Spam Resource: All Things Deliverability

Twenty years ago this month, HoTMaiL was acquired by Microsoft, going on to become MSN Hotmail, er, Windows Live Mail, er, Windows Live Hotmail, er, Outlook.com, or whatever it's called today as they merge the Outlook 365 and Hotmail platforms. Read more about the Hotmail…

Hey, we made it! 2017 is finally drawing to a close! Let's take a moment to review the top five most popular Spam Resource posts this year. Anything to help take our minds off of the fresh hell that awaits us in 2018, right? 5. In 2017, it seemed like a lot of people need…

Mickey Chandler just posted the 12th and final in his series of "the Days of Listmas" over at Spamtacular . Happy holidays!

A representative of French post office and webmail provider LaPoste announced on LinkedIn yesterday that LaPoste.net now offers support for a DKIM -based ISP feedback loop, supplementing existing support for their IP address-based FBL. And, it's true! When you login to f…

Ray from Spamhaus explains why in a new post. Spoiler alert: Looks like the Andromeda botnet and rise of IoT (Internet of Things) spam are to blame.

Engadget reports that Gmail's "Inbox by Gmail" web interface and Android app are proactively offering up a suggestion to unsubscribe from any promotional emails that haven't been opened in the past month. This could be significant. Most good senders focusing…

Brian Krebs recently published a most excellent article on the current state of phishing and what you can and should do to try to protect yourself as an email user. It's definitely worth a read.

🎵 On the first day of Listmas    🎵 my data showed to me 🎵 something’s causing slow delivery… Over on Spamtacular, Mickey Chandler is  publishing a series of posts for the 12 days of Listmas, talking about the things that can go wrong with deliverability and list hygiene …

Hey! Are you finding your mail rejected when trying to send to verizon.net? Through a complicated series of mergers and acquisitions over the years, AOL and Yahoo and Verizon have all merged into a single MBP (mailbox provider). The surviving entity? Yahoo! Mail. Thus, if you&#…

Vodafone (NZ) is reporting that they have shut down their email service as of November 30, 2017. This affects the following domains: clear.net.nz, es.co.nz, ihug.co.nz, paradise.net.nz, pcconnect.co.nz, quik.co.nz, vodafone.co.nz, vodafone.net.nz, and wave.co.nz. However, don&…

Hey big sender, it's that time of the year again! Lots of companies generate lots of revenue during the run up from about now until Christmas, and email is a very important channel for them to do that. That's why it's important for senders to follow these five deliv…

Wondering if government action against spammers still happens? Here's an example from the UK. MediaPost's EmailMarketingDaily reports that "two UK firms were fined thousands of pounds by the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) for allegedly spamming consumers.&…

One-time Netscape Navigator developer Jamie Zawinski suggests that HTML support in email might have been his fault .

If you've upgraded your iPhones to the just-released iOS version 11 and your email is hosted by Microsoft's Outlook.com, Office 365 or Exchange 2016, you may now find yourself unable to send email from your iPhone. It sounds like a known issue and that it is being work…

The MX servers for Hotmail UK changed in DNS overnight. For those who are caching DNS or have hard coded DNS entries, you're going to run into problems with false positive "user unknown" bounces. Time to flush the cache and make sure you're relying on what'…

So, what do we do? Deliverability! How? Nobody knows! -- Courtesy of my friend Sarah

If you're running a mailing list manager, or dealing with a reply-handling mail system, like many ESPs have in place, you've learned that DMARC adds a number of challenges to this process. To deal with that, you have probably modified your software to watch for any doma…

LinkedIn just reminded me: Spam Resource is just about sixteen years old, give or take a week or two. After sixteen years (and over 1.6 million page views), I don't always get the chance to post as often as I used to; life is busy and fast moving. I really can't complai…

Over on the Word to the Wise blog, Laura Atkins raises the concern that in response to the recent "prank" email scandal , email technologists are likely to say that this couldn't have happened if the White House had implemented DMARC. She's correct in that DM…

Found on the Sophos Naked Security blog :  Senator Ron Wyden (D-Oregon) contacted the US Department of Homeland Security in a July 18 letter where he ' asked the agency to “take immediate steps” to mandate that all federal agencies implement DMARC (Domain-based Message Aut…

Check out the reply I received in response to a recent AOL Whitelist Request submission: Subject:  Reputation corrected and request denied Your Whitelist request, with the confirmation code X, has been denied.   The requested IP address(es) is receiving temporary failures due t…

Laura Atkins of Word to the Wise explains: "The text to image ratio is not going to make or break delivery." I've certainly had people try to tell me that they think the secret to inbox placement is based on a certain specific text-to-image ratio. Like Laura, I kn…

From Network World, here is an update on the winding down of Verizon's email service, which  I previously reported on here . When is the transition happening? "Once customers are notified, they are presented with a personal take-action date that is 30 days from the ori…

Gmail app users on Android, rejoice -- Google just added phishing protection. If you try to click on a link deemed to be problematic, you'll get warned: “The site you are trying to visit has been identified as a forgery intended to trick you into disclosing financial, perso…

If you're familiar with the "list unsubscribe" functionality, support for which is implemented in Apple's iOS Mail Client, as well as Gmail and Outlook.com, you might wonder why these implementations might not allow you to land at a preferences page when click…

United Kingdom-based ISP Orange (now part of Everything Everywhere aka EE) has announced that they are shutting down their email service as of May 31, 2017. This affects users at these domains: orange.net, orangehome.co.uk, wanadoo.co.uk, freeserve.co.uk, fsbusiness.co.uk, fsli…

As mentioned in a previous post, Verizon recently announced that it is getting out of the email hosting business. Verizon users are being given a choice. They can: Give up their verizon.net email address; or Continue to use their verizon.net email address, but it will now be h…

There's an effort underway within ICANN where the net result could be that publicly-available domain ownership info is no longer available under any circumstances. Does that strike you as the best way to go? I personally don't think it is. WHOIS is a valuable forensic …

As reported last May , the Verizon email user transition to AOL continues, with Verizon now announcing that they have decided to " close down our email business ." Existing verizon.net email users have two options: Continue to use their verizon.net email address, but …

I've been thinking about best practices for password reset emails lately. Instead of trying to re-invent a wheel that other folks have already capably designed, I'll just highlight a couple of thoughts and link to some more detailed info from a couple of folks with have…

Microsoft's Terry Zink announced yesterday on the Mailop list that Microsoft is combining the infrastructure for Outlook.com (Hotmail) and Office 365. As part of this infrastructure update, Microsoft is letting the world know that soon, all outlook.com (hotmail.*, live.*, …

I usually try to avoid getting too political around these parts, but this one I just can't resist. Turns out, then-Indiana governor Mike Pence was a big fan of using his personal AOL email account for state business . That can't be right, can it? After all, that party s…

The United States Patent and Trademark Office has granted patent number 9,547,842 to IBM for an "Out-of-office electronic mail messaging system." What? I don't even .

Deliverability Expert Chris Truitt was kind enough to reach out to me after he noticed my prior post lamenting the lack of guidance on what you should do with Microsoft SNDS data. Here are his suggestions for what you should be thinking about when looking at Microsoft SNDS da…

ARS Technica reports on Trump minister of propaganda (I think that's his title) Sean Spicer and how he registered a handful of domains a few years ago with his still-current contact information, including his still-current phone number. I'm a big fan of WHOIS transpare…

Microsoft Hotmail / Outlook.com's SNDS ( Sender Network Data Services ) portal is a useful interface where you register to be able to look up reputation data specific to your sending IP addresses. In my " How to troubleshoot Microsoft Outlook.com / Hotmail Delivery Iss…

Have you heard of the Scunthorpe Problem ? It highlights the side effects associated with trying to filter out profanity. Where it affects me and the clients I work with most often is with personalization. They have to be careful -- creating an email with "Dear Firstname /…

Formerly known as the London Action Plan, UCENET (Unsolicited Communication Enforcement Network) exists to promote international spam enforcement cooperation and address spam related problems, such as online fraud and deception, phishing, and dissemination of viruses. Its memb…