t around to control SMS, iMessage and TXT spam like there is with email. And even though sending...

January 8, 2014

Images, again

By steve

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08January

It’s a new year, but an old problem. Email with unloaded images. Sure, you should be including critical content as text, and/or including alt-text as a normal part of your creative design process, but at the bare minimum you should look at what your mail looks like without images. The last thing you want to do is send out email with just one strong call to action – the unsubscribe...

January 7, 2014

CASL and existing opt-in addresses

By laura

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07January

The Canadian Anti-Spam law takes effect this summer. EmailKarma has a guest post by Shaun Brown that talks about how to handle current opt-in subscribers under the law. Express consents, obtained before CASL comes into force, to collect or to use electronic addresses to send commercial electronic messages will be recognized as being compliant with CASL. What does “grandfathering” mean...

January 6, 2014

And we're back

By laura

2 Min read

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06January

Happy New Year! I am back and ready to talk email with folks. December is always a busy time, both between the holidays and all associated personal stuff, but also for delivery consulting. There are senders that suddenly discover their email going to the bulk folder and needing help and assistance. But now it’s January and email marketing gets a brief break. The beginning of the new year...

December 20, 2013

Responsys bought by Oracle

By laura

1 Min read

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20December

Being on the west coast, I’m usually not yet awake when the 9am eastern press releases go out. So I’m often late on BREAKING NEWS!! in the email industry. This morning it was the news that Oracle bought Responsys. Most news reports seem to agree that the purchase price was $1.5B, although a couple places are putting that at a lower figure of “about $1.39B.” In any case...

December 19, 2013

ROKSO

By laura

2 Min read

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19December

ROKSO is the Register of Known Spamming Operations. It is a list of groups that have been disconnected from more than 3 different networks for spamming. ROKSO is a little bit different than most of the Spamhaus lists. The listings themselves talk more about the background of the listees and less about the specific emails that are the problem. Many ISPs and ESPs use ROKSO during customer vetting...