At least one ESP and Spamhaus are currently investigating bounce messages at a couple ISPs incorrectly pointing to Spamhaus as the reason for the block. The bounce messages are taking the form: smtp; 554 p3plibsmtp03-07.prod.phx3.secureserver.net bizsmtp IB105. Connection refused. 192.0.2.24 is listed on the Exploits Block List (XBL) <; Please visit for more information. smtp; 553 5.7.1 [BL21]...
Things are extremely busy here so blogging is not getting quite the attention it should. I hope to return to more extensive posts soon. Meanwhile, you’ll have to put up with short posts. Today is a disclaimer I received in a spam. This is one of my addresses that has, somehow, ended up on UK-specific lists. Disclaimer: “Note:- We are not spammer. We found your email through manually...
One of the ongoing challenges sending email, and managing a high volume outbound mail server is dealing with the ongoing changes in filtering. Filters are not static, nor can they be. As ISPs and filtering companies identify new ways to separate out wanted email from unwanted email, spammers find new ways to make their mail look more like wanted mail. This is one reason traps are useful to...
I’ve seen scattered reports today that some mail to the Outlook 365 servers is failing. This has been confirmed by ZDNet. Only folks with a Office 365 account can log in and see the status messages, but there are some folks on the mailop list posting updates from the website. Attempts to mail to affected domains results in this response: 421 4.3.2 The maximum number of concurrent server...
Gmail is a challenge for even the best senders these days. With the recent Gmail changes there isn’t any clear fix to getting open rates or inbox delivery back up. Some of it depends on what is causing Gmail to filter the mail. Changing subject lines, from name, from address may get mail back to the inbox in the short term, but it only works until the filters catch up. What I am seeing...
There was a discussion today on a marketing list about role accounts and marketing lists. Some ESPs block mail to role accounts, and the discussion was about why and if this is a good practice. In order to answer that question, we really need to understand role accounts a little more. What are role accounts? A definition I tend to use is role accounts are email addresses that map to a business...
It seems one of the most asked questions I hear from people is about filters and what the secret sauce is. Cloudmark’s processes which determine which IPs get a poor or suspect reputation in our CSI products, take into account many different factors, including both spam trap hits and volume of trusted end user complaints (hitting the “This is spam” button), reputation of the reverse DNS of the...
In an effort to more closely observe the group’s buying habits and personal behaviors, a growing number of corporations are turning to tag and release programs to study American consumers, sources confirmed Friday. The Onion
What is SPF? Sender policy framework (SPF, RFC 7208) is an authentication process that ties the 5321.from (also known as the mail from, envelope from or return path) to authorized sending IP addresses. This authorization is published in a TXT record in DNS. Receivers can check SPF at the beginning of a SMTP transaction, compare the 5321.from domain to the connecting IP address and determine if...
Last week Message Systems announced the release of Momentum 4. This high volume MTA has a large number of features that make it possible for large volume senders to manage their email and their delivery. I had the opportunity to get a preview of the new features and was quite impressed with the expanded features. Improvements that caught my eye include: Real time views of delivery statistics...
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