Tagspamtraps

July 24, 2013

Delivery implications of Yahoo releasing usernames

By laura

4 Min read

2 comments

24July

Yahoo announced a few weeks ago it would be releasing account names back into the general pool. This, understandably, caused a lot of concern among marketers about how this would affect email delivery at Yahoo. I had the opportunity to talk with a Yahoo employee last week, and ask some questions about how this might affect delivery. Q: How many email addresses are affected? Yahoo is not providing...

July 9, 2013

TWSD: Mail known spam trap addresses

By laura

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09July

One of the things we all “know” is that if spammers get their hands on spamtrap addresses then they’ll stop sending mail to those addresses. This is true for a lot of spammers, but sadly it’s not true for all. I don’t think it’s any secret that I consult for all types of mailers, from those who just need a little tune up to those who want me to help them avoid...

April 18, 2013

Do you have an abuse@ address?

By laura

3 Min read

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18April

I’ve mentioned multiple times before that I really don’t like using personal contacts until and unless the published or official channels fail. I don’t hold this opinion just about resolving delivery issues, but also use official channels when reporting spam to one of my addresses or spam traps. My usual complaints contain a plain text copy of the mail, including full headers...

March 21, 2013

Spamhaus answers questions

By laura

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21March

Lost in all of the DOS attack news this week is that the first installment of Spamhaus answering questions from marketers in Ken Magill’s newsletter. It’s well worth a read for anyone who is interested in hearing directly from Spamhaus. One quote stood out for me, and it really sums up how I try to work with clients and their email programs. Playing evasion games to avoid traps is...

March 5, 2013

Spamhaus Speaks

By laura

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05March

There’s been a lot of discussion about Spamhaus, spam traps, and blocking. Today, Spamhaus rep Denny Watson posted on the Spamhaus blog about some of the recent large retailer listings. He provides us with some very useful information about how Spamhaus works, and gives 3 case studies of recent listings specifically for transactional messages to traps. The whole thing is well worth a read...

November 29, 2012

Q3 Email intelligence report from Return Path

By laura

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29November

Return Path released their 3rd quarter email intelligence report this week. And the numbers aren’t looking that great for marketers. Complaints are a major problem for commercial mailers. In the data Return Path examined, commercial mail made up 18% of the total inbox volume. That same mail accounted for 70% of all email complaints. Additionally, 60% of the email sent to spamtraps was...

October 31, 2012

Poisoning Spamtraps

By laura

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31October

Today’s question comes from Dave in yesterday’s comment section. I wonder if spammers might submit harvested addresses to big-name companies known to not use confirmed opt-in just to poison what they believe might be spamtraps? It’s certainly possible that people submit addresses to forms and big-name companies. But I don’t really think that poisons the spamtrap. Depending...

October 30, 2012

Harvesting and forging email addresses

By laura

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30October

For the contact address on our website, Steve has set up a rotating set of addresses. This is to minimize the amount of spam we have to deal with coming from address harvesters. This has worked quite well. In fact it works so well I didn’t expect that publishing an email address for taking reader questions would generate a lot of spam. Boy, was I wrong. That address has been on the website...

September 26, 2012

What causes Spamhaus CSS listings

By laura

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26September

Today’s Wednesday Question comes from Zaib F. What causes the Spamhaus CSS listing in your experience other than Sender using multiple sets of IPs, to look as if they are a valid sender. Do you think a Spamtrap plays a role? I’ll preface this by saying I don’t know what the specific Spamhaus criteria are for listing on the CSS. I do know the overall goal of the CSS list is to...

September 6, 2012

Equivocating about spamtraps

By laura

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06September

What is a spamtrap? According to a post I saw on Twitter: By definition, a spam trap is an email address maintained by an ISP or third party, which neither clicks nor opens emails, meaning it does not actively engage with the emails it receives. That’s not the definition of a spamtrap at all. A spam trap is an email address that does not belong to an actual person but still receives...