CategoryIndustry

June 8, 2017

Final migration of Verizon email addresses to AOL

By steve

3 Min read

4 comments

08June

AOL were kind enough to share some details about the shutdown of the Verizon mail system and the migration of @verizon.net email address to the AOL mail service: What is the cut-over date for the verizon.net MX record? The cut-over date for the mx record for verizon.net to to be handled by AOL is June 20, 2017. This will occur after midnight sometime on Tuesday morning June 20 EDT.   How...

June 7, 2017

CASL Private Right of Action Delayed

By laura

3 Min read

1 comment

07June

Today the Canadian Government announced they were suspending the provision that allows individuals to sue marketers for violations of CASL. Under these provisions, individual Canadian consumers had a private right of action. Any Canadian could sue any company that sent mail violating the law. This part of the law upset many senders and marketers. I’m sure many are relieved at this delay in...

June 6, 2017

Women. Technology. Moving Forward.

By laura

5 Min read

1 comment

06June

A little over a year ago, Kristin Bond posted an article (reprinted here) looking at the diversity of speakers at marketing conferences. As with many articles pointing out gender issues in technology there was quite a bit of discussion about it on a related mailing list.  Some of the comments were supportive and open to the idea that gender diversity is an overall good. Some of the comments...

June 2, 2017

Disappearing domains

By laura

4 Min read

2 comments

02June

On May 31, British broadband provider EE discontinued service for a number of email domains: Orange.net, Orangehome.co.uk, Wanadoo.co.uk, Freeserve.co.uk, Fsbusiness.co.uk, Fslife.co.uk, Fsmail.net, Fsworld.co.uk, and Fsnet.co.uk. These domains were acquired by EE as part of multiple mergers and acquisitions. On their help page, EE explains that the proliferation of free email services with...

May 25, 2017

Random thoughts on spammers

By laura

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25May

I recently received a 419 spam that had a message at the top of the email. Yup, a 419 spammer is trying to convince me there are millions of dollars waiting for me, but he won’t pay his software vendor 29.99 to comply with a license. This is only the most recent in a long line of examples of spammers being cheap and attempting to steal services. Back when I was working abuse almost every...

May 16, 2017

Phishing increasingly sophisticated

By laura

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16May

Phishing is an online threat that’s been around for more than 20 years. I initially heard of it in relation to spammers taking over an AOL account to send out spam. These days phis is more dangerous and more sophisticated. Phishing is not just used to send spam. It’s used to take over elections; it’s used to steal millions of dollars. Experts estimate that globally phishing...

May 15, 2017

Shibboleet

By laura

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15May

Using unique addresses for signups gives me the ability to track how well companies are protecting customer data. If only one company ever had an address, and it’s now getting spam or phishing mail, then that company has had a data breach. The challenge then becomes getting the evidence and details to the right people inside the company. In one case it was easy. I knew a number of people...

May 11, 2017

April 2017: The Month in Email

By laura

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11May

April was a big travel month for us. I went to Las Vegas for meetings around the Email Innovations Summit and to New Orleans, where Steve spoke on the closing keynote panel for the EEC conference. I wrote several posts this month about privacy and tracking, both in email and in other online contexts. It’s increasingly a fact of life that our behaviors are tracked, and I wrote about the need for...

May 10, 2017

ESPC meeting

By laura

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10May

Yesterday I had the pleasure of attending my first ESPC semi-annual meeting. I was scheduled to talk on a panel  about list hygiene with a couple vendors. Because some folks didn’t make it, I also sat on the panel talking about blocklists. It was a fun day. I got to meet and talk with some colleagues I haven’t seen in an age. And I met some new faces and had interesting interactions...

May 8, 2017

Text to Image ratios in email

By laura

3 Min read

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08May

One of the questions I get from folks about delivery is what the optimal text to image ratio there should be in an email. I’ll be honest, I hate this question. Why? Because the question is actually irrelevant. I’ve seen companies with a single image and no text get to the inbox. I’ve seen companies with no images get to the inbox. The text to image ratio is not going to make or...