Using SSL TLS to protect data in transit and authenticate servers you contacted originally required specialized software, complex configuration and expensive and complicated to require certificates. The need for specialized software is long since gone. Pretty much every web server and mail server will support SSL out of the box. Basic server configuration is now pretty simple – give the...
The CBL issued a statement and explanation for the false positives. Copying it here because there doesn’t seem to be a way to link directly to the statement on the CBL front page. November 24, 2015 Widespread false positives Earlier today, a very large scale Kelihos botnet event occured – by large scale, many email installations will be seeing in excess of 20% kelihos spam, and some...
Update: As of Nov 24, 2015 11:18 Pacific, Spamhaus has rebuilt the zone and removed the broken entries. Expect the new data to propagate in 10 – 15 minutes. Delivery should be back to normal. The CBL issued a statement, which I reposted for readers that find this post in the future. I think it’s important to remember there is a lot of malicious traffic out there and that malicious...
I posted Friday about how most deliverability folks roll their eyes when a sender starts talking about their business model. The irony is that one of the first things I do with a client is ask them to tell me about their business model and how email fits into their business plan. Once I know that, I can help them improve their email sending to meet the requirements of ISPs, blocklists and...
There are a lot of things all of us in the deliverability, abuse and blocklist space have heard, over and over and over again. They’re so common they’re running jokes in the industry. These phrases are used by spammers, but a lot of non-spammers seem to use them as well. The most famous is probably “I’m sure they’ll unblock me if I can just explain my business model...
Kevin Senne posted over on the Oracle blog about how we need to stop caring about SenderScore and why it’s not as useful a metric as it used to be. I can’t argue with anything he’s said. I think there is way too much focus on IP reputation and SenderScore. There’s so much more to deliverability than just one or two factors. In fact, if you’ve been to any of my recent...
Earlier today I approved a comment from Mike on a post about problems at AOL from 2012. The part of the comment that caught my attention: SMTP error from remote mail server after end of data: 521 5.2.1 : AOL will not accept delivery of this message. Mike also mentioned his IP reputation is good, when he checks at AOL so he doesn’t understand why mail is being blocked. I think the big clue...
The Department of Defense is breaking HTML links in mail to .mil domains. This is part of the DoD’s attempt to curtail phishing. a great majority of intrusions into Pentagon networks are the result of the kind of human error that is exploited in phishing attacks, in which seemingly trustworthy e-mail links are used as attack vectors to hijack user computers, install malware or steal...
During the Q&A last week, I mentioned an example of a type of filter trying to demonstrate how complex the filters are. There was some confusion about what I was saying, so I thought I’d write a blog post explaining this. Background This story came from another deliverability person, let’s call her ESPer. One of their customers (Customers) is using a 3rd party service that...
I had a great time answering questions at the 2015 All About eMail Virtual Conference & Expo today. Thanks so much to everyone who participated and asked questions. They were great and I’m sorry we didn’t have more time. I did get some questions on twitter (@wise_laura) afterwards. One was about an example I gave to explain how filters are complex. There have been rumors going...
RSS - Posts