Howto: Create a Gravatar brand icon

Recently I talked about how to make your brand image icon show up when sending to Gmail recipients. Today I'll talk about how to do the same for a different set of smaller ISPs and email clients.

Gravatar is a system owned by the folks behind Wordpress that allows you to upload an image or photo that is then linked to an email address. The primary use of the system is to show user icons for commenters on Wordpress blogs, from what I can tell.

Howto: Make your brand icon display in Gmail

Looking to make your brand's logo show up next to emails you send to Gmail recipients, but you're not sending from a Gmail account? I think I've figured out how you can do that. Read on.

Inbox by Gmail: Bye bye

Do you use Inbox by Gmail? If so, you've got until March 2019 to enjoy it before it shuts down.

H/T Delivery Counts.

Spam in a post-GDPR world?

Spam levels are down a bit, according to various reports. Is GDPR to thank? Truth be told, Spamhaus says, that GDPR actions taken by legitimate companies sending legitimate mail might have reduced the amount of mail they send, wanted or unwanted, but those companies weren't the biggest sources of spam to begin with.

The real issue, Spamhaus says, is that GDPR is "hampering organizations from effectively stopping career cybercriminals from defrauding innocent people."

Why? Because good guys fighting the bad actors sending bad mail utilize WHOIS data to help identify and track those bad actors. The effective gutting of data in WHOIS in response to GDPR impedes that good work, as shared by John Levine.

This isn't news to me. Hiding or redacting domain ownership has long been a pain point for anti-spam and internet security folks.

Test Authentication Here

I finally repaired my long-broken DKM/SPF/TLS checker, you can find it here.