New Feedback loop

There’s a new feedback loop at mail.ru. This is a DKIM based FBL (like Yahoo) and is designed primarily for ESPs. I am hearing there is an IP based FBL for ISPs in the works, but there isn’t a firm release date for that yet.
Senders and ESPs can signup for the new FBL at http://postmaster.mail.ru/. One caveat is that you must have a mail.ru account in order to get access to the stats page and there isn’t currently an English webmail page. I tried but couldn’t get online translators to work on the signup page.

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Denial

I come up against a lot of denial when talking with people about spam and email. It makes sense, nobody likes spam. Nobody wants to send spam. And I do understand the initial denial when they hear “you’re mail looks like spam” or “you spammed me.”
It often takes overwhelming evidence to convince some senders that their mail is spam. I’ve talked before about some of my clients who insist that I just “forgot” I signed up for their mail. But these aren’t the only excuses I hear.
A sender that denies all feedback about their mailing program isn’t a very good sender, though. The best thing any sender can do when faced with information is to think about why a recipient might not want their mail.
I often describe my role as a translator between marketers and IT folks. I can translate technology to marketing and back again. One of my other major roles, though, is translating uncomfortable or unwelcome recipient feedback. Many marketing programs have been significantly improved because the program maintainers took a minute to look at the feedback and use it.

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Abuse Reporting Format

J.D. has a great post digging into ARF, the abuse reporting format used by most feedback loops.
If you’re interested in following along, you might find this annotated example ARF report handy.

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Beware the TINS Army

When consulting with clients, I spend a lot of time trying to help them better understand the concept of sender reputation. Spam reports, feedback loops, and other data that comes from a collection of positive and negative reputational feedback about a company sending email.
Certainly, the “This is not spam” action – moving an email from the spam folder to the inbox, or clicking the “not spam” button in a web mail’s interface, is a strong positive reputational action. Some webmail providers use this data to decide which bulked senders deserve being let out of the penalty box – which should have their mail once again delivered to the inbox.
A client recently theorized that a great solution to their delivery problems would be to do this “en masse.” Sign up for hundreds or thousands of webmail accounts, send my mail to them, and click on the “not spam” button for each of my own emails. That’ll greatly improve my sending reputation, right?
NO! ISPs have already thought of this. They watch for this. They’re really good at picking up on things like this. I know for a fact that Yahoo and Hotmail and AOL notice stuff like this, and I strongly suspect other webmail providers notice it as well.
What happens when Yahoo or Hotmail pick up on this type of unwanted activity? Well, if it’s at Yahoo, they’re likely to block all mail from you, 100%, forever. I’ve seen it happen more than once. Yahoo might even identify all of your netblocks, ones beyond the ones sending today’s mail or originating today’s activity. And good luck trying to convince them that you’re not a spammer – you have a better chance of winning the lottery two weeks in a row.
As for Hotmail – what would Hotmail do? Ask Boris Mizhen. Microsoft is currently suing him, alleging that he and/or his agents or associates engaged in this very practice.

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