Cousin domains

When I checked in on Facebook this morning there was a discussion from a couple people frustrated by cousin domains. I share their frustration.

Kitten running through field with text “every time a marketing department registers a cousin domain, god kills a kitten”

Cousin domains are a major problem for ISPs trying to protect their users from phishing and other fraud. Because so many companies use cousin domains in their legitimate mail, ISPs can not be strict with them. Instead, they have to expend time and energy to determine if this particular cousin domain is legitimate or not.

It’s time, energy and other resources that could be used better.


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Fun with spam filters

I recently had a challenging travel experience in the Netherlands, trying to get from Schipol airport to a conference I was speaking at. As part of my attempt to get out of the airport, I installed UBER on my phone. There were some challenges with getting UBER to authorise my phone number, so I tried linking it to my Gmail account.

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October 2017: The Month in Email

October was a busy month. In addition to on boarding multiple new clients, we got new desks, I went to Toronto to see M3AAWG colleagues for a few days, and had oral surgery. Happily, we’re finally getting closer to having the full office setup. 

What is an office without a Grover Cat? (he was so pleased he figured out how to get onto it at standing height).

All of this means that blogging was pretty light this month.
One of the most interesting bits of news this month is that the US National Cybersecurity Assessments & Technical Services Team issued a mandate on web and email security, which Steve reviewed here.
In best practices, I made a brief mention about the importance of using subdomains rather than entirely new domain names in links and emails and even DKIM keys.
We’ve talked about engagement-based filters before, but it’s interesting to note how they’re being used in business environments as well as consumer environments.
We also put together a survey looking at how people use Google Postmaster Tools. The survey is now closed, and I’ll be doing a full analysis over the next couple of weeks, as well as talking about next steps. I did a quick preview of some of the highlights earlier this week.
Finally, a lot of industry news this month: Most notably, Mailchimp has changed its default signup process from double opt-in to single opt-in. This caused quite a bit of sturm und drang from all ends of the industry. And, in fact, a few days later they announced the default double-opt-in would stay in place for .eu senders. I didn’t get a chance to blog about that as it happened. In other news, the Road Runner FBL is permanently shuttered, and Edison Software has acquired Return Path’s Consumer Insight division. Also worth noting: Microsoft is rolling out new mail servers, and you’ll likely see some new — and potentially confusing — error codes.
My October themed photo is behind a cut, for those of you who have problems with spiders.

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Brand indicators in email

A number of companies in the email industry have been working on a way to better identify authenticated emails to users. One proposal is Brand Indicators for Message Identification (BIMI). A couple weeks ago, Agari announced a pilot program with some brands and a number of major consumer mail providers. These logos should be available in the Yahoo interface now and will be rolling out at other providers.

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