Vetting customers

MAAWG has published a BCP for vetting new customers. This is the culmination of much work by a lot of people.
One of the best things about the document is the discussion of how spammers attempt to hide their identity. All too often I’ve been called in by ESPs to help them identify how a spammer got on their network and where their process failed. As filtering gets better at blocking spam, spammers are spending more and more time trying to steal good reputations to get their unwanted mail through.
Providers who follow these rules may still find themselves with spammers as customers, but the spammers will have to work harder to get on clean networks.

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Back from MAAWG

Today is the first day back at work after a productive MAAWG conference.
The thing I get most out of MAAWG is a greater appreciation for what a large, global force messaging is. The recent protests and uprisings around the world have relied on messaging to organize, share information and communicate. Messaging is also somewhat fragile. Thing things that make it great for strangers to interact with one another also allows bad people and organizations to cause harm.
It is a struggle to minimize the harm while not hurting the good.
MAAWG is comprised of the people that make messaging work. These are folks that are on the front lines in the fight to stop online harm. It’s somewhat humbling to watch a conference full of really smart people, from all levels of responsibility, discuss ways to improve messaging for real users and real people while stopping the bad people. There are good ideas and bad ideas, but discussions are professional and informative. Plus it’s always good to see old friends and make new ones.
I inevitably come back from MAAWG with a load of things to do, new projects to take on and new ideas. This time I’m also looking forward to the publication of a document announced at the conference. The EastWest Institute’s Chief Technology Officer Karl Frederick Rauscher talked about a report they will be publishing next month talking about how China and the US are working together to fight spam.

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Amendment is futile, part 2

When Yahoo filed for dismissal of the Holomaxx complaint, they ended the motion with “Amendment would be futile in this case.” The judge granted Yahoo’s motion but did grant Holomaxx leave to amend. Holomaxx filed an amended complaint earlier this month.
The judge referenced a couple specific deficiencies of Holomaxx’s claims in his dismissal.

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Prepping for MAAWG

The June MAAWG meeting is next week. Both of us are working on various projects, documents and announcements for the meeting. This means light blogging, although we’ll post public announcements as they come out.
If you’re going to MAAWG be sure to stop by and say hi!

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