Which best practice is ruining your business?
December 4, 2012
An interesting look at best practices
04December
December 3, 2012
Confirming website registrations
03December
Confirming email addresses during a website registration process is a good practice. It stops people from creating fake accounts, abusing resources and using that site as a mechanism for harassment. But simply sending out a confirmation mail is not sufficient to prevent problems, particularly when everything about the process assumes that unconfirmed registrations are actually valid and not...
November 30, 2012
What a week!
30November
It has been quite an insane and busy week here. So I share with you what’s kept me going much of the week. Happy weekend. Next week I’ll have a multi-part series on confirming email addresses and some major companies trying to do the right thing with subscriptions, but failing. EDIT: Excuse any typos. Amelia has decided she doesn’t want to be a good cat and instead wants to walk...
November 29, 2012
Q3 Email intelligence report from Return Path
29November
Return Path released their 3rd quarter email intelligence report this week. And the numbers aren’t looking that great for marketers. Complaints are a major problem for commercial mailers. In the data Return Path examined, commercial mail made up 18% of the total inbox volume. That same mail accounted for 70% of all email complaints. Additionally, 60% of the email sent to spamtraps was...
November 28, 2012
DKIM and Gmail
28November
After they were a a little embarrassed by their own DKIM keys being poorly managed a few months ago, Google seem to have been going through their inbound DKIM handling and tightening up on their validation so that badly signed mail that really shouldn’t be treated as DKIM signed, won’t be treated as signed by Gmail. This is a good thing, especially as things like DMARC start to be...
November 27, 2012
Spammers are funny
27November
Dear Spammer, If you are going to send me an email that claims it complies with the Federal CAN SPAM act of 2003, it would be helpful if the mail actually complies with CAN SPAM. In this case, however, you are sending to an address you’ve harvested off my website. The mail you are sending does not contain a physical postal email address. You’re also forging headers. Both of those...
November 26, 2012
Motion to dismiss in Penkava v. Yahoo case
26November
Earlier this month Yahoo filed a motion to dismiss in the Penkava v. Yahoo. This is the class action lawsuit where an Alabama resident is attempting to sue Yahoo for violation of the California wiretapping law. Here’s the short synopsis. People send mail to Yahoo. Yahoo “creeps and peeps” on that mail so they can profit from it. Plaintiff doesn’t like this, and thinks that...
November 23, 2012
For the spammer that has everything
23November
Sales are everywhere on Black Friday, even in the spammer underground.
HT: Brian Krebs
November 22, 2012
Thanks
22November
It’s thanksgiving here in the US and most of us are off eating way to much food with family and friends. But that doesn’t mean I can’t take a few minutes to give thanks. I am thankful for reasonably effective spam filters. I am thankful for ESPs and ISPs who actually take action on complaints. I am thankful for the unsung folks who keep email useful. I am thankful for my readers...
November 21, 2012
Delivery emergencies and the holidays
21November
There is a lot of contention between ISPs and senders at the best of times. As we move into the holiday season, retailers are increasing their email marketing, sometimes quite significantly. This causes more delivery issues as recipients and MTAs react to the increased volume. At many non retail companies, however, the pace of work slows down. There are distractions and office parties and people...
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