A series of tubes

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The Internet and pundits had a field day with Senator Stevens, when he explained the Internet was a series of tubes.
I always interpreted his statement as coming from someone who demanded an engineer tell him why his mail was delayed. The engineer used the “tube” metaphor to explain network congestion and packets and TCP, and when the Senator tried to forward on the information he got it a little wrong. I do credit the Senator with trying to understand how the Internet works, even if he got it somewhat wrong. This knowledge, or lack there of, drove his policy positions on the issue of Net Neutrality.
In the coming years, I believe we’re going to be seeing more regulations around the net, both for individuals and for corporations. These regulations can make things better, or they can make things worse. I believe it’s extremely important that our elected officials have a working understanding of the Internet in order to make sensible policy. This understanding doesn’t have to be in their own head, they can hire smart people to answer their questions and explain the implications of policy.
Apparently I’m not the only one who thinks it is important for our elected officials to have a working knowledge of technology. Paul Schreiber put up a blog post comparing the website technology used by the current Presidential candidates. Do I really expect the candidate to be involved in decisions like what domain registrar or SSL certificate provider to use? No. But I do expect them to hire people who can create and build technology that is within current best practices.

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May 2014: The month in email

It’s been a busy and exciting month for us here.
Laura finished a multi-year project with M3AAWG, the Messaging, Malware and Mobile Anti-Abuse Working Group (look for the results to be published later this year) and continued working with clients on interesting delivery challenges and program opportunities. Steve focused on development on the next version release of Abacus, our flagship abuse desk tool, which will also be available later this year.
And as always, we had things to say about email.
The World of Spam and Email Best Practices
We started the month with a bit of a meta-discussion on senders’ fears of being labeled spammers, and reiterated what we always say: sending mail that some people don’t want doesn’t make you evil, but it is an opportunity to revisit your email programs and see if there are opportunities to better align your goals with the needs of people on your email lists. We outlined how we’ve seen people come around to this position after hitting spamtraps. That said, sometimes it is just evil. And it’s still much the same evil it’s been for over a decade.
We also wrote a post about reputation, which is something we get asked about quite frequently. We have more resources on the topic over at the WiseWords section of our site.
Gmail, Gmail, Gmail
Our friends over at Litmus estimate Gmail market share at 12%, which seems pretty consistent with the percentage of blog posts we devote to the topic, yes? We had a discussion of Campaign Monitor’s great Gmail interview, and offered some thoughts on why we continue to encourage clients to focus on engagement and relevance in developing their email programs. We also wrote a post about how Gmail uses filters, which is important for senders to understand as they create campaigns.
SMTP and TLS
Steve wrote extensively this month about the technical aspects of delivery and message security. This “cheat sheet” on SMTP rejections is extremely useful for troubleshooting – bookmark it for the next time you’re scratching your head trying to figure out what went wrong.
He also wrote a detailed explanation of how TLS encryption works with SMTP to protect email in transit, and followed that with additional information on message security throughout the life of the message. This is a great set of posts to explore if you’re thinking about security and want to understand potential vulnerabilities.
DKIM
Steve also wrote a series of posts about working with DKIM (DomainKeys Identified Mail), the specification for signing messages to identify and claim responsibility for messages. He started with a detailed explanation of DKIM Replay Attacks, which happens when valid email is forwarded or otherwise compromised by spammers, phishers or attackers. Though the DKIM signature persists (by design) through a forward, the DKIM specification restricts an attacker’s ability to modify the message itself. Steve’s post describes how senders can optimize their systems to further restrict these attacks. Another way that attackers attempt to get around DKIM restrictions is by injecting additional headers into the message, which can hijack a legitimately signed message. If you’re concerned about these sort of attacks (and we believe you should be), it’s worth learning more about DKIM Key Rotation to help manage this. (Also of note: we have some free DKIM management tools available in the WiseTools section of our site.)
As always, we’re eager to hear from you if there are topics you’d like us to cover in June.

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February 2015 – The month in email

This was a short and busy month at WttW!

We attended another great M3AAWG conference, and had our usual share of interesting discussions, networking, and cocktails. I recapped our adventures here, and shared a photo of the people who keep your email safe while wearing kilts as well. We also commended Jayne Hitchcock on winning the Mary Litynski award for her work fighting abuse and cyberstalking.

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Changing the email client

We’re in the thick of hiring and next week is Thanksgiving, so blogging is going to be very light for the next two weeks.
One thing I have noticed is that lately there are attempts to “change how people interact with email.” Google released their Inbox product. And today I saw a post about an IBM attempt to change email and how people use it as a tool.
I find as I juggle more and more incoming email that most email clients just don’t cope with the whole process well. For a long time I could use my inbox as a todo list and manage what needed to be done. With the company growing and changing, an inbox todo list is just not as workable as it used to be. Maybe the Verse client from IBM is one solution.
I’m glad people are looking at how to improve the email client. Fundamentally, the client I’m using now is not that much different than the GUI client I was using at MAPS back in 2000 and 2001. Sure, it’s visually different, but the functionality isn’t much different.
A few years ago I blogged that people should look at building new email interfaces. I’m glad that some companies are actually looking at the interface and rethinking how people interact with email. Who knows, maybe we’ll end up with some specialized clients that are featured around getting work done by email and other clients focused around a more casual use of email, like shopping and networking.
 
 

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