News from MAAWG

During MAAWG a number of companies in the email space announce new initiatives, mergers, products and the like. This MAAWG is no different.
Spammers adjust to security trends. This is not really news, spammers have been adjusting to new security measures since folks started blocking from: addresses back in ’95 and ’96. The tactics are different and developing, but for every security hole that is blocked, spammers will search for another hole to exploit. The unfortunate truth is that end user is the weak point, and spammers and scammers are very very good at social engineering.
Spam statistics stalemate. Spam is still accounting for approximately 90% of all email traffic.
Cloudmark acquires Bizanga. I talked to some of the Cloudmark folks and they seem very excited with their acquisition of the Bizanga MTA and email technology.
Bizanga Storage announced. Bizanga Store is a scalable storage system brought to you by some of the people who were instrumental in building the Bizanga MTA acquired by Cloudmark.
ReturnPath announced partnership with RPost. Yet more ongoing changes in the certification field.

Microsoft delivery partnerships
Truths and myths about email

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Sending too much mail

Not having policies restricting the amount of mail any customer or recipient receives may lead to higher spam complaint rates and blocking warns the DMA Email Marketing Council.
HT: Box of Meat

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Permission Based Emails? Are you sure?

Yesterday I wrote about the ReturnPath study showing 21% of permission based email does not make it to the inbox. There are a number of reasons I can think of for this result, but I think one of the major ones is that not all the mail they are monitoring is permission based. I have no doubt that all of the RP customers say that the mail they’re sending is permission based, I also have no doubt that not all of the mail is.
Everyone who sends mail sends permission based email. Really! Just ask them!
In 10 years of professionally working with senders I have yet to find a marketer that says anything other than all their email is permission based. Every email marketer, from those who buy email addresses to those who do fully confirmed verified opt-in with a cherry on top will claim all their email is permission based. And some of the mailers I’ve worked with in the past have been listed on ROKSO. None of these mailers will ever admit that they are not sending permission based email.
Going back to ReturnPath’s data we don’t really know what permission based email means in this context and so we don’t know if the mail is legitimately or illegitimately blocked. My guess is that some significant percentage of the 20% of email to the probe accounts that doesn’t make it to the inbox is missing because the sender does not have clear recipient permission.
When even spammers describe their email as permission based email marketing, what value does the term have?

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Spammers aren't who you think they are

Shady direct marketers exploit CAN SPAM to continue spamming but protect themselves from the law. This is something I’ve been talking about for a while (TWSD), and it’s nice to see the mainstream press noticing the same thing.
HT: Box of Meat

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