Email

Greylisting Still Works - Part I

Greylisting is a hoary technique for rejecting spam sent by botnets and other poorly written spamware. When a mail server receives an attempt to deliver mail from a hitherto unseen sending host IP address, it rejects the message with a "soft fail" error which tells the sender to try again later. Real mail software does try again, at which point you note that the host knows how to retry and you don't greylist mail from that IP again. more

Making Multi-Language Mail Work (Part 3)

In the previous installments we looked at software changes in mail servers, and in the software that lets user mail programs pick up mail. What has to change in the user mail programs? ... The first and most obvious is that users have to be able to enter the addresses. more

Cybersecurity Considerations in the Work-From-Home Era

Verisign is deeply committed to protecting our critical internet infrastructure from potential cybersecurity threats, and to keeping up to date on the changing cyber landscape. Over the years, cybercriminals have grown more sophisticated, adapting to changing business practices and diversifying their approaches in non-traditional ways. We have seen security threats continue to evolve in 2020, as many businesses have shifted to a work from home posture due to the COVID-19 pandemic. more

Email Portability, DKIM, and Socio-Political Implications on Tech Development

A few years ago, cell phone portability was introduced in the United States which caused a major shift in the market. The same thing happened this past year in Israel, following a major battle involving the cell carriers, consumer groups and the Israeli parliament (The Knesset). What if the same happened with email addresses? Ridiculous, you say? May be so, but there is chatter here in Israel to create a law which forces the local service providers hands to do just that. more

Synacor Provides a New Complaint Feedback Loop Service to the Internet Community

Last week, Synacor joined other major mailbox providers by introducing a complaint feedback loop service -- powered by ReturnPath. This increases the number of public complaint feedback loops available today across the internet. more

The Kindness of Strangers, or Not

A few days ago I was startled to get an anti-spam challenge from an Earthlink user, to whom I had not written. Challenges are a WKBA (well known bad idea) which I thought had been stamped out, but apparently not. The plan of challenges seems simple enough; they demand that the sender does something to prove he's human that a spammer is unlikely to do. more

Maybe Email IS Dead - Part of It, Anyway

I tend to chuckle at every new proclamation that email is dead. Google Wave won't kill it. Twitter and Facebook aren't killing it; they're using it. RSS didn't kill it. Instant messaging didn't kill it. "Push media" (remember that?) didn't kill it. AOL and Compuserve and Prodigy didn't kill it; they joined it. And before that, usenet and email lived happily side-by-side. more

ACLU, Anti-Spam Laws, and the First Amendment

In an article published by the Technology Liberation Front, Cato Institute adjunct scholar Tim Lee dissects a recent argument by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) regarding free speech & anti-spam laws. It's been interesting to watch the ACLU wrestle with anti-spam legislation. Their entire purpose is to work through the legal system to protect our civil rights, as defined in the First Amendment -- which is why I've been a card-carrying member since before I was old enough to vote... more

Perfect Storm Brewing at ESPs Amidst Growing PowerMTA Admin Crisis

Sometimes, a software company is as much about people as it is about technology. Who says PowerMTA admins don't have influence? Not only are they the influencers of our brand [Port25] they are also the main influencers and decision-makers when it comes to purchasing decisions. more

Jeremy Jaynes Gets One More Chance

n 2004 Jaynes became the country's first convicted spam felon under the Virginia anti-spam law. He's been appealing his conviction ever since, most recently losing an appeal to the Virginia Supreme Court by a 4-3 decision in February. As I discussed in more detail at the time the key questions were a) whether the Virginia law had First Amendment problems and b) whether Jaynes had standing to challenge it. The court answered No to b), thereby avoiding the need to answer a), the dissent answered Yes to both. more

Georgians Use Spam to Explain Their Situation

Call it outreach, call it propaganda or call it brilliance or even desperate measures, spammers (people) who favour the Georgian side in the recent conflict have been spamming using email, to get their point across. Depending on where in the world you are from, your ideological standpoint on Russia and your beliefs, when it comes to what email should be like, can be different and you may judge the action as you will. I call it spam. An Estonian colleague Viktor Larionov was quoted saying that whether there is a cyber war in Georgia or not, we know there is in fact a media war in play... more

RealTimeML:  Email Send Time Optimization for Supply Chain Bottlenecks

Look for this trio of email-related organizations MessageGears, Validity, Vidi-Emi, to become trailblazers in the RealTimeML Email landscape. This article will examine the nascent concept of utilizing RealTimeML to optimize for open rates and ultimately engagement rates by using a SendTime Email Optimization model. The model will infer RealTimeML predictions for optimal engagement rates, which provides enormous value throughout your current supply chain. Additionally, we will share ongoing time trials to serve the model efficiently. more

Response Policy Zones (RPZs): Use as a Blocklisting Process

Gradually it seems the word is spreading about a new blocking methodology to interrupt the ability of end users to click and visit phishing sites - thereby having their personal information/credentials at risk. This is the DNS Response Policy Zones. DNS RPZs allows companies that run recursive resolvers to create a zone that will not resolve specific domains. more

Canadian Marketing Association Attacks Anti-Spam Bill

With the final Industry Committee review of C-27, Canada's anti-spam legislation, set for Monday afternoon, lobby groups have been increasing the pressure all week in an effort to water down many of the bill's key protections. Yesterday, the Canadian Marketing Association chimed in with an emergency bulletin to its members calling on them to lobby for changes to the bill. While the CMA was very supportive of the bill when it appeared before the committee in June, it now wants to kill the core protection in C-27 - a requirement for express opt-in consent. more

Internet Governance Forum Publishes BPs on Regulation and Mitigation of Unsolicited Communications

The IGF this morning published a number of reports, including the aforementioned one, at the URL provided, titled 'IGF 2015 Best Practice Forum Regulation and mitigation of unsolicited communications.' The reports can be found in the included URLs on the IGF Website. more