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For some time now I have contended that Confirmed Opt-in, 'COI' is dead, or at the very least on life support. It certainly is not a major factor in the continued relation between sender and receiver; that relies far more heavily on the ongoing and historical reputation of the mailer and the mail stream. Proof of permission doesn't scale; end-users complain all the time, but it is rare if not impossible for a receiving site to request proof when an end-user complains, then the receiver complains to the sender, and the sender says that permission was actually in place. Much more commonly, the sender unsubscribes the address and moves on, permission or not, since the subscriber doesn't want the mail any more. But then, I recently had two eye-opening experiences... more
One of the key features of the soon-to-launch iPhone is its advanced web browser capabilities. "The iPhone is the first smart phone we've tested with a real, computer-grade Web browser, a version of Apple's Safari," say the Wall Street Journal. To make the user's browsing experience even more efficient, the phone even comes with a top-level domain (TLD) button labeled ".com". Rather interesting given that today there are over two hundred TLDs in existence including .mobi... more
ZDNet UK has an article on IPv6 and what may slow down its deployment. Jay Daley, from Nominet points out to the fact that the current IPv6 allocation policy used by RIPE NCC is geared towards ISPs. This is a complaint I have heard time and time again. Under the current policy, you have to show to RIPE NCC that you are going to allocate 200 address blocks to your customers before you are allocated a /32 block. Obviously, a large corporate network cannot afford to renumber every time it switches ISPs... more
The IPv6 Portal reports on a paper titled "The Choice: IPV4 Exhaustion or Transition to IPv6", written by Jordi Palet, warning that organizations must start planning for IPv6 now or "be aware that some already have, and you are beginning to be at a disadvantage." From the report: "This is going to affect the business of existing Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and to a greater extent, at a certain point in time, the creation of new ISPs. As a consequence if may have a deeper impact in developing regions (Africa, Asia and Latin America/Caribbean) where the penetration of the Internet is not yet so widespread." more
I recently came across a copy of a ruling in the bizarre case of MySpace vs. theglobe.com. Theglobe.com was the ultimate dot.com bubble company. It started up here in Ithaca, and went public at the peak of dot.com hysteria with one of the the greatest one-day price runups ever. Since then they bought and sold a variety of busineses, none of which ever made any money, including the Voiceglo VoIP service which appears to be what the spam was promoting. more
NetworkWorld is running an article today that talks about the announcement from ARIN (the American Registry for Internet Numbers) of the ARIN Board resolution calling upon ARIN to no longer be "neutral" in the IPv4 vs IPv6 space and instead work to actively encourage migration to IPv6... Until now, ARIN and the other RIRs have generally been fairly neutral in the IPv4 versus IPv6 debate and have not shown a preference in allocation, but this announcement from ARIN shows the first signs of change. more
Last December I wrote about Mark Mumma, who runs a small web hosting company in Oklahoma City and his battle with Omega World Travel a/k/a cruise.com. Mumma lost his CAN SPAM suit agains them in December, but Omega's countersuit for defamation went to trial last week, and I hear that the jury awarded Omega $2.5 million in damages, which Mumma is not likely to be able to pay. This may be painted in some circles as a huge defeat for anti-spam activists, but it's not... more
A case study by Efficient Frontier mentions how using the Google Adsense for Domains network doubled the conversion ratio of search ads for their clients. According to their website, "Efficient Frontier manages more than $400 million in annual PPC spend under management, counts 80 of the top 500 search advertisers as clients and manages over 30 million keywords"... "When we analyzed the results, we were shocked. We didn't expect to see that domain park sites can bring in the quality of traffic necessary..." more
Well, it has been quite a while since first the Hong Kong OFTA (in 2004) and then CITB (in 2006) issued requests for public comment about a proposed UEM (Unsolicited Electronic Messaging) bill to be introduced in Hong Kong, for the purpose of regulating unsolicited email, telephone and fax solicitations. We're a large (worldwide) provider of email and spam filtering - but we're based in Hong Kong, and any regulation there naturally gets tracked by us rather more actively than laws elsewhere. We sent in our responses to both these agencies... The bill is becoming law now - and most of it looks good... There's one major fly in the ointment though... more
Legitimate email marketers, anti-spam groups and beleaguered recipients got a bit of good news with the arrest last week of a man described as one of the world's most prolific spammers. Robert Alan Soloway, 27, dubbed "the Seattle Spammer" by federal officials, was indicted on 35 charges related to fraudulent Internet activities. Soloway pleaded not guilty to all charges at his May 30 arraignment. You can read more here. Although it's always great when a notorious spammer gets put out of business, such actions probably won't result in a drop in the amount of spam that gets sent... more
Seems that DNSSEC is being subjected to what an old boss of mine used to call the "fatal flaw seeking missiles" which try to explain the technical reasons that DNSSEC is not being implemented. First it was zone walking, then the complexity of Proof of Non-Existence (PNE), next week ... one shudders to think. While there is still some modest technical work outstanding on DNSSEC, NSEC3 and the mechanics of key rollover being examples, that work, of itself, does not explain the stunning lack of implementation or aggressive planning being undertaken within the DNS community. more
While travelling home from Geneva, I was thinking quite a lot on the relationship between a ccTLD (registry) and a Country. This is because many countries are starting to talk louder and louder about the responsibilities Countries have on critical infrastructure, or (possibly more important) the management of the critical infrastructure. Will for example any (none?) of ccTLD operators (servers) sustain a denial of service attack of a scale similar to the attack on the root servers? What can ccTLD operators do to resist the malicious attacks? Should this be discussed? more
ICANN sent a 10-page letter to RegisterFly on February 21st threatening to terminate its accreditation. The letter is available here. ICANN's not exactly advertising this -- no conspicuous notice appears on its home page and, more curiously, no update has been posted by the Ombudsman despite two prior postings about RegisterFly in the past week. A member of the general public would be hard pressed to find out that any action has been threatened. more
In an entry in the ICANN blog, Paul Levins says they've arranged to move Registerfly's domains to another registrar. They won't say who the other registrar is beyond "an existing accredited Registrar with a demonstrated record of customer service" which could be just about anyone other than Registerfly. They have "most" of the registrant data. All is to be unveiled next week. In the meantime, read the comments on the blog... more
Wednesday was the open public consultation preparing for the second meeting of the Internet Governance Forum, which will take place in Rio de Janaeiro on 12th-15th November. Although the inaugural Athens meeting was widely deemed a success, having largely stayed off the dread topics of wresting control of DNS from ICANN and IP addressing from the RIRs, the usual suspects were back demanding that these topics be added to the agenda. more
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