World IPv6 launch day

Today is world IPv6 launch day. A group of ISPs, network hardware manufacturers and web companies permanently enabled IPv6 for their products and services.
What’s this got to do with email? According to a post on the NANOG mailing list the very first email to arrive at the Comcast IPv6 mailserver was received a minute after the server was turned on. This email was spam and was caught by Cloudmark’s filters.
Comcast goes on to assure readers that more mail came in and not all of it was spam.
But, yes, the first email sent to Comcast over IPv6 was spam. Welcome to the future.
 

Related Posts

You opted in

One thing I get in some of the comments here and in some of the discussions I have with email senders is that no commercial emailer ever sends unsolicited email. That, clearly, at some point the recipient opted in to receive mail and if that person doesn’t want mail they shouldn’t ever give out their email address.
I have an old yahoo address that’s used primarily as my Flickr account login. I don’t believe I’ve ever given out the address to anyone or opted in to anything. Anything’s possible, this address was created sometime in 2006 or 2007 and I may have tossed it into a form to test something. It’s certainly not an address I ever actually use.
Earlier this week I checked mail on the account. There were almost 700 messages in there. It was pretty amazing how much garbage this unused, unshared address collected. Notice the “clever” use of foreign alphabets and the number of legitimate companies who have acquired this address or hired people to mail me on their behalf. I’m sure some of it is phishing, too.

Read More

Data Cleansing part 2

In an effort to get a blog post out yesterday before yet another doctor’s appointment I did not do nearly enough research on the company I mentioned selling list cleansing data. As Al correctly pointed out in the comments they are currently listed on the SBL. And when I actually did the research I should have done it was clear this company has a long term history of sending unsolicited email.
Poor research and a quickly written blog post led to me endorsing a company that I absolutely shouldn’t have. And I do apologize for that.
With all that being said, Justin had a great question in the comments of yesterday’s post about data cleansing.

Read More

Gmail and the bulk folder

Earlier this week Gmail announced they were providing reasons for why they delivered a particular mail to the bulk folder. I’m sure a lot of senders are rejoicing over the clear feedback. After all this is exactly what they’ve been asking for “tell us why you’re filtering our mail and we’ll fix it.”
I am not sure, however, that this is going to help the majority of senders seeing mail going to the bulk folder. On the Gmail support pages, they list a number of the explanations they’re be providing.

Read More