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Major payday loan email sender shut down

Chattanooga area payday lender Carey V. Brown lays off workers

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"Blocked for Bot-like Behavior"

An ESP asked about this error message from Hotmail and what to do about it.
“Bot-like” behaviour usually means the sending server is doing something that bots also do. It’s not always that they’re spamming, often it’s a technical issue. But the technical problems make the sending server look like a bot, so the ISP is not taking any chances and they’re going to stop accepting mail from that server.
If you’re an ESP what should you look for when tracking down what the problem is?
First make sure your server isn’t infected with anything and that you’re not running an open relay or proxy. Second, make sure your customers aren’t compromised or have had their accounts hijacked.
Then start looking at your configuration.
HELO/EHLO values

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Ken gets spam

Ken at Popehat gets spam offering to write a sponsored post. Ken counters with what he wants out of a sponsored post.
Blogging is going to be light this week. I’ve got a couple project deadlines to meet and most of my focus is on that. Plus, it’s the end of August and most folks are on vacation.

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Spam illustrated

Portraits of Spammers
It’s been a long week, so enjoy some art (and spam). Next week we’ll get back to discussing the many faults of Gmail. And senders. And receivers. And, well, everyone has faults. And email is Dead. Tabs killed it.

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Gmail tabs … good for marketers?

It appears to be Google’s turn as the subject of most of my blog posts these days.
Consumerist had a post up today talking about the new Gmail tabs. Interestingly enough, they’re quoting an Ad Age article that says the new tabs are not hurting engagement.

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Gmail promotions tab

Chad White explains why you shouldn’t ask recipients to move mail from the promotions tab to the inbox.

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Gmail says no expectation of privacy, kinda.

Consumer Watch put out a press release yesterday about a court filing made by Gmail that says Gmail users have no expectation of privacy. I pulled a bunch of the docs yesterday, but have had no real time to read or digest them.
For recap users everything I pulled (and stuff other people have pulled) are available at Archive.org.
The initial complaint was filed under seal at the request of Google. The redacted complaint doesn’t tell us a lot, but it’s available for people to read if they’re interested.
The doc everyone is talking about is Google’s Motion to Dismiss. Everyone is up in arms about Google saying, in that filing, “a person has no legitimate expectation of privacy in information he voluntarily turns over to third parties.” (page 28, line 9). What no one seems to have mentioned is that this is actually a quote from a case that Google is referencing. The whole paragraph may lead one to a different conclusion.

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TWSD: Don't honor opt-outs

One of the big arguments various mailers make is that they make it easy for users to opt-out of mail, so it’s not a big deal. Users who don’t want to receive the mail, can make it stop. This was one of the guiding principles of CAN SPAM. The sender can make the decision to send mail to any recipient but they have to offer an opt-out.
The problem is there are a lot of major companies out there that don’t honor opt-outs. Since earlier this year I’ve been tracking when I opt-out of mail. Why? Because I kept getting the feeling that I’d opted out of mail before, but kept getting it.
The good(?) news is that it wasn’t my imagination, some of these companies aren’t honoring their opt-outs. The bad news is that major companies are not honoring opt-outs.

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Lavabit shuts down

Lavabit is a secure mail system. Today their CEO announced he was shutting down the service immediately.

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Are the new Gmail ads email?

I’ve seen lots of opinions over the last few weeks about whether or not the new ads in the Gmail promotions tab are email or not.

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