Spam Resource
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 outsourced email service for these domains to a company called Synchronoss. Alas, I wasn’t able to find any email postmaster/deliverability-specific contact information for Synchronoss, but with this list of domains you could at least easily configure and adjust throughput and throttle settings as necessary.Cablevision, Optonline, and Suddenlink Email Domains include: aamasonryinc.com, abcts.com, alphalabsusa.com, anatolelubbock.com, apexsurvey.com, bmsnr.com, brannonoil.com, brantoncompany.com, caddost.com, calvaryandrews.com, candcmachinery.com, carlbrowncpa.com, carolinacourtreporters.com, cebridge.net, chamber.huntsville.tx.us, cityofwinfieldtx.com, classicnet.net, cobbholmanlumber.com, edhauto.com, gatewaysnyder.com, gibraltarenergy.com, halfmannrealty.com, harrellfinancialservices.com, heritagehomessnyder.com, highagency.com, hoodtoolingandmachine.com, jacksonmelons.com, jayadkins.com, johnmclarkinc.com, kccrop.com, kiffe.com, kingwoodcable.com, kingwoodcable.net, npgcable.com, optimum.net, optonline.com, optonline.net, ponyexpress.net, stfrancis-wv.org, stjoelive.com, suddenlink.net, suddenlinkmail.com, tyler.net, uneedspeed.net.Note that this list may include the domains of some customers of Altice USA. All MX records
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 for years.Spam filters don’t work that way. They are not so simplistic that just a word or two from a static list are going to tank your inbox placement.Content does matter, to some degree, yes. Meaning that yes, what you say or include in your email messages can have an impact on inbox placement. But as far as ranking how important content is, it is third, usually a distant third place, behind IP and domain sending reputation.Don’t believe me? Here’s Magan Le from Litmus with “Why spam trigger words are a thing of the past,” where she sums it up nicely.Truth be told
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. A user configures it to access an existing email account, and currently only Gmail and Microsoft accounts are supported (in addition to accounts on Zoom’s own email service). Anyway, I don’t want to give too much away before linking, so click on through to learn more.
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.Fast forward a bit and it’s still something to be wary of. Last year I warned that Gmail seemed to be putting messages in the spam folder if they contained Bitly links. That may or may not still be the case today (probably isn’t, right at this exact second, but tomorrow is another day).So what should you do if you want short links and/or the tracking afforded to you by way of using Bitly or other link shortening services? You’ve got options, and I covered those options earlier this year.TL;DR? Use a custom domain for tracking or short links whenever possible.
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 about CASL. I wanted to learn more, so I asked for guidance from Canadian Deliverability expert Matthew Vernhout (who is currently VP, Deliverability North America for Netcore Cloud). Here are a few good links that he kindly shared with me.The Canadian government has an official CASL website here: Fightspam.gc.caMatthew’s “Email Karma” blog published a CASL Countdown series back in 2014, but the information there still seems to be very relevant.That’s just part of a whole CASL section that one can find on the Email Karma website.Privacy Agency NewPort Thomson has published a CASL ebook that has lots of useful information for marketers.The Canadian Marketing Association regularly posts
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 there might be an SBL entry (a blocklisting) for Gmail.So…Spamhaus is blocking Gmail? NO, no no. Gmail is not blocklisted by Spamhaus. Promise. Here’s what’s actually happening.Using Spamhaus is good, but querying Spamhaus using open/public DNS resolvers is bad. Spamhaus is actually rejecting those queries — they’re not blocking mail from Gmail. The person running into this problem needs to switch over to using the Spamhaus DQS (Data Query Service), and that ought to just flat out fix things.As noted above, the rejections are actually because the email administrator of the mailbox provider or mail server in question has configured Spamhaus in a way
Will tomorrow be another Saturday night? I guess we’ll have to wait and see. In the mean time, please enjoy Sam Cooke singing “Another Saturday Night” from 1963.
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 you’ve talked to before.If yes, the mail is forwarded to you, skipping the challenge step.If no, the mail is NOT forwarded to you, and the sender receives a notification back — a “challenge.”The notification encourages the sender to “respond” to the “challenge” by clicking a link, solving a puzzle (think CAPTCHA) or (this is a new one I’ve seen recently) paying a designated charity.The charity angle might be new; but C/R has been around forever. I know well how it works, having built my own implementation of it back in the late 1990s. And I’ve been pointing out the imperfections behind the concept since all the