Recent Posts

Phones part of SMS botnet

Spammers have been moving into the phone market for a long time. Just recently security firms have discovered an Android botnet. This botnet sends viruses over SMS, and when a link in the SMS is clicked, the phone is infected with the virus which then sends more SMS.
The technology for blocking and reporting SMS spam is comparable to email blocking technology 10 or 12 years ago. There just aren’t many tools for people to use to control this spam. M³AAWG is addressing mobile spam, but it still seems that the volumes are increasing without much recourse. Even the 7726 reporting number doesn’t seem to stop the spam (nor remove per-text charges).
At least in the beginning of the email spam problem, we didn’t have botnets. Now, at the beginning of the curve for SMS spam, we already have self replicating botnets. I’m afraid the good guys might be behind on this issue.
Then again I might just be cranky because SMS spammers woke us up at 4:30 am.
Infoworld article
TNW article
PCWorld article

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.

Volume! Volume! Volume!

Saw a series of tweets this morning from random consumers about holiday marketing volume.

There is no bat phone

I don’t have much to add to Al’s post about the lack of people to call at different ISPs to get mail delivered. I will say there was a time some ISPs had staff that would deal with senders and blocking problems. But those positions have gradually been eliminated over the last 2 or 3 years. In some cases the employees left for greener pastures, in others they were subject to layoffs and budget cuts. In most cases, though, the employees were not replaced.
ISPs have moved to complex and multi-tired spam filtering. They’ve removed the ability of most employees to actually interrupt the filtering and special case a sender. Getting mail delivered is about sending mail that recipients want. It’s not about who you know. It’s about how much recipients like your mail.

Troubleshooting tools

There have been a number of comments on my post about Hotmail moving to SPF authentication having to do with troubleshooting authentication failures. I have been helping clients troubleshoot these issues, and am able to take on new clients to solve authentication problems. Contact me for more information.
Of course, many of these issues can be solved with access to the right tools. Steve’s been working on a number of tools that may help the troubleshooting process and we’ve recently launched them on Emailstuff.org. The website itself contains a number of DNS and data related tools we use for investigations and thought we’d share with the public at large.
One of the really useful tools is the SPF record expander. Plug in any domain, like google.com, and see what IP addresses they authorize to send mail.

TWSD: Adapt to filters

This morning the new Yahoo! CEO posted about changes to Yahoo! mail. I logged into one of my Yahoo accounts to check and see if I had access to the new Yahoo! mail client yet. I don’t, but I did notice that spammers have adapted to the new Yahoo model of disabling filters in the mail folder. Most of the mail in my inbox has, at the very top of the message “Click not spam to enable links!”
My favorite has to be the animated gif of how to click “not spam.”
Spammers spend so much time and energy compensating for filters, hopping IP addresses, rotating through domains, and specially creating mail for different ISPs. I have to wonder, though, if they would waste less time by sending opt-in mail.

Confirming addresses for transactional mail

A colleague was asking about confirming transactional mail today. It seems a couple of big retailers got SBLed today for sending receipts to spamtraps. I talked a few weeks ago about why it’s important to let people unsubscribe from transactional email, and many of those same things apply to confirming receipts.

Fun with Subject lines

Courtesy of Think Geek (who have some of the best use of symbols in subject lines I’ve seen).

Hotmail moves to SPF authentication

Hotmail has recently stopped using Sender ID for email authentication and switched to authenticating with SPF. The protocol differences between SenderID and SPF were subtle and most senders who were getting a pass at Hotmail were already publishing SPF records.
From an email in my inbox from September:

Data, data, elections and data

One of the interesting stories coming out of the recent US Presidential election is how much data the Obama Campaign collected about voters, volunteers and donors. Today Politico talks about how valuable that data is, and how many Democrats want to get their hands on it.