Spamcop mail changes

Spamcop is shutting down it’s email service. While anyone could report spam using Spamcop, the system also provided users email addresses behind the Spamcop filters. This shut down should have no major impact on senders. Email addresses in use will still be accepting email, but that mail will simply be forwarded to another address, instead of users being able to access it through POP or IMAP.
The one problem some senders may have is IF they are solely authenticating through SPF and they are publishing a p=reject DMARC statement. This may result in some of the mail being rejected at the forwarding mail server, like AOL, Yahoo and other services respecting DMARC policy statements.
User forwarded mail will be coming from 68.232.142.20 (esa1.spamcop.iphmx.com) and 68.232.142.151 (esa2.spamcop.iphmx.com). If you don’t want to apply DMARC policy to known forwarded mail, those are the IPs to special case.

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Is gmail next?

I’m hearing hints that there are some malware or phishing links being sent out to gmail address books, “from” those gmail addresses. If that is what’s happening then it’s much the same thing as has been happening at Yahoo for a while, and AOL more recently, and that triggered their deployment of DMARC p=reject records.
It’s going to be interesting to see what happens over the next few days.
I’ve not seen any analysis of how the compromises happened at Yahoo and AOL – do they share a server-side (XSS?) security flaw, or is this a client-side compromise that affects many end users, and is just being targeted at freemail providers one at a time?
Does anyone have any technical details that go any deeper than #AOLHacked and #gmailhacked?

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Spammers react to Y! DMARC policy

It’s probably only a surprise to people who think DMARC is the silver bullet to fixing email problems, but the spammers who were so abusing yahoo.com have moved on… to ymail.com.
In the rush to deploy their DMARC policy, apparently Yahoo forgot they have hundreds of other domains. Domains that are currently not publishing a DMARC policy. Spammers are now using those domains as the 5322.from address in their emails. The mail isn’t coming through any yahoo.com domain, but came through an IP belonging to Sprint PCS.
ymail_dmarc
This is just one example of how spammers have reacted to the brave new world of p=reject policies by mailbox providers. If only the rest of us could react as quickly and as transparently to the problems imposed by these policy declarations. But changing software to cope with the changes in a way that keeps email useful for end users is a challenge. What is the right way to change mailing lists to compensate for these policy declarations? How can we keep bulk email useful for small groups that aren’t necessarily associated with a “brand”?
The conversation surrounding how we minimize the damage to the ecosystem that p=reject policy imposed hasn’t really happened. I think it is a shame and a failure that people can’t even discuss the implications of this policy. Even now that people have done the firefighting to deal with the immediate problems there still doesn’t seem to be the desire to discuss the longer effect of these changes. Just saying “these are challenges” in certain spaces gets the response “just deal with it.” Well, yes, we are trying to deal with it.
I contend that in order to “just deal with it”, we have to define “IT.” We can’t solve a problem if we can’t define the problem we’re trying to solve. Sadly, it seems legitimate mailers are stuck coping with the fallout, while spammers have moved on and are totally unaffected.
How is this really a win?

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June 2014: The month in email

Each month, we like to focus on a core email feature or function and present an overview for people looking to learn more. This month, we addressed authentication with SPF.
We also talked about feedback mechanisms, and the importance for senders to participate in FBL processes.
In our ongoing discussions about spam filters, we took a look at the state of our own inboxes and lamented the challenge spam we get from Spamarrest. We also pointed out a post from Cloudmark where they reiterate much of what we’ve been saying about filters: there’s no secret sauce, just a continuing series of efforts to make sure recipients get only the mail they want and expect to receive. We also looked at a grey area in the realm of wanted and expected mail: role accounts (such as “marketing@companyname.com”) and how ESPs handle them.
As always, getting into the Gmail inbox is a big priority for our clients and other senders. We talked a bit about this here, and a bit more about the ever-changing world of filters here.
On the subject of list management, we wrote about the state of affiliate mailers and the heightened delivery challenges they face getting in the inbox. We got our usual quota of spam, and a call from a marketer who had purchased our names on a list. You can imagine how effective that was for them.
And in a not-at-all-surprising development, spammers have started to employ DMARC workarounds. We highlighted some of the Yahoo-specific issues in a post that raises more questions.
We also saw some things we quite liked in June. In the Best Practices Hall of Fame, we gave props to this privacy policy change notification and to our bank’s ATM receipts.
We also reviewed some interesting new and updated technology in the commercial MTA space, and were happy to share those findings.

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