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I finally broke down and did it. I set myself up as my own mailbox provider. I’ve got some of my inbound mail (I’ve got multiple addresses and domains) pointed at my new infrastructure and I’ve had lots of fun these past few weeks getting back into the role of postmaster.Why did I do it? All of the talk about Google potentially letting political senders bypass Gmail spam filters started to annoy me, first of all. And beyond my political concerns, Gmail allows a lot of mail through to my spam folder that I wish they would just block outright. So, with my own server, I can block whatever domains and IPs I want.I also wanted to bust the myth that hobbyist and small volume mail servers are effectively locked out of Gmail. I know from experience that it’s not true, and I wanted to have a server or service I
Google and various news outlets are reporting that Gmail had a significant outage today (Saturday, December 10th). Google reports that as of 4:16 PM UTC (10:16 AM US central time) things are on the mend, but that there’s a backlog of messages to be delivered.I can’t tell if senders found inbound delivery attempts delayed with 4xx errors, or if Google servers accepted messages then sat on them. Message delivery to the inbox, however, was definitely delayed for folks (observed by myself, too), regardless of what the backend systems were doing.
Blake E. Reid, writing for LAWFLARE breaks down the legal merits of the Republic National Committee’s lawsuit against Google over Gmail’s spam filtering. Starting with, “the trouble with the RNC’s pointillistic arguments is that they invoke a bunch of different laws that apply different rules to different kinds of platforms in different contexts.” It’s a good read and I found it full of insight. Check it out here.
What’s up with that Gmail political email pilot program, previously revealed by Axios and discussed by my friends Jennifer Nespola Lantz and Travis Murray (and me, and others)? Strangely enough, according to the Washington Post, Democrats are flocking to it, and Republicans seem to be avoiding it. Was this a bluff that they weren’t expecting Gmail to call? After all, a number of noisy Republicans complained about, and asked for a way through the spam filtering; they were offered such a path, and don’t seem to want to use it. Instead, the Republican National Committee is suing Google.Color me confused.Why do this now? It won’t be decided in time to affect midterm elections. It makes the whole thing seem like bit of a ploy, focused on publicity. And perhaps a bad faith one, given the opportunity the GOP was already offered to be able to bypass Gmail’s spam filters.And who
Check it out — it’s our first taste of BIMI on iOS outside of beta. Apple iOS users who upgrade to iOS 16 can now see a BIMI logo associated with an email send, depending on what mailbox provider they use. All four of these CNN Newsletter signup emails were opened and viewed on the default Apple mail client in iOS 16.0.2, and as you can see, iCloud and Fastmail users get shown the BIMI logo for CNN! You’ll note that no logo is displayed for the Yahoo and Gmail subscribers, even though both platforms support BIMI (and CNN has the Gmail-required VMC in place). Why Fastmail and not Gmail or Yahoo? I suspect that Fastmail was quickest to implement an updated “authentication results” header that includes information about the BIMI logo checks, and I don’t think Gmail and Yahoo are including that information. Yet? It seems likely that they’ll catch
Today’s guest post comes from my Kickbox colleague, Jennifer Nespola Lantz. Don’t forget to check out her posts over on the Kickbox blog. Take it away, Jen!Yesterday, a colleague shared a link, a much anticipated link, a link that adds clarity to a topic that caused some hair to catch on fire (mine in particular), some ire and anger, much speculation, and little support. That topic: Gmail’s Political Pilot Program or as Gmail has coined it Gmail Verified Sender Program Pilot (some speculate there are reasons for this, but let me learn my lesson and not talk about that just yet).I was hot on the topic when I first read about it and quick to comment judge. I was also quick to jump right into this newly shared link, filled with (what I hoped was) answers to some lingering questions. And what an enjoyable read it was. Not because it was
Here is the scenario. Maybe you’ve just gotten a bounce message that looks like this:Aug 25 11:20:24 s1 postfix/smtp[26906]: 98299221BB: to=, relay=gmail-smtp-in.l.google.com[142.250.141.27]:25, delay=1.2, delays=0.04/0.77/0.2/0.21, dsn=5.7.1, status=bounced (host gmail-smtp-in.l.google.com[142.250.141.27] said: 550-5.7.1 [206.125.175.2] Our system has detected that this message is not RFC 550-5.7.1 5322 compliant: duplicate headers. To reduce the amount of spam sent 550-5.7.1 to Gmail, this message has been blocked. Please review 550 5.7.1 RFC 5322 specifications for more information. j6-20020a637a46000000b0042b3a763e76si3563504pgn.127 – gsmtp (in reply to end of DATA command))Or perhaps it looks like this:Aug 25 12:48:59 s1 postfix/smtp[14180]: C90492056B: to=, relay=aspmx.l.google.com[142.250.141.27]:25, delay=0.69, delays=0.08/0/0.39/0.22, dsn=5.7.1, status=bounced (host aspmx.l.google.com[142.250.141.27] said: 550-5.7.1 [206.125.175.2] Our system has detected that this message is not RFC 550-5.7.1 5322 compliant: 550-5.7.1 Multiple ‘From’ headers found. 550-5.7.1 To reduce the amount of spam sent to Gmail, this message has been 550-5.7.1 blocked. Please visit 550-5.7.1 https://support.google.com/mail/?p=RfcMessageNonCompliant 550 5.7.1 and review RFC 5322 specifications for more information.
I’ve spent a lot of time lately explaining what exactly seedlist testing is, how it works, and why it’s valuable. I like it. I have a bias, after all, in that my day job is product manager for a suite of deliverability tools, and that includes seedlist-based inbox testing (shameless plug: find more info about the Kickbox Deliverability Suite here). Occasionally somebody will tell me that they’ve heard that seedlist testing can’t be trusted or that it’s not useful now in 2022, because mailbox provider spam filters are so individualistically focused on user feedback. Yeah…they have a point…sort of. But not quite.It is very true that spam filters are very user-centric. Gmail, in particular. Your Gmail spam filter is different than mine. Gmail tracks individual user feedback and tailors the spam filtering experience, if you will, based on the different inputs that you and I provide to it. That means
Over on the Validity blog, my friend Travis Murray has provided an update on the current status of that Gmail pilot program to allow some political senders to in theory be able to bypass some spam filters. Read it and be informed.The whole thing makes me itch. There are just too many apples to give everybody one bite, as I mentioned before.And My colleague Jennifer Nespola Lantz worries that this “is a flat degradation of trust for the end user” and I concur.So…what comes next here? Get ready to start sliding down that slippery slope here, folks.
Are you getting inundated with calendar spam? Are you annoyed that events from spammers show up on your calendar automatically, even if you didn’t accept the invite and RSVP to attend? Google now has a setting that will configure it to auto-add events to your calendar only if the invitation comes from someone you know. CNBC’s Ashley Capoot explains how to turn this on.