The Online Trust Alliance (OTA) announced today they were joining forces with the Internet Society (ISOC). Starting in May, they will operate as an initiative under the ISOC umbrella. “The Internet Society and OTA share the belief that trust is the key issue in defining the future value of the Internet,” said Internet Society President and CEO, Kathryn Brown. “Now is the right time for these two...
Various things happening in the email space recently that are worth mentioning but don’t have enough to justify a whole blog post. Verizon announced a new umbrella company for the AOL and Yahoo media properties, including things like Engadget, Huffington Post. Based on the various press articles I’ve seen this doesn’t appear to affect the email handling for either set of domains...
It should be easy, right? Except it’s not. So why is it so hard? With one-on-one or one-to-few email it’s pretty simple. The rejections typically go back to a human who reads the text part of the rejection message and adapt and makes the decision about future messages. The software handles what to do with the undeliverable message based on the SMTP response code. In the case of a 5xy...
This morning I got spam from a major data broker / ESP / credit reporting agency claiming I’d signed up on some college website. In the UK. To check my credit score. Uh. No. No I didn’t. Of course, it’s very possible someone did use my email address when signing up for something at a UK university. They probably got a t-shirt or free pizza out of it. But that doesn’t...
Last night (Mar 29, 2017) between about 8pm Eastern and 9:30pm Eastern AOL suffered a technical issue. Every email sent to them received a “Recipient address rejected” reply. One example of the error message: Mar 29 20:45:12 p2-lvmail11 lsb1-99-208-250/smtp[22251]: A88DFC2DBE9: to=<redacted@aol.com>, relay=mailin-01.mx.aol.com[64. 12.91.195]:25, delay=0.18, delays=0.01/0/0.14/0...
In the email space we talk about filters as if they were sentient beings. “The filters decided…” “The filters said…” This is convenient shorthand, but tends to mask that filters aren’t actually deciding or saying anything. Filters are software processes that follow rules dictated by the people who create and maintain them. The rules flow from the goals...
Botnets are a huge problem for a number of reasons. Not only are they used to send spam, they’re also used in criminal activities. One of the major challenges in dealing with botnets is finding and stopping the people who create and use them. Why? Because the internet is global and crime tends to be prosecuted within local jurisdictions. Catching someone running a botnet, or involved in...
“If you want to use another means that violates the law, and every common definition of “spam”, then by all means, go ahead. You can enjoy fines and being added to the ROKSO database,” says a comment on my recent COI blog post. It’s both disconcerting and entirely predictable. My post was a discussion of what to do with addresses that don’t confirm. Data tells us that...
It seems the last few Friday’s I’ve been lax on posting. Some of that is just by Friday I’m frantically trying to complete all my client deliverables before the weekend. The rest of it is by Friday I’m just tired. Today had the added complication of watching the Trumpcare debate and following how (and how soon) it would affect my company if it passed. That’s been a...
In some ways it’s been really hard to focus on email for the last few months. There are so many more important issues in the world. Terrorism, Brexit, the US elections compromised by a foreign government, nuclear threats from multiple countries, the repeal of ACA, mass deportations and ICE raids here in the US. I find myself thinking about what to blog. Then I glance at the news and wonder...
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