Hello! Hope all are keeping safe through Harvey, Irma, Katia and the aftermath. I know many people that have been affected and are currently out of their homes. I am proud to see so many of my fellow deliverability folks are helping our displaced colleagues with resources, places to stay and money to replace damaged property. Here’s a mid-month late wrapup of our August blog posts. Our favorite...
Google Postmaster bad IP reputation
There are widespread reports this morning (9/11/17) that Google postmaster tools is showing bad IP reputation for IPs starting on 9/9. This issue is affecting just about everyone. Looking through my client’s postmaster pages, I’m seeing red for IP reputation on every client. Even my clients with generally good reputation are seeing bad reputation since 9/9. This looks like a...
What's going on with your SBL listing?
This popped up on my Facebook memories this morning. I don’t post about client events very often, but given I can’t remember even what client this is, I don’t think I’m revealing too much info. FB memory from a few years ago. I’m dealing with a client who has a pretty big SBL listing. They’re going through a lot of contortions to fix the problems the SBL is...
Equifax compromise and their insecure response
Today it was announced that someone infiltrated Equifax earlier this year and stole 143,000,000 identities. These identities include names, birthdates, and addresses, at a minimum. Details are available at your favorite news site. What I want to talk about is the website they’ve put up to address the issue. This website is Yet Another Example of how the financial services industry trains...
Spam-infused Mai-Tai
Happy Labor Day! Celebrate it with the perfect email-themed cocktail – a spam-infused Mai Tai, served in the traditional glass. A speciality of the Duck Inn in Chicago, it’s made from a fat-washed dark rum: Slice Spam thin and lay the slices onto a small sheet pan. Cover with 5oz of melted lard. Bake at 250 degrees for one hour, or until the Spam is thoroughly browned. Fine strain...
A decade of blogging
August 2017 marks 10 years of blogging. In that time we’ve written almost 2200 posts. We’ve had millions of visitors. My first blog post was a bit of a cliche. The first real content on the blog was a post about the 7th circuit court of appeals ruling in the E360 v. Spamhaus lawsuit. I continued following that case for the next 4 years as various arguments, filings, and rulings were...
Local-part Semantics
An email address has two main parts. The local-part is the bit before the @-sign and the domain is the bit after it. Loosely, the domain part tells SMTP how to get an email to the destination mailserver while the local part tells that server whose mailbox to put it in. I’m just looking at the local part today, the “steve” in “steve@example.com”. Talkin’...
Aug 21, 2017
August mini-recess
Blogging will be light through the end of the month. We’re headed to Wyoming to see the eclipse this weekend. As well, with all of the current political events happening it’s hard to focus on email right now. So basically I’m giving myself permission to not blog daily through the end of August. I’ll blog as I have stuff to say. Some of those might be copies and pastes from...
Email address as identity
A few months ago I was talking about different mailbox tools and mentioned email addresses are the keys to our online identity. They are, email addresses are the magic key that authenticates us and opens access to different accounts. The bad guys know this too. The Justice department recently announced a plea deal related to compromised email accounts. The individual in question gained access to...