Al Iverson
Evan writes, “Hi Al, My email address has just been compromised and now I am receiving hundreds of System Administrator and Mail delivery failure notices sent to my inbox from all those poor people who have received unwanted spam from my address. I noticed your name on the web when I went searching to find out how and if I can stop this happening and was hoping that you might have some ideas other than changing my email address?”Hey Evan, I’m sorry to hear you’re going through that. But don’t despair, this soon will pass. In the mean time, here’s what you should do.Change your email password, just to be safe. All throughout history, it’s been pretty unlikely that the bounces coming back from spam have anything to do with sending from your actual email account and email system. Do change that password, though, just in case. If a bad guy had…
Hey, just a quick reminder that I compile my Spam Resource blog content into a weekly email newsletter that sends out every Monday morning. Each week it contains highlights from the past week of posts, and an article or two from the twenty years of archives I’ve got up in here. God forbid I ever have free time again, I’ll also start throwing in email exclusive content, like I’ve been threatening to do forever. So if you want to be sure never to miss out on my “valuable” blog and email content, feel free to sign up for my email newsletter here. It’s sponsored by nobody except me, with the caveat that you’ll hear me talking about what I’m working on at work from time to time. And if you’re email technology savvy, you can find endless hours of fun by pulling apart the email headers and telling me what…
I think Verizon Wireless has supported reporting SMS spam to them via the 7726 (SPAM) SMS number for a while now. I’m not really sure when that started, but very recently, Verizon’s Alex Lawson posted a blog post talking about 7726. Check it out here. TL;DR? Forward unwanted SMS messages to 7726. What happens next? Maybe not enough, but reporting is a good first step. Verizon does say they block a lot of SMS spam, so perhaps end user reports feed into those mechanisms. AT&T and T-Mobile tell you to forward spam texts to 7726, too. Spam reports are valuable in the email world. Let’s hope that’s true of SMS land, as well.I had a chance to use it just now and what you do is first you forward the SMS message itself, and then 7726 replied with, “Please reply with the sender’s number. Messages shared with 7726 are shared with…
ExpertSender is a “Multichannel Marketing Automation system designed to help fast-growing businesses grow their revenue with marketing automation across the Email, SMS, Web Push, Mobile Push, Facebook Audiences, Google Customer Match & Mobile apps and more.” They are based in Gdańsk, Poland, and they are looking to hire a Deliverability & Compliance Specialist. Could that be you?In that role, your daily tasks would include: Monitoring deliverability performance and providing support to account managers in case of potential issues or opportunities for improvement, educating colleagues and clients on best email sending practices and verifying that those practices are followed accordingly, developing our infrastructure by regular monitoring and updates in collaboration with IT, and managing their IP database, controlling available resources and more.For more information or to apply, click here.
I saw somebody ask recently how best to label their email marketing messages as an advertisement. Their intent was to comply with CAN-SPAM, the US federal anti-spam law. Though I am not a lawyer and this is not legal advice, allow me to clarify it with my layman’s pants on, since CAN-SPAM misunderstandings and myths abound and this is an easy one to help folks understand.According to CAN-SPAM, you do NOT have to label your email as an advertisement, if you have “prior affirmative consent.” Meaning, if all your email is opt-in, you only send marketing messages to people who have explicitly signed up to receive such email from you, then you’re good. You don’t need to label the mail as advertising.But don’t take my word from it — here’s the relevant detail, straight from the fine folks at the Federal Trade Commission (FTC):”If recipients have given their prior affirmative consent…
Anti-spammers and deliverability folks might think of this as a Permission Pass email. And indeed, Spamhaus has a whole guide describing how they think you should do it properly. But in addition to confirming and cleaning up certain types of problematic email lists, an email message process similar to this can be helpful to boost engagement, and boost deliverability and marketing success at the same time.Deliverability people call them re-engagement emails, while marketers call them winback campaigns. By either term, they’re extremely valuable as part of a “lifecycle management process” where you you might take one or more tries to “re-engage” (request a response / look for a sign of life) from non-responding recipients, and then, if they don’t respond, either suppress them (or apply other strategy) to get them out of the way of most mailings. The goal at the end of the day is to reduce the amount…
Yahoo (as far as Yahoo Mail is concerned) was once called Yahoo, then it absorbed AOL and became Oath, then Verizon Media, and now it is just called Yahoo again. Throughout this time there has been some form of ISP feedback loop — you know, that thing that sends complaint reports back to the sender or sender’s ESP platform when a Yahoo user clicks the “report spam” button. But the URL and process to sign up for the Yahoo CFL or FBL has changed over the years, and it’s easy to stumble across outdated guidance when Googling. So, here’s my try at providing updated guidance.A note on terminology: Yahoo calls this spam reporting process a CFL (Complaint Feedback Loop). I and most others call it an ISP (Internet Service Provider) FBL (Feedback Loop). I consider the terms CFL and FBL to be interchangeable in this context.What is it? The Yahoo…
If you monitor ISP feedback loop complaints, you may have noticed that the level of spam complaints received was greatly reduced over the weekend, as it appears that the Validity-run Universal FBL system seems to have stopped sending feedback loop complaint reports at some point on Saturday.Validity’s Universal Feedback Loop (FBL) is a system that handles ISP feedback loop complaint processing and forwarding for more than two dozen mailbox providers.I’m assuming that this likely afftected all of the FBLs managed by Validity, which includes: BlueTie, Comcast, COX, Fastmail, Italia Online, LiberoMail, Virgilio, Laposte.net, Liberty Global, UnityMedia, UPC, Locaweb, Mail.ru, OpenSRS, Rackspace, Seznam.cz, SilverSky, Swisscom, Synacor, TIM, Telenet, Telenor, Telstra, Terra, UOL, Virgin Media, XS4ALL, Yandex, and Ziggo.Validity appears to be in the process of restoring service as of Monday morning, March 21st and complaints appear to be flowing again. Spam reports could show a spike (temporary increase in volume) as…
The intent behind DMARC (Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting and Conformance) is to give a domain owner insight into who is sending mail using their domain and allow that domain owner to define a policy to tell ISPs what to do with mail that purports to be from them but doesn’t pass authentication checks (usually meaning that said mail is fraudulent). There’s a strong implication here that this is a domain level setting, it’s something that you would do at the highest possible level for your domain. Meaning here, I’d set a DMARC policy for spamresource.com, not for subdomains like newsletter.spamresource.com or email.spamresource.com. And generally speaking, that’s what you should do. It’s what I (usually) do.But what if you want to get granular and do this differently with one or more (or all) subdomains of your domain name? Here are some options.Do nothing (at the subdomain level). Maybe you’ll set a…
Twilio is hiring! They’re looking for a Deliverability Consultant. Might that be you?”This position is needed to manage a portfolio of email, sms messaging and/or multi-channel deliverability engagements of Twilio’s largest and most critical customers. Our team works with a variety of Twilio customers across a range of products — including email, sms messaging, and multi-channel programs — to help customers improve and grow the performance of their Twilio programs.”For more information and/or to apply, click here.