Blog

January 18, 2019

Recycled addresses, spamtraps and sensors

By laura

4 Min read

2 comments

18January

A few hours ago I was reading an ESP blog post that recommended removing addresses after they were inactive for a year because the address could turn into a spamtrap.  That is not how addresses turn into spamtraps and not why we want to remove active addresses. Moreover, it demonstrates a deep misunderstanding of spamtraps. Unfortunately, there are a lot of myths and misunderstandings of...

January 17, 2019

Automated link checking getting more sophisticated

By laura

3 Min read

2 comments

17January

As the volume and severity of malicious email increases, filters are increasingly following links in emails. This is really nothing new. Barracuda and other filters have been inspecting links automatically for years. From what I’ve seen there does seem to be some level of risk analysis based on domain reputation. That makes sense, not only is following links computationally expensive, it...

January 16, 2019

What’s a suspicious domain?

By laura

2 Min read

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16January

The question came up on slack and I started bullet pointing what would make a domain suspicious. Seemed like a reasonable blog post. In no particular order, some features that make a domain suspicious to spam filters. Domain is used in… … mail users complain about … mail users delete without reading … mail sent in bulk through the ISP (example: Censorship, Email and...

January 15, 2019

Yeah… don’t do that

By laura

2 Min read

1 comment

15January

Never add someone to a mailing list without giving them a heads up that you’re doing it. It’s just uncool and rude. For example, I have been contacting some vendors about some work we need done. One of them has yet to answer my inquiry, but has already added me to their newsletter. Even worse, I had no idea submitting a form asking about their services would get me on their mailing...

January 14, 2019

How much has changed and will change

By laura

2 Min read

1 comment

14January

I was on a call with a client today and they wanted to talk about the handshake agreement about bounce handling I mentioned last week. As I started to really talk about it, I realised how much has changed in the years since that meeting.  It was a bit of the wild west of email and spam. CAN SPAM didn’t exist. Gmail didn’t exist. Global email volume, even including spam probably...

January 11, 2019

What’s a bounce?

By laura

4 Min read

8 comments

11January

Bounces and bounce handling is one of those topics I’ve avoided writing about for a long time. Part of my avoidance is because there are decades of confusing terminology that hasn’t ever been really defined. Untangling that terminology is the first step to being able to talk sensibly about what to do. Instead of writing a giant long post, I can break it into smaller, more focused...

January 10, 2019

How accurate are reports?

By laura

3 Min read

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10January

One of the big topics of discussion in various deliverability circles is the problems many places are seeing with delivery to Microsoft properties. One of the challenges is that Microsoft seems to be happy with how their filters are working, while senders are seeing vastly different data. I started thinking about reporting, how we generate reports and how do we know the reports are correct...

January 9, 2019

Mailbox providers

By laura

1 Min read

1 comment

09January

The other day I tweeted that I often used the term “receivers” to describe receiving MTAs. Whenever I use the term “receivers” to discuss email filters, I think of JD and Madkins telling me that receivers send mail, too. And they do. But I haven’t found a better term for “groups that receive and filter lots of mail.” #deliverability #emailgeek — Laura Atkins (@wise_laura)...

January 7, 2019

Reputation is in the eye of the beholder

By laura

3 Min read

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07January

A few years ago reputation was generally recognised as one thing. If a sending reputation or IP reputation was good in one place it was likely good in other places. Different entities mostly reputation using the same set of signals albeit slightly tweaked to meet their own needs. More recently there is a divergence in how reputation is measured, meaning delivery can be vastly different across...

January 4, 2019

Targets and measures

By laura

3 Min read

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04January

Over the past few years a number of email delivery products have been launched. Many of these products are intended to improve deliverability by improving metrics. The problem is they don’t work the way their purchasers thing. Take data hygiene services. For the most part, these services take a list of email addresses, do data analysis and magic and then return a “clean” list to...