This month in email: September 2013

laura
Industry
September 30, 2013

Looking back through the month of September there were a couple things talked about on the blog.

Legal cases discussed

I wrote quite a bit about the Google wiretapping case. In this potential class action suit, a number of plaintiffs are suing Google for intercepting emails in violation of the federal wiretapping statutes and state wiretapping laws. On September 5th I attended a hearing on Google’s motion to dismiss in San Jose. The judge issued her ruling on September 26, allowing the case to move forward on most counts. I did a post on the federal claims and some of the judge’s reasons for allowing the case to go forward.
In other court cases, Al guest blogged about Spamarrest losing in court.
I also discussed two instances of companies looking for patent infringers in the email space.

ISP specific issues

The big issue in September was Yahoo releasing recycled addresses. The addresses were handed over at the end of August, but by mid-September we started hearing stories of personal information leaking to the wrong people. Yahoo started scrambling to cope with the problem.

Industry and technical commentary

I did a post about ISP relationships and how who you know is becoming less and less important for email delivery. I also looked at “the volume question” and discussed how volume can affect email delivery. Finally, Steve talked about tips and techniques for analyzing email on the fly without dropping everything into a database.

Email marketing OF THE FUTURE!

ISPs are continually developing tools for their users. Some of the newer tools are automatic filters that help users organize the volumes of mail they’re getting. Gmail released Priority Inbox over a year ago. Hotmail announced new filters as part of Wave 5 back in October.
All of these announcements cause much consternation in the email marketing industry. Just today there was a long discussion on the Only Influencers list about the new Hotmail filtering. There was even some discussion about why the ISPs were doing this.
I think it’s pretty simple why they’re creating new tools: users are asking for them. The core of these new filters is ISPs reacting to consumer demand. They wouldn’t put the energy into development if their users didn’t want it. And many users do and will use priority inbox or the new Hotmail filtering.
Some people are concerned that marketing email will be less effective if mail is not in the inbox.

Penkava v. Yahoo: dismissed

Carson Penkava, who was suing Yahoo! under California wiretapping laws, filed for dismissal with prejudice at the end of November. No reasons were given.

Wiretapping and email

An Alabama resident is suing Yahoo for violating the California wiretapping law. Specifically he’s suing under CA Penal Code section 631. The thing is, this section of the law deals with wiretapping over “telephone or telegraph” wires. That doesn’t seem to apply in this case as Yahoo isn’t using either telephone or telegraph wires to transmit their packets.
Holomaxx tried the wiretapping argument when they sued Yahoo and Hotmail. That case cited a cause of action under both federal law and California law. The wiretapping claim was addressed specifically by the lawyers for the defendants.