October 2008
39 posts
Return Path: It's Not Rock and Roll, But We Like... →
at last, email marketers who don’t know how to read won’t be left out of the deliverability discussion
Deliverability.com: The ISP that marketers dream... →
Josh Baer describes what marketers want from an ISP (along with guaranteed inbox delivery.)
AP: E-tailers push e-mail discounts to lure... →
“…if consumers are fed up with the e-mail blasts now, just wait until the holiday season gets under way in earnest — with merchants expecting to increase the pace [of sending email] as they do whatever they can to make their sales goals.”
CircleID: Co-Operation to Make the Domain Business... →
‘In order to provide more security for the Domain Name System (DNS), a group of large domain-name registries and registrars has got together with IT security providers and government agencies to launch a new workgroup: the “Registry Internet Safety Group” (RISG).’
Seth's Blog: Be careful of who you work for →
in short: if you work for a schmuck, or represent schmucky clients, then you’re a schmuck too.
ComputerWorld: Next president will need to make... →
“Among the areas needing immediate attention…are a greater focus on public-/private-sector collaboration, more transparency around an unfolding multibillion-dollar cybersecurity initiative announced earlier this year…, greater security research and development investments, and more direct involvement by the White House.”
(via fergdawg)
All Spammed Up: Spammer Hiding Techniques →
Rather than pushing GFi Mail Essentials (like most of their articles), the All Spammed Up blog lists a few common spammer techniques for evading detection — all of which I’ve seen legitimate marketers use, too.
Maybe they simply don’t realize that it makes them look like spammers?
Business Wire: Study Finds 18 to 34-Year-Olds More... →
“It is too easy to assume that the media consumers choose for their own news, information and entertainment are, by default, the best media to use for marketing messages. This is a dangerous assumption to make in a time when consumers are becoming increasingly aware of their level of control over their media experiences.”
The study is clearly...
Jeffersonville News and Tribune: Robo-calls — Spam... →
“They are intrusive; they are usually offensive, spewing recorded messages versus an actual voice so that the listener cannot question the person making the statements; and, just like most telemarketing campaigns, they are annoying.”
DoxPara Research: DNS TXT Record Parsing Bug in... →
(via deliverability.com)
New York Times: A Robot Network Seeks to Enlist... →
MSNBC: ISPs pressed to become child porn cops →
(via fergdawg)
Light Blue Touchpaper: Non-cooperation in the... →
“…[phishing site] take-down company A knows about a phishing website targeting a particular bank, but take-down company B is ignorant of its existence. If it is company B that has the contract for removing sites for that bank then, since they don’t know the website exists, they take no action and the site stays up.”
And, we all lose.
(via taint.org)
Spam Wars: A Botnet By Any Other Name... →
“That Storm is down but Srizbi is up doesn’t mean squat to the recipients of spam generated by either’s army.”
This is why the Box of Meat hasn’t joined our fellow anti-spam bloggers in excitedly reporting on the apparent death of Storm. To the recipients of the abuse, it doesn’t matter at all.
John Levine: Users don't like forwarded spam →
a recap of the forwarding vs. spam filtering argument
CircleID: Continued Controversy Over Google Ads on... →
there’s been a class action lawsuit filed against Google, who profits greatly from their ad network being included on abusively registered domains
open...: Why We Need More Spam →
PC World: Woman Is First to Plead Guilty in... →
“A woman accused of helping spam kingpin Alan Ralsky…has pleaded guilty to spam charges.”
New York Times: Authorities Shut Down Major Spam... →
‘“This is pretty major. At one point these guys delivered up to one-third of all spam,” said Richard Cox, chief information officer at SpamHaus, a nonprofit antispam research group.’
PC World: Will the Real Spam King Please Stand Up? →
Dan Tynan plays along with the false grandeur of the so-called spam kings
The Constructed Life: Spam as Spiritual Practice →
(actually, she’s talking about deleting spam being a spiritual practice)
CircleID: Peering into Fast Flux Botnet Activity →
Jose Nazario writes about his new paper (authored with Thorsten Holz) researching fast flux botnets, and some of the surprising (and dismaying) things they learned.
The Industry Standard: Registry operators are... →
Announcing new policies to deal with rampant abuse, Afilias — the operator of .info — “…is taking the power into its own hands that ICANN seems unwilling to wield.”
Direct Mag: Goodmail to begin charging for... →
Ken Magill reports that “…Goodmail is set to begin charging for its services in 2009…” after a 90-day free trial period which began in July 2006, and says that the primary draw is for ESPs to be able to use open rates as a valid metric again.
Clinton Herald: Kramer wins another spam judgment;... →
“Robert W. Kramer III, owner and operator of CIS Internet Services, received the $236,480,660 judgment against two individual defendants….”
Network World: CAN-SPAM: What went wrong? →
“Failure of law to deter spammers shows limits of U.S. legislation in a world of global cybercrime”
CircleID: Inside a Managed Spam Service →
A spammer uses simple tricks like stuffing Cc and Bcc to improve their throughput via a managed spam service — in order to undersell that same service.
DNSBL Resource: Shutting Down Blacklists →
“… if you use DNSBLs on your mailserver, you need to pay attention…” to this article by Al Iverson.
Return Path: The Root of All Email →
J.D. explains how Jon Postel’s most common quote “…is the root of all email, from the earliest standards discussions to the latest theories of authentication, reputation, and deliverability.”
Consumerist: 7 Stupid Online Security Mistakes... →
Stay Safe Online: National Cyber Security... →
“October 20008 will be the fifth year of Cyber Security Awareness Month.”
That’s a direct quote, complete with typo & grammatical errors. *sigh*
Washington Post Security Fix: New Federal Law... →
“President Bush last week signed into law a bill that seeks to make it easier for prosecutors to go after cybercrooks, while ensuring that identity theft victims are compensated for their time and trouble when convicted identity thieves are forced to cough up ill-gotten gains.”
Boing Boing: John Hodgman in BBtv's SPAMasterpiece... →
‘…the debut installment of Boing Boing tv’s SPAMASTERPIECE THEATER, which Hodgman himself describes as the dramatization of “true tale[s] of romance, adventure, infamy, and low-cost prescription drugs, all culled from the reams of actual, unsolicited emails, received here by us and people like you — what we call SPAM.”’
MX Logic: Spam Survey →
anti-spam vendor MX Logic is conducting a somewhat amusing survey on peoples’ attitudes about spam
OUT-LAW.COM: Liberal Democrats broke privacy laws... →
“The Liberal Democrats broke anti-spam laws by placing 250,000 automated telephone calls last week without prior consent, according to the UK’s privacy chief. If the party continues placing such calls, it has been warned that it could face prosecution.”
(via legalbrief)
TheHill.com: House limits constituent e-mails to... →
“The [U.S. House of Representatives] is limiting e-mails from the public to prevent its websites from crashing due to the enormous amount of mail being submitted on the financial bailout bill.”
At Word to the Wise, Laura Atkins reminds us that “This is similar to what some ISPs have to do under periods of peak load.”
It’s a technique (actually a variety of...
Spam Wars: Riding the Coattails of Credibility →
Danny Goodman discusses pharmacy spam which “borrowed” an opt-out link & CAN-SPAM statement from a legitimate message.