Cloudmark has an interesting discussion about the Report Spam button and how it’s used.
June 29, 2012
Report Spam button
29June
June 26, 2012
Address verification
26June
In the comments on my Address Verification in Real Time Ken asks: are there any legal issues in doing a large number of bulk SMTP transactions where you would connect issue say 20 RCPT TO commands to verify the user then send a RSET and QUIT. Immediatley connect again and do another 20 RCPT TO’s etc… If you had say 250 thousand email addresses all pointing to the same MX record that would be you...
June 20, 2012
Dealing with complaints
20June
There are a lot of people who abuse online services and use online services to abuse and harass other people. But handling complaints and handling the abuse are often afterthoughts for many new companies. They don’t think about how to accept and process complaints until they show up. Nor do they think about how bad people can abuse a system before hand. But dealing with complaints is...
December 21, 2011
Don't spam filter your role accounts
21December
A variety of “amazon.com order confirmations” showed up in my inbox this morning. They were quite well done, looking pretty close to real Amazon branding, so quite a few people will click on them. And they funnel people who do click to websites that contain hostile flash apps that’ll compromise their machines (and steal their private data, login and banking credentials then add...
October 18, 2011
Where do you accept reports?
18October
One of the things that is most frustrating to me about sending in spam reports is that many ESPs and senders don’t actively monitor their abuse address. A few months ago I talked about getting spam from Dell to multiple email addresses of mine. What I didn’t talk about was how badly broken the ESP was in handling my complaint. The ESP was, like many ESPs, an organization that grew...
August 3, 2011
Gmail abuse and postmaster addresses
03August
A long time ago, Steve wrote a post about setting up abuse and postmaster addresses for Google hosted domains. Google has gone through a couple iterations of the interface since then, as you can see by the comment stream. I checked with some people who have Google hosted domains and they have confirmed that abuse@ and postmaster@ addresses can be set up by creating a group. When you create the...
August 3, 2011
The little things
It really amuses me when I get blatant spam coming from a network belonging to one of our Abacus customers. I know that the complaint will be handled appropriately.
It’s even better when the spam advertises the filter busting abilities of the spammer. I get a warm, fuzzy feeling to know that the spammer is going to be looking for a new host in the immediate future.
July 28, 2011
Have you audited your program lately?
28July
A few months ago, I got spammed by a major brand. I know their ESP takes abuse seriously, so I sent a note into their abuse desk. It bounced with a 550 user unknown. I sent another note into a different abuse address, it bounced. I sent mail into their corporate HQ, it disappeared into a black hole. I eventually connected with their delivery person and he’d not seen hide nor hair of any...
August 20, 2010
Spamhaus and Gmail
20August
Today’s been chock full of phone calls and dealing with clients, but I did happen to notice a bunch of people having small herds of cows because Spamhaus listed www.gmail.com on the SBL. “SPAMHAUS BLOCKS GOOGLE!!!” the headlines scream. My own opinion is that Google doesn’t do enough to police their network and their users, and that a SBL listing isn’t exactly a...
August 13, 2010
Should you respond to complaints
13August
David Spinks asks on twitter: Should you ever contact someone who made an abuse complaint about your newsletter to find out why My answer was: It depends, but it’s too complicated to explain in 140 characters. I don’t suggest responding to people who hit the “this is spam” button as a way of complaining. FBLs are complaints, but they are people who don’t necessarily...
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