I’ve been talking a lot about ongoing B2B spam. That is, where senders drop your address into some sort of automation, that sends mail from gmail or amazon and just spams and spams and spams. This is what my mailbox looked like this morning Yes, every one of those emails is sent to the same address. “you are still using the address laura-info@…” Well, no, actually. That...
We recently moved co-working spaces, after 8 or 9 years in the same place. I’ll be up front here, we left Space A because I was annoyed with them. I’ve been increasingly unhappy with them for a while, but moving is a pain so just put up with them. But their most recent rent increase along with the lost packages, increasing deposit requirements and revolving door of incompetent staff...
This week I attended a Data Visualization workshop presented by the Advanced Media Center at UC Berkeley. Every year I set at least one professional development goal; this year it’s learning how to better communicate visually. Part of the class included other resources, which led me to Nathan Yau’s website. One of the articles on the front page of his site is titled “Email...
Most companies and senders will tell you they follow all the best practices. My experience says they follow the easy best practices. They’ll comply with technical best practices, they’ll tick all the boxes for content and formatting, they’ll make a nod to permission. Then they’re surprised that their mail delivery isn’t great. Too many senders, ESPs and...
Monday I published a blog post about the ongoing B2B spam and how annoying it is. I get so many of these they’re becoming an actual problem. 3, 4, 5 a day. And then there’s the ongoing “drip” messages at 4, 6, 8, 12 days. It is getting out of control. It’s spam. It’s annoying. And most of it’s breaking the law. But, I can also use it as blog (and twitter...
I’ve been increasingly annoyed by these drip automation campaigns. You know the ones I mean. Senders use some software to find some flimsy pretext to send a mail. Then there emails drop every few days. Sometimes this cycle goes on for months. Most of these messages violate CAN SPAM. It’s annoying. It’s illegal. It is spam. I can even opt out of most of these messages, they...
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...
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...
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...
due diligence noun. research and analysis of a company or organization done in preparation for a business transaction It’s a term that’s been around for five centuries or so. Originally it meant the effort that was necessary for something, but it evolved into a legal term for “the care that a reasonable person takes to avoid harm to other persons or their property“. More...
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