Humor

Your idea will not work. Here is why it won’t work.

Matthew Green reminded me of an old bit of spam lore.

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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.

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NY Times on unsubscribing by email

IMG_2100
More than a decade ago I was included in one of these. It wasn’t work related per se, but the address list included a lot of experienced, BTDT, names-on-RFCs technology folks.
Yeah, even they got stuck in the mess of replying all, unsubscribing, lecturing people about not replying to all. It was a mess, but funny given the names involved. #neverdothis #noreplytoall

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Phone call of the week

I phoneforblogreceived a message on our 800 number. “This is Mark from a-website.example. Your customers are complaining to me that they are not getting my mail. And you’re blocking mail from me. Explain this to me!”
 
 
I called him back and left a message: “I think you’re confused and I probably can’t help you.”
A few minutes later, Mark returns my call.
L: Hi, this is laura.
M: Who are you? You called me, you must be from Clearwire!
L: No, I’m not with Clearwire, I’m with WttW.
M: Then why is your phone number on the Clearwire website?
L: I don’t know, but this isn’t Clearwire. The Clearwire website is redirecting to Sprint. They got bought out a while ago.
M: Redirecting to Sprint? What does that mean? Your phone number is on Clearwire’s website. You must be with Clearwire.
L: No, really, I’m not.
M: Why is your phone number on their website?
L: I don’t know. But this is not Clearwire. (I start searching the blog because I remember some post somewhere about Clearwire.)
M: Well, who are you?
L: I run a delivery consulting firm. Is it possible you found my website and the blog post that says all clearwire.net addresses are being discontinued April 15, 2015?
M: They’re gone?
L: Yes, for more than a year now.
M: Oh.
scene
That blog post is the #1 google hit if you search for clearwire.net.
 

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What a week!

Yesterday, after 5pm, I was so happy. I was telling folks to have a great weekend. To take time off and relax. Have fun! Don’t work! Enjoy the weather!
Then someone pointed out it was only Thursday.
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But! I got up this morning and got lots of happy Facebook notifications from friends about how TODAY was Friday. I was ready to have an awesome and productive day and go into the weekend with a clean todo list and a well planned next week.
Then I broke my mail client. Trying to add an attachment would crash everything. That got fixed that somewhere around noon.
So! I’ll just grab some lunch and get ready for a productive afternoon!
Then I broke finder.
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Yes, that is a picture of my 27 inch monitor with hundreds of Windows opening. I was trying to delete some of the 39,000 .jpgs from my mail client. My finger slipped on the trackpad, though, and instead of “move to trash” I clicked “show in containing folder.” Ooops. I finally crashed finder manually and it restarted and didn’t try and reopen all the windows.
OK. Fine. I’ll go to the bank and pick up mail and drop off tax (ugh, ow) payments.
On the way there, construction screwed up traffic and it took me more than 20 minutes to go 2 miles. (It’s not a safe place to walk, or I would have). On the way back, I went the Other Way. Only to discover a firetruck across 4 lanes of traffic and half a dozen cop cars showing up to a very recent accident.
Then, while writing this blog post I managed to somehow move widgets around and lose them on the wordpress editor.
Apparently I should have taken my friend’s advice and just decided today was not a work day. Because, wow, was it a mess. What all this means is I’m not going to try and blog anything substantial. I’d probably make some total boneheaded mistake and that wouldn’t be any good.
Instead, I will share the song KFOG played every Friday at 5pm (before Cumulus decided to fire everyone). Because I am really in the need of this week to be over.
Have a good weekend. Next week will be better!

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Dealing with blocklists, deliverability and abuse people

There are a lot of things all of us in the deliverability, abuse and blocklist space have heard, over and over and over again. They’re so common they’re running jokes in the industry. These phrases are used by spammers, but a lot of non-spammers seem to use them as well.
The most famous is probably “I’m sure they’ll unblock me if I can just explain my business model.” Trust me, the folks blocking your mail don’t want to hear about your business model. They just want you to stop doing whatever it is you’re doing. In fact, I’m one of the few people in the space who actually wants to hear about your business model – so I can help you reach your goals without doing things that get you blocked.
A few months ago, after getting off yet another phone call where I talked clients down from explaining their business model to Spamhaus, I put together list of phrases that senders really shouldn’t use when talking to their ESP, a blocklist provider or an abuse desk. I posted it to a closed list and one of the participants put it together into a bingo card.
bingo__email__save_1
A lot of these statements are valid marketing and business statements. But the folks responsible for blocking mail don’t really care. They just want their users to be happy with the mail they receive.

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October 2015: The month in email

Oct2015_blog
When you spend most of your day working on email and spam issues, it starts to cross into all aspects of your life. In October, I was amused by authors who find names in spam, SMTP-related t-shirts on camping trips, and spam that makes you laugh. Maybe I need a vacation?
We were quite busy with conference presentations and client work this month, but took time to note the things that captured our attention, as always. We highlighted a few things we enjoyed reading around the web: Brian Krebs’ Reddit AMA, the results of Jan Schaumann’s survey on ethics in internet operations, and a great post on Usenet from Joe St. Sauver.
In industry news, we covered a few glitches that are worth noting, in case you missed them: Yahoo FBL confirmation emails, Google postmaster tools, Network Solutions email, and weird Lashback listings. Even though these have mostly been resolved, it’s useful to keep track of the types and frequency of these sorts of issues, as they can significantly impact your deliverability and may be useful as your clients or business stakeholders raise questions about campaign performance.
Steve contributed a few key technical posts this month, including a short post on IPv6 authentication issues, following up on the issues he outlined back in July. He also noted Gmail’s upcoming move to DMARC p=reject, which is notable for the ways they are are looking to mitigate risks with their ARC proposal.  Finally, he wrote that it’s worth looking at false positives every now and then, as it can reveal interesting patterns in the ESP landscape.
Finally, a good suggestion from the best practices file: engagement through confirming user names, and a not-so-good plan for an app that’s sure to invite abuse and harassment.

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88 Miles per hour!

A lot of advertisers are really getting into this whole Back to the Future Day thing. A number of companies are compiling emails related to the phenomenon.
MailCharts
Milled
What other ads have folks seen referencing Marty and his trip back?

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Tracking consumers

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

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Using Google to taunt coworkers

Happy Friday, all. This has been a rough week for so many people, I thought we needed a little humor.
From Tim Norton (@norton_tim) on Twitter.

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Spammers make me laugh…

When they can’t work their spam ware.

{rtf1ansiansicpg1252deff0deflang1033{fonttbl{f0fnilfcharset0 Calibri;}}
{*generator Msftedit 5.41.21.2510;}viewkind4uc1pardsa200sl276slmult1lang9f0fs22 Dear Sir,par
My clients wants to invest huge cash .Please do reply if interested no dime needed from you.par
Regardspar
john Gagapar
}

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Too much email on the brain

Last night I was cruising through our local news website. I see the headline New SPF guidelines coming our way.
My first thought was, “Wow, SPF made the paper?” Now, I live in the SF Bay area so there are a lot of technology related stories that hit our paper which might not see the light of day in other areas. But, still: new SPF guidelines hit the local paper before I’ve heard about it? That seems a little strange.
Then I notice that it’s in the “Living” section. That’s even stranger.
Oh, well, if there’s new SPF stuff, I’d better click and see what is going on with SPF. The internal headline is Beauty Tuesday: New SPF guidelines accompanied by a picture of sunscreen. It was only then I realized it wasn’t about sender policy framework but was about sun protection.
A bit of a picard-facepalm2 moment for me.
Happy Friday, everyone.

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Silly Saturday Spam

I couldn’t resist posting the newest Nigerian 419 showing up in my mailbox.

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Email in 2030

As predicted by Mark Brownlow. My favorite? You can still buy 1 million email addresses for $99. It’s still a bad idea.

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Silly spam subject line of the day

It’s Friday, it’s been a long week and while I have things to say I’m looking for some entertainment.
What are your favorite spam subject lines?
Here are some of mine:
“Having rock-like winky is easy”(OK, I admit, sometimes I’m 12 and “winky” makes me laugh)
“-Enlarge-your ~Penis up to 3 per month!” (Up to three what per month? And every month?)
“-Its all about the bra-” (From yourscalecars, advertising penis enlargement. Uh. Really?)
“!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!” (apparently spammers never got the memo that !! is bad in a subject line)
“Adventures of my giant mighty soldier” (uh. back to being 12)
“Aliens spotted” (I always thought aliens were striped)
“allergic to almonds or pecans?” (well, no, but thanks for trying)
“anxiety’s archduke Bourbaki’s” (uh. What?)
And, well, I’ve gotten through the a’s in my spamfolder and there are something like 200,000 messages still to go.
Do share some of your own in the comments!

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I hate spam

But sometimes it makes me laugh. Yesterday I got a 419 that said, “[…]have been diagonalized with HIV/AIDS which has defiled all forms of medical treatment[…]” Diagonalized? Defiled all forms of treatment?
At least it was entertaining, right?

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Gmail Evolution

All the cool kids are doing infographics, so here’s our take on the new Gmail Priority Inbox.

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Limited email at gmail

Mike Monteiro has a screenshot of what happens when you actually fill up a gmail inbox.
How much of that mail is spam, I wonder?
HT: Laughing Squid

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Is social media a laughing matter?

I really love my job, but sometimes I miss academia, research and science. One of the ways I stay somewhat connected to that world is reading Scienceblogs (and the new Scientopia site). A few weeks ago my worlds collided when one of the librarians at Scienceblogs posted a Friday funny: 5 signs you’re talking to a social media douchebag.

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10 ways spam is like Vuvuzelas

Amir Lev has a great post today detailing the 10 ways that spam is like Vuvuzelas. After reading his reasons (and deleting over 1000 messages from Cutwail), I absolutely agree.

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A little light post for a friday after MAAWG

10 signs you might have a deliverability issue

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Overheard at the airport

Sitting at the gate, waiting for boarding I overhear a conversation. A woman is texting on her blackberry and saying to her traveling partner, “You know that universal sign for ‘not’? He thinks that is why mail is ending up in the junk folder. And if we add it to our mail then it will get delivered.”
This is one of the strangest theories of email delivery I have heard in a long time.

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Blog Olympics – Passing on the stick

Given that it is August and a lot of people are on vacation and it seems to be a general low point in getting things done at work, I expect blogging to be light through the end of the month. Once everyone gets back in September, I will have a more substantive posts up more regularly. Happily, EmailKarma helped me with a somewhat fluffy post today. He tagged me into the Blog Olympics meme. The rules say I am supposed to pick 7 blogs I read and tag them forward. The rules also state that I have to link back to the blog that passed on the stick to me but I cannot add it to the list of my favorite 7 blogs.
I limited my picks to email related blogs. Now, in no particular order (vaguely the order they show up in my RSS feed, but nothing actually that specific):

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Delivery Haikus

As we mentioned earlier Habeas is being bought out by ReturnPath.
While they’ve not actually used it for several years the thing that Habeas will be remembered for is their introduction of the Haiku form of poetry into email headers:

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Categories of email

The question came up on a mailing list about how senders classify email. Steve came up with the following list of email types from the recipient (not sender) perspective

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Valentine's day semi-fluff

There comes an inevitable point in some of my longer term consulting gigs where my client asks me some version of the following question:

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40 email companies

Ken Magill has a post up mentioning the top 40 companies in email marketing. Some highlights:

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ISPs like boxes of meat

On the heels of JDs post about building relationships with ISPs, many of our Abacus customers and our ISP contacts have been commenting that boxes of meat are always welcome.
Please, remember to send them boxes of meat.
Meat may not get your email delivered, but it will make the ISPs remember you fondly.

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419 … over live chat?

MailChimp’s customer service people were contacted by what appears to be a King selling monkeys.
I want to get permission part II up today, but this was just so funny I had to share.

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