spam resource

What Does iOS 15 Mean for Email Deliverability during the 2021 Busy Season?

Editor's note: Spam Resource is more-or-less on a break this week, which makes for a great opportunity for me to share a guest post by John Peters, Deliverability Specialist for Campaign Monitor. Take it away, John!

During the busy email season the global volume of emails increases dramatically and it’s a stressful time for both marketers, Email Service Providers and Mailbox Providers (MBPs). To make the most of this period, marketers need to understand the email ecosystem, especially from the viewpoint of the MBP.

Graphic by: Travis Hazlewood

MBPs’ resources are stretched thin at this time as they strain to manage the increase in emails. MBPs need to balance their responsibility to safeguard their users and deliver relevant emails to their inboxes. While Apple’s Mail Privacy Protection (MPP) feature may seem to add more complexity, in a real sense it hasn’t changed Deliverability in a significant way (yet). Senders still need to follow best practices and the rules of Email, now more than ever. This is something that I cover in Campaign Monitor’s latest "What Does iOS 15 Mean for Email Deliverability?" blog post.

-- Written by John Peters, Deliverability Specialist for Campaign Monitor.

Tired of spam? A burner email account could be the answer.

You'll remember that recently I explained how 1Password now has its own "hide my email" feature (with a bit of help from Fastmail), for those who may not be into using the Apple version of the functionality.

Well, Mozilla wants you to remember that they've got a feature to help you with this, too. Over on Mozilla's Distilled blog, M.J. Kelly wants to help you recover from inbox fatigue by implementing burner email accounts with Firefox Relay. Check it out.

Happy holidays, long weekend or not...

I hope everyone has a happy and safe Thanksgiving Holiday. Maybe you've got a long weekend ahead or perhaps you'll need to be up and ready to provide deliverability support for those Black Friday email campaigns. Either way, I hope things go smoothly and that you have a good one.

I hear that supply chain issues could interfere with turkey deliveries, so don't forget that our good friend SPAM® Oven Roasted Turkey is always available as a backup.

Disclaimer: Neither I nor Spam Resource are connected to Hormel or the foodstuff known as SPAM in any way. I'm just a fan! Please don't sue!

Take care and I'll see you back on the blog and in email soon!

New ISP Feedback Loop: tim.it/tin.it/alice.it

Validity's Mathieu Girol has announced that Telecom Italia will now be offering an ISP Feedback Loop through the Validity Universal FBL service. If you manage feedback loops for an ESP or email sending platform, you'll want to go sign up for this ASAP!

The domains this new ISP FBL covers are: tim.it, tin.it, alice.it. And here's all the different ISPs and companies covered via the Validity FBL service:

And if you're new to deliverability and FBLs, perhaps wondering exactly what is an ISP Feedback Loop and what does it do, click here for more details.

Now hiring: SparkPost

SparkPost is looking to hire a US-based Deliverability Strategist. "The ideal Deliverability Strategist will provide world-class strategic Deliverability services and support to our customers. This experienced deliverability practitioner positively impacts the email programs of large enterprise customers by giving proactive specific recommendations and advice to optimize delivery, inbox placement and engagement." Could that be you?

Find more details here.

Crooks Commandeer Sam's Club Name to Send Scam Emails

Katherine Skiba for AARP reports how in just one particular month in 2021, five hundred (!) different consumer brands were hit by phishing attacks -- not just Sam's Club!

And phishing attacks and email scams are big money. "Though in third place, [the FTC says that] illicit emails trigger big losses: $149 million during the first half of 2021, which put losses on pace to exceed the $252 million lost in all of 2020 and $226 million in 2019."

Read the whole article here. And please, use this as an opportunity to remind all big senders of email that they should implement DMARC if they haven't already, avoid cousin domains, and tell their users that they'll only be sending email from their main domain name.

Now hiring: Klaviyo

Do you have email systems experience, knowledgable in email technologies and deliverability concepts like SMTP, POP, SPF, DKIM, DMARC, blocking lists, IP reputation and more? Have you led design and implementation of a high-scale, high-reliability MTA environment or do you have specific hands-on experience with something like PowerMTA?

If so, this could be the opportunity for you! Klaviyo is looking for an Email MTA-focused Lead Software Engineer. Helping them build out their MTA environment sounds like a fun one to me. You should apply.

Zimbra Anti-Spam Best Practices in 2021

Do you use Zimbra? Zimbra Collaboration, formerly known as the Zimbra Collaboration Suite (ZCS) before 2019, is an open-source collaborative software suite that includes an email server and a web client.

L. Mark Stone from Zimbra partner Mission Critical Email has put together an overview of his recommended best practices for how Zimbra admins can best prevent inbound spam and phishing emails. Even if you don't use Zimbra, it's great to hear his experiences -- you'll see he uses and recommends three commercial (i.e. paid) blockinf list providers: Invaluement, URIBL and Spamhaus.

Click here to learn more.

3 Ways Pardot Protects Your Email Reports from Non-human Activity

From The DRIP: More great content from Lucy Mazalon. This time around, she details what Salesforce Pardot does to help users deal with non-human interactions, aka bot and security device clicks and activity. Metrics Guard and Visitor Filters being two key Pardot features that will help you out. And, very importantly, she didn't forget the two-click unsubscribe -- making sure that your unsubscribing user has to click a button or link on the landing page before they are considered unsubscribed. Bots won't do that; people will. (If your email sending platform doesn't support two-click unsubscribe, then you need to start asking them why that is. It's a best practice nowadays.)

Read it here.

Spamhaus: Fake FBI warnings from real FBI servers

From our friends at Spamhaus via Twitter today (Saturday, November 13th), here's a warning about fraudulent US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) emails that are sending from IP addresses actually used by the FBI.

"We have been made aware of "scary" emails sent in the last few hours that purport to come from the FBI/DHS. While the emails are indeed being sent from infrastructure that is owned by the FBI/DHS (the LEEP portal), our research shows that these emails *are* fake.

"These fake warning emails are apparently being sent to addresses scraped from ARIN database. They are causing a lot of disruption because the headers are real, they really are coming from FBI infrastructure. They have no name or contact information in the .sig. Please beware!"

You can find a screenshot here and here's a report on this event from NBC News. And here's Brian Krebs, explaining how it was done.

[ H/T: Jennifer Nespola Lantz ]

Cornbread Dressing with Spam and Sun-Dried Tomatoes

I'm saddened to find that pumpkin spice spam didn't seem to be available this year, but if you're looking for a spammy meal in the spirit of the season, this recipe from Caroline Choe of the Today show might just do the trick. Cornbread Dressing with Spam and Sun-Dried Tomatoes sounds pretty good to me, and they're even being careful to use low sodium spam. Which is probably still high in sodium, such as it is. Check it out here. Yum!