Last week I posted a link to an article discussing how Gmail builds defenses to protect their users from malicious mail. One of the things I found very interesting in that article was the discussion about how Gmail deploys many changes at once, to prevent people from figuring out what the change was. Let’s take a look at what Gmail said. Make it hard for attackers to understand your...
Ask Laura: Can you help me understand no auth / no entry?
Dear Laura, I’m a little confused by the term “no auth / no entry”. Gmail and other major receivers seem to be moving towards requiring authentication before they’ll even consider delivery. Does this just mean SPF and DKIM, or does this mean the much more stringent DMARC, as well? Thanks, No Shirt, No Shoes, No What Now? Shirtless & Shoeless, “No auth / no entry” is...
Thoughts on filters
One of the questions we received during the EEC16 closing keynote panel was why isn’t there a single blocklist that everyone uses and why don’t ISPs share data more. It would be so much easier for senders if every ISP handled mail the same as every other. But the world isn’t that simple, and it’s not always clear which mail stream is spam and which is good mail. There were...
Thoughts from #EEC16
EEC16 was my first Email Experience conference. I was very impressed. Dennis, Len, and Ryan put together a great program. I made it to two of the keynotes and both took me out of an email focused place to look at the bigger picture. Patrick Scissons discussed his experiences creating marketing and advertising campaigns for good and to share messages. Some of the campaigns were ones I’d seen...
March 2016: The Month In Email
Happy April! I’m just back from the EEC conference in New Orleans, which was terrific. I wrote a quick post about a great session on content marketing, and I’ll have more to add about the rest of the conference over the next week or so. Stay tuned! Here’s a look at what caught our attention in March: On the DMARC front, we noted that both Yahoo and mail.ru are moving forward with p=reject, and...
Don't mess with my email
One thing we tell clients is that people consider their mailbox a very personal space. They’re offended when people invade that personal space without permission, sometimes to an extent that doesn’t seem proportional to the scale of the offense. And we advise senders who have been invited into the inbox to treat it with respect. Google don’t seem to realize that. Today, they...
Content is the new volume!
I’m having a great time here at #EEC16. Today is my visit and go to sessions day, since tomorrow I’m speaking at 2 different sessions. I was lucky enough to get into the Customer Experience session presented by Carey Kegel of SmartPak and Loren McDonald of IBM Marketing Cloud. It was an interesting session. If you don’t know, SmartPak is a brand focused on selling horse tack and...
Ask Laura: Do I have to publish DMARC?
Dear Laura, I heard recently that both Gmail and Yahoo will require DMARC authentication in early 2016 or images will be automatically blocked. Is that correct? And if so, do you know when they will be requiring DMARC? A DMARC-Overwhelmed Admin Dear Overwhelmed, There are three things going on here, all of which are related to DMARC but are very different in how it affects mail delivery...
More Yahoo domains get DMARC'd
Yahoo is turning on p=reject for 62 of their international domains on March 28, 2016. These domains include: y7mail.com yahoo.at yahoo.be yahoo.bg yahoo.cl yahoo.co.hu yahoo.co.id yahoo.co.il yahoo.co.kr yahoo.co.th yahoo.co.za yahoo.com.co yahoo.com.hr yahoo.com.my yahoo.com.pe yahoo.com.ph yahoo.com.sg yahoo.com.tr yahoo.com.tw yahoo.com.ua yahoo.com.ve yahoo.com.vn yahoo.cz yahoo.dk yahoo.ee...
Email nightmare for some FSU students
I mentioned yesterday that sometimes people and software screw up in ways that cause problems. Today I saw an article demonstrating just how bad these issues can be. Florida State University Housing Department sent detailed and confidential violation reports to tens of thousands of students. On Monday, March 14 at around 2 p.m., FSU first became aware that a glitch in the University Housing...