These last few years have been something, huh? Something had to give and, in my case, that something was blogging. There were a number of reasons I stopped writing here, many of them personal, some of them more global. I will admit, I was (and still am a little) burned out as it seemed I was saying and writing the same things I’d been saying and writing for more than a decade. Taking time...
Dear Colleagues at ESPs, We have a problem. More specifically, YOU have a problem. You have a spam problem. One that you’re not taking care of in any way, shape or form. There was a point where ESPs started caring about spam out of their networks. They got blocked enough they had to take action. Because they took action a lot of the big blocklists started being nice. Spamhaus, for instance...
Sometime in the last few days, Spamhaus seems to have started issuing a block message if someone queries the DBL with an IP address. folks started seeing an uptick in error messages that mention Spamhaus saying: 554 5.7.1 Service unavailable; Client host [x.x.x.x] blocked using dbl.spamhaus.org; No IP queries, see (in reply to RCPT TO command)) Crowdsourcing information from the emailgeeks slack...
Over the last few years I’ve reduced the complaints I send to ESPs about their customers to almost nothing. The only companies I send complaints to are ones where I actually know folks inside the compliance desk, and I almost never expect action, I just send them as professional courtesy. The sad fact is, many ESPs are really horrible about dealing with spam coming from their networks. The...
When asking a for assistance with email delivery, there are some pieces of information that are required before anyone can help. Be prepared with the information so you can get timely assistance. This advice is true whether you’re looking for help from peers or working with paid deliverability consultants. What is the problem? Be very specific about the problem you see. The fix for mail...
I was on the phone with a colleague recently. They were talking about collecting a bit of data over the weekend and mentioned how great it was they had the tools to be able to do this. Coincidentally, another colleague mentioned that when the subscription bombing happened they were able to react quickly because they had a decent tool chain. I’ve also been working with some clients who are...
Much of the current deliverability advice focuses on a few key ideas: Authenticate your mail with SPF, DKIM and DMARC Use a dedicated IP. Monitor delivery. Clean your data. All of these things are absolutely things you should be doing, but senders can do all these things and still have cruddy delivery. These things are great and can help your mail deliver better. But they’re not enough to...
Over the last few months I’ve gotten an increasing number of questions about the Spamhaus DBL. So it’s probably time to do a blog post about it. Last year I wrote about the DBL: DBL is the Domain Block List. It lists domains and not IP addresses. I’ll be honest, I don’t have as much experience with the DBL as with other lists, but I have had a few clients on the DBL. DBL is tied into...
An on the ball reader sent me a note today showing a bounce message indicating microsoft was rejecting mail due to a Spamhaus Blocklist Listing. 5.7.1 Client host [10.10.10.10] blocked using Spamhaus. To request removal from this list see (S3130). [VE1EUR03FT043.eop-EUR03.prod.protection.outlook.com] The IP in question is listed on the CSS, which means at a minimum Microsoft is using the SBL. I...
All to often we think of filters as a linear scale. There’s blocking on one end, and there’s an inbox on the other. Every email falls somewhere on that line. Makes sense, right? Bad mail is blocked, good mail goes to the inbox. The bulk folder exists for mail that’s not bad enough to block, but isn’t good enough to go to the inbox. Once we get to that model, we can think...
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