Proper Assumptions
20 February 2014
I’m at the Messaging, Malware, & Mobile Anti-Abuse Working Group meeting this week. After all of the sessions on Tuesday were over, I was speaking with a colleague from another company about how I handle some aspects of providing client advice and he suggested that I write that down in a blog post. When dealing…
If ESPs were like ISPs…
12 February 2014
Everyone wants to protect users and trap data. As a result, people like to send redacted complaints to email service providers (ESPs). Generally, I’m pretty happy to work with redacted data. I need to be able to tell which client sent mail. I need to be able to tell when they sent the mail (the…
Spammer escapes slammer (Updated)
28 December 2013
The Lompoc Record is reporting that Jeffery Kilbride has escaped from the minimum security federal lockup. Kilbride was convicted in 2007 of offenses primarily related to the CAN-SPAM Act. Among the things that were apparently included was an allegation that Kilbride and his partner had impaired the ability to track them down by using false…
Make money that’s worth it…
14 December 2013
Was that Day Off Worth his Life^ – NARA – 534698 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
I’m in the midst of putting some old posts back up. That means searching through the Wayback Machine, looking for interesting posts (like many other writers, I think that a lot of what I’ve put out in the past is drivel), and then copying and pasting it into the blog platform, and then altering the date (so that the URL doesn’t change). I came across this postfrom December 14, 2006. In re-reading it, it occurred to me that with
just a few edits, it’s all still relevant today. So, rather than put it back in its old place, I’m putting up a new post (with appropriate edits), exactly 7 years after posting it the first time.
“Forward to a Friend” and Germany
27 November 2013
Lots of folks have been talking recently about a September BGH decision holding that “emails sent using a ‘send to a friend’ function are to be considered spam, unless the recipient had given prior express consent” Federal Court of Justice, Email Recommendation (2013).* This is a fairly significant development in law. As a general rule,…
Don’t opt-out of spam?
19 November 2013
Yesterday, Laura Atkins wrote a blog post which suggests that unsubscribing from spam doesn’t result in receiving more spam (Atkins 2013). I know that this is a project that she’s been working on for at least a month, and I don’t have any reason to doubt her results. Additionally, she links to (Magill 2013), (Pogue 2013),…
Wherein Zoominfo causes spam
18 November 2013
Zoominfo, DiscoverOrg, and Lead411 are popular lead generation sources. Every once in a while someone comes along and tries to defend the use of crowd sourced list generation services (of which ZoomInfo and Jigsaw seem to be the largest). These systems work by allowing people to download contact information for third parties in exchange for the…
Looking at a spam stream: The story of Jimmy Walker
8 November 2013
I was recently asked about how to go about proving that someone was not obtaining email addresses in a direct, opt-in manner. The methodology won’t surprise you, and if you have been involved in helping problematic clients for a while, the results might not even surprise you. The “someone” at issue was a payday loaner.…
Deliverability Relationship Marketing
13 September 2013
A teaser (King 2013) for a Delivera whitepaper by Ken Magill provided blog fodder for Laura Atkins over at Word to the Wise (Atkins 2013). Ken’s premise, with which Laura agrees, is that ESPs which start talking about the wonderful relationships they have with folks at Spamhaus or at various ISPs should cause you to be…