Spam Resource: All Things Deliverability

Breaking news! Popular open-source spam filter SpamAssassin version 4.0.0 was just released . Find more information in the release notes here . Kevin A. McGrail, Chair Emeritus, Apache SpamAssassin, had this to say about the new version: "The efficacy is much higher, bett…

Well, Figgy Pudding Spam is a thing that exists, apparently. Laurel Wamsley for National Public Radio explains that this limited edition concoction is apparently so popular, that you may have already missed your opportunity to purchase it this holiday season. Oh, well. Inciden…

UW-Green Bay professor Michelle McQuade Dewhirsta turns spam emails into into songs for voice and cello. Wisconsin Public Radio's Jonah Beleckis explains . I don't know how I feel about this. It is indeed creative, I'll grant her that.

Adam Spriggs recently posted a very helpful Salesforce Marketing Cloud tip to his blog, which you'll find here . In it, he guides you through how to use AMPscript to implement a "two click unsubscribe" process. Why would you want to do that? To keep bots and emai…

DKIM replay attacks are one of the new big things lately, and they work like this: Take a DKIM signed email message, and re-send it to a billion other people. Maybe add another header (or change the subject, if the signature doesn't cover the subject), or maybe change nothi…

Mike Scarcella, reporting for Reuters : Google has hired law firm Perkins Coie to help defend it against the RNC's spam filtering lawsuit . "While Perkins long has provided legal services to the Democratic National Committee in matters of political law, and to politica…

Oracle's Chad S. White recently shared four fantastic tips on how to maximize your response rate when implementing a double opt-in (aka confirmed opt-in) process. It's a great way to verify consent (and keep a clean email list), but one of the primary complaints from m…

Google and various news outlets are reporting that Gmail had a significant outage today (Saturday, December 10th). Google reports that as of 4:16 PM UTC (10:16 AM US central time) things are on the mend, but that there's a backlog of messages to be delivered. I can't …

Another week is drawing to a close, and I think that means it's time for another music break. If Katy Perry doesn't make you want to get up and dance, you might be dead inside. Enjoy ! Thank you to Denise Miller for the suggestion!

Will Easton is an expert email strategist and nonprofit fundraiser, and the webmaster of ethicalemail.org  and you should connect with him on LinkedIn . Today's topic? The deluge of fundraising spam you're likely to receive after making a political contribution and hand…

Rackspace appears to have suffered a security issue related to their Hosted Exchange mailbox environment, starting on December 2nd. You can find more information here , here and here . From what I can tell, their Hosted Exchange systems make up only a small portion of the over…

Email/technology expert Mike Hillyer has put together a list of six very smart email/technology people that were affected by recent layoffs or other job upheaval. The group is a diverse set of experts, starting with a specialist in customer engagement (Tom Mairs), running supp…

It's infographic time! This one breaks down the top 25 mailbox providers in the UK, as measured by this methodology: Any domain in the "top 10 million domains" ( as measured by various online tools ), And that domain name ends in .uk, the Internet country code top…

It's been a long week. Let's get weird. The song: "Frontier Psychiatrist" by the Avalanches. I'm not entirely sure what's going on here, but it's a fun collage of sound.

Cablevision, Optonline, and Suddenlink cable internet services all seem to be owned by Altice USA , a company spun out from the European telecommunications provider Altice. Altice USA is a collection of brands brought together via multiple acquisitions, and Altice USA has outso…

You've seen the advice: "Just avoid these 18 spam trigger words and always get to the inbox!" I've been doing this a long time and somebody new pops up with guidance like this a few times a year, and it's just absolute bullshit, and it's been bullshit …

Thanks to  Cyrill Gross from Mailix , we now have first impressions of the new Zoom email client . Note that this is NOT the new "zmail.com" email service   -- it's the email client  application -- and it runs as part of the Zoom desktop client on Mac or Windows.…

Eleven years ago, Laura Atkins of Word to the Wise warned: Using bit.ly to shorten links in your emails will get you blocked . Indeed, Spamhaus made a change back around that time that led me to warn that link shortening tools were likely to end up blocklisted more often. Fas…

As we wind things down for the long holiday weekend here in the USA, please allow me to say thank you, friends, for reading and subscribing! Please enjoy "Thank You Friends" by Big Star, a woefully underrated rock band that more people should know about.

CASL is (literally) “ Canada’s Anti-Spam Legislation .” If you’re American, think of it as the Canadian version of CAN-SPAM , the US federal anti-spam law, but with some important differences. I know a fair amount about CAN-SPAM (disclaimer: I’m not a lawyer) but I know less ab…

A friend warned me of a scenario that could have the potential to freak people out, if misunderstood. It looks like this: This person is using Spamhaus to filter inbound mail. They seem to be rejecting mail from Gmail due to a Spamhaus listing. The Spamhaus website DOES suggest…

Challenge/Response is a specific type of email filter. If you use a Challenge/Response (C/R) spam filter to protect yourself from spam, here's what happens: Your email server or service receives a new inbound email message. The system checks to see if this is a person that …

Videoconferencing provider Zoom is getting into the email game. Their new Zoom Mail service will allow users to create their own user accounts using the zmail.com domain, but the bigger play is offering custom domain email hosting to paid clients. Surf on over here for more ab…

Blake E. Reid, writing for LAWFLARE breaks down the legal merits of the Republic National Committee's lawsuit against Google over Gmail's spam filtering. Starting with, "the trouble with the RNC's pointillistic arguments is that they invoke a bunch of differen…

Back in the day, these used to be called Postmaster Pages (or Postmaster Sites ) and they are where email senders would go to look for help when having deliverability issues. Wondering what to do about mail bouncing at a mailbox provider or internet service provider? Need to su…

I've blogged about the Friendly From before, just basically so ( and you can find that here ), but now, Jennifer Nespola Lantz takes it to the next level. Over at the Kickbox blog , she dives deep into how the Friendly From can impact deliverability success, guiding you thr…

European telecommunications provider Orange has shut down email services in Slovakia.  This means that the email domain orangemail.sk is no more. Orange notified users here that as of November 1, 2022 it is no longer possible to send or receive emails or SMS messages via the …

US telecommunications provider Hargray offers broadband internet "throughout the Lowcountry region of South Carolina and the Savannah region of Georgia," according to Wikipedia. They've recently posted notice that they're getting out of the email business, in…

Dear Al: How much does your email address matter when it comes to getting mail through, i.e. what about addresses like mycompany.guru or mycompany.live? In those domains, the ".guru" and ".live" segments are called "TLDs" or top-level domain. You c…

For today's fun Friday share, let's get in the spirit of the season with this comprehensive breakdown of common Halloween memes, courtesy of Wired's Amelia Tait . We'll get back on topic next week.

Multiple folks over on the Mailop list are reporting that Microsoft OLC (Outlook.com/Hotmail/etc)'s IPv6 inbound mail servers are deferring inbound mail delivery attempts with "451 4.7.500 Server busy. Please try again later" errors. The fix seems to be to stop …

Wondering what domain names mailbox provider Fastmail uses for their email service? You'll never get an exact list, as customers can point their own domains at the service, but it turns out that Fastmail has a built-in list of 110 email domains that they offer up for clien…

Thanks to a new feature in iOS 16, it's pretty easy for you to schedule an email you're writing to be automatically sent in the future at a certain time. Check out the how-to here , courtesy of Mac Observer. And if you're looking for more information on all the diff…

What's up with that Gmail political email pilot program, previously revealed by Axios and discussed by my friends Jennifer Nespola Lantz and T ravis Murray ( and me , and others)? Strangely enough, according to the Washington Post, Democrats are flocking to it, and Repub…

Did you know? There is a dog named Spam and he's dressed up as a pirate for Halloween and he's up for adoption, courtesy of the Hallie Hill Animal Sanctuary in Hollywood, South Carolina. If you live nearby, you probably should adopt this little guy immediately. Click he…

The email domain love.com was previously owned by AOL, then Verizon, then Yahoo, as the email services and corporate oversight changed for the AOL/Yahoo email services. From the context, it sounds as though it was once possible to have an email address at the love.com domain n…

Estonian webhost and mailbox provider Zone now supports BIMI and will display a sender logo in Zone Webmail, if they're able to. VMC is required. Find more details here . Doing a quick check of my domain data, I think that Zone's primary email domains are: webmail.zone.…

Over on the Oracle Blog , Clint Kaiser, Daniel Deneweth, Jason Witt note that we’re at the one year anniversary of the launch of the Apple Mail Privacy Protection functionality. How did it impact marketers? How does it impact analytics, email deliverability, live content, and e…

Do you want to be kind to your friendly neighborhood mailbox provider? Of course you do! Who doesn't want to "do a solid" favor for a giant, faceless corporation?? I kid. Seriously, though, this pro-tip has benefit both to you and to the mailbox providers: If you …

It's that time again! Are you living for the weekend? Me, too. And the O'Jays have just the perfect song for us. See you on the east side...or maybe the west side, if you go over the bridge. Enjoy.

Click here for a more recent BIMI status update . Normally now would be a good time for me to provide a write up on the current status of mailbox provider support for BIMI, but my Kickbox colleague Jennifer Nespola Lantz beat me to it, so I'll just link to her very informat…