Spam Resource: All Things Deliverability

From Brian Krebs comes the story of the fall and rise of internet hosting firm HostWinds . Founder Peter Holden explains how they came to get enticed into hosting spammers, which seemed very profitable in the short term, but turned out to not be so tenable for the long haul. In…

As reported on Slashdot: "[After recent spam filter changes at Gmail, Linux inventor Linus] Torvalds said his own experience [is] that around 30 per cent of the mail in his spam box turned out not to be spam." I see lots of false positives in my own mailboxes as well,…

I registered the domain spamresource.com on December 31, 2000 and in the year 2001 first used it as a platform to publish my thoughts and opinions on spam-related topics (hand coding the HTML all along the way). Throughout 2004 and 2005, I also used the domain name to house an…

Electronic Frontier Foundation's Jeremy Malcolm and Mitch Stoltz published an article yesterday quite reasonably expressing concern over a proposal in front of ICANN that would limit use of "domains by proxy"-style WHOIS privacy for domain registration services. …

It's been a little over a year since Yahoo and AOL implemented restrictive "p=reject" DMARC policies, saying you essentially aren't allowed to use their domains outside of their infrastructure. Death to mailing lists was predicted; but what seems to have act…

Return Path's Tom Sather explains when it's OK to use a shared IP address . Basically, when your volume is very low. He suggests that the cutoff be 50,000 messages a month -- below that level, you should be on a shared IP address. Above that, a dedicated IP address is r…

Over on her Word to the Wise blog, Laura Atkins shares a wonderful list of links to almost every email service provider's policy prohibiting use of bought lists or purchased email addresses. It's funny, working in this business.  A prospective client might say, "w…

According to France-based Deliverability monitoring company DeliverNow, French ISPs Orange, SFR, and Laposte.net have deployed a new spam filtering mechanism powered by Vade Retro . This new filtering will dynamically block senders who have an elevated spam complaint rate. (I …

Josh over at Word to the Wise explains that as Microsoft brings live IPv6 support for its Office365/Exchange Online Protection email platforms, they're mandating that all mail sent over IPv6 must authenticate with either Sender Policy Framework (SPF) or DomainKeys Identifie…

If you're trying to send mail to subscribers at clear.net or clearwire.net today, you'll notice that all delivery attempts are being rejected, because wireless data provider Clearwire has retired all email services as of April 15, 2015. Once upon a time, Sprint was …

On March 10th, the Messaging, Malware and Mobile Anti-Abuse Working Group (M3AAWG) published a new version of the Senders BCP (Best Common Practices) document -- a solid overview and set of recommendations on how to not be a spammer. They're not particularly rough or tough…

In 2014, Yahoo and AOL both implemented strict "p=reject" DMARC policies on their primary domains. This presented challenges to both AOL/Yahoo users and various service providers. Yahoo implemented this new DMARC policy in February. AOL implemented the sample policy …

Ken Magill has the story on initial filings regarding the lawsuit brought by Craig Ames and Robert McGee against Spamhaus in the United Kingdom.

Read all about it over at The Hill. My question is, does this thing have a chance of going anywhere, based on the current gridlock in Congress? I'm doubtful, but we will see.

According to multiple sources , Amazon is starting up a cloud-hosted email service. Called WorkMail, it looks as though it'll be price competitive to similar offerings from Microsoft and Google . Looking into my crystal ball, I assume they'll get some adoption in 201…

What is a list-unsusbcribe header, you might ask? It's an email header, typically hidden from the end user, that includes information that allows the MUA (mail user agent; meaning your email client, email reader, or webmail platform) to submit an unsubscribe request on your…

Mickey writes, "I'm being blocked by AHBL. I own a tax and accounting firm. We send out two newsletters per year to our existing clients using an ESP. We give our clients every opportunity to be removed from the list if they so choose. We do not and have not spammed ev…

As reported on TechCrunch and elsewhere, Yahoo's Chinese email service is no more. Warned all the way back in April, current users of the Chinese version of Yahoo! Mail were given the opportunity to transition their accounts to Alibaba's email service, Alimail . As of J…

My wife and I were lucky enough to be able to purchase a new car earlier this year. It's a nice car and we love it. But ever since then, seemingly once a month or so, I get a survey request related to automobiles and the automotive industry. Some from known entities, some f…