Articles I read today

It has been a rather busy day today, I do not have a full blog post. I did see a couple posts come across my RSS feeds. Both of them have content I want to talk about and discuss in a little more detail, as I think they touched on some very interesting issues.
Network World has an article interviewing Mark Risher from Yahoo. The article discusses Yahoo’s use of DomainKeys as part of their inbound mail filtering.
Mickey has an article about how to deal with ISPs when attempting to troubleshoot a blocking issue.
More details and commentary on both articles later this week.

Related Posts

Yahoo and Spamhaus

Yahoo has updated and modified their postmaster pages. They have also put a lot of work into clarifying their response codes. The changes should help senders identify and troubleshoot problems without relying on individual help from Yahoo.
There is one major change that deserves its own discussion. Yahoo is now using the SBL, XBL and PBL to block connections from listed IP addresses. These are public blocklists run by Spamhaus. Each of them targets a different type of spam source.
The SBL is the blocklist that addresses fixed spam sources. To get listed on the SBL, a sender is sending email to people who have never requested it. Typically, this involves email sent to an address that has not opted in to the email. These addresses, known as spamtraps, are used as sentinel addresses. Any mail sent to them is, by definition, not opt-in. These addresses are never signed up to any email address lists by the person who owns the email address. Spamtraps can get onto a mailing list in a number of different ways, but none of them involve the owner of the address giving the sender permission to email them.
Additionally, the SBL will list spam gangs and spam supporters. Spam supporters include networks that provide services to spammers and do not take prompt action to remove the spammers from their services.
The XBL is a list of IP addresses which appear to be infected with trojans or spamware or can be used by hackers to send spam (open proxies or open relays). This list includes both the CBL and the NJABL open proxy list. The CBL list machines which appear to be infected with spamware or trojans. The CBL works passively, looking only at those machines which actively make connections to CBL detectors. NJABL lists machines that are open proxies and open relays.
The Policy Block List (PBL) is Spamhaus’ newest list. Spamhaus describes this list as

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PBL and Yahoo

A few days ago I posted about Yahoo using the Spamhaus lists. In the comments of that post there have been multiple reports of mail being bounced from Yahoo with a reason of “on the PBL” but the IP was not on the PBL.
I am happy to look into this for people. I’m sure neither Spamhaus nor Yahoo want to be incorrectly rejecting email. To do this, though, I need the rejection message from Yahoo, the IP the mail was sent from and when it happened. Feel free to email the information to laura at wordtothewise.com.

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Predictions for 2008

I did not have a lot of predictions for what will happen with email at the beginning of the year so I did not do a traditional beginning of the year post. Over the last 3 – 4 weeks, though, I have noticed some things that I think show where the industry is going.
Authentication. In January two announcements happened that lead me to believe most legitimate mail will be DK/DKIM signed by the end of the year. AOTA announced that approximately 50% of all email was currently authenticated. They did not separate out SPF/SenderID authentication from DK/DKIM authentication, but this still suggests email authentication is being widely adopted. AOL announced they will be checking DKIM on their inbound mail. I expect more and more email will be DKIM signed in response to this announcement.
Filtering. The end of 2007 marked a steady uptick in mail being filtered or blocked by recipient domains. I expect this trend to continue throughout 2008. Recipient domains are rolling out new technology to measure complaints, evaluate reputation and monitor unwanted email in ways that tease out the bad actors from the good. This means more bad and borderline email will be blocked. Over the short term, I expect to see more good email blocked, too, but expect this will resolve itself by Q2/Q3.
Sender Improvements. As the ISPs get better at filtering, I expect that many borderline senders will discover they cannot continue to have sloppy subscription practices and still get their mail delivered. Improved authentication and better filtering let ISPs pin-point blocks. Instead of having to block by IP or by domain, they can block only some mail from a domain, or only some mail from an IP. There are a number of senders who are sending mail that users do not want mixed with mail that recipients do want. Right now, if there is more mail that recipients want in that mix, then ISPs let the mail through. This will not continue to happen through 2008. Senders will need to send mail users actively want in order to see good delivery.
Less is more. A lot of other email bloggers have talked about this, and I will echo their predictions. Less email is more. Send relevant mail that your customers want. Target, target, target. Good mailers will not send offers to their entire database, instead they will send mail to a select portion of their database.
Feedback loops. Use of feedback loops by recipient domains will continue to grow.
Mobile email. More recipients will be receiving email on mobile devices.
Suggestions for 2008

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