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Collaboration key to fighting crime on the internet

The Pittsburg Post Gazette has a good article on the DNS Changer Working group and how it can serve as a model for future collaboration against cyber crime.

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Yahoo changes

Thanks to tips by a couple blog readers and some clients, I have been looking into Yahoo disabling links in the bulk folder. It does appear Yahoo is no longer allowing users to click on links in emails that Yahoo places in the bulk folder.
In fact, some of the spam in my Yahoo mailbox even has a notice about this.

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Facebook blocking spam: parallels to email filtering

Last month a Dangerous Minds posted numbers that indicated their Facebook posts were reaching fewer users.  They suggested that this was a conspiracy by Facebook to make more money and soak small publishers with “exorbitant” advertising fees. I didn’t pay that much attention to it. I use Facebook to communicate with friends. The only commercial entities I “like” or are “friends” with are small local businesses that I shop at.
Today, I see a tweet from Ben Chestnut that looked intriguing.

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Spamming is a marketing tactic

A twitter discussion about the use of Re: and FWD: in subject lines for bulk email. The summary appears to be that even marketers hate it when they get mail like that, but if it drives sales then it’s a worthwhile trick. The final tweet says a lot, though.

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Is Spamhaus still relevant?

Today’s Wednesday question comes from a recent discussion on the Only Influencers mailing list. One of the participants asked “Is Spamhaus relevant and necessary? Are they willing to work with marketers?”

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Return Path announces new abuse prevention service

Return Path announced a new product this morning, designed to help mailbox providers stop outbound abuse.

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Gmail sending out warnings for 512 bit DKIM keys

As an update to yesterday’s post, Gmail is contacting postmasters at domains signing with 512 bit keys to warn them of the upcoming changes. This message also clarifies “DKIM keys failing.” Messages signed with 512 bit keys or less will be treated as unsigned by Gmail in the next week or so.

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Is Google failing DKIM keys shorter than 512 bits?

Today’s Wednesday question comes from Andrew B. and got pushed to Thursday so I could check a few more facts.

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Data Driven Email (and other) Marketing

The frequency of emails from the Obama campaign ended up being a talking point for pundits and late night talk show hosts. Jon Stewart of The Daily show even asked President Obama about email directly during his October 18th interview. (Video, email question at the 5:56 mark)

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How long is your DKIM key?

While we were at M3AAWG, Wired published an article talking about how simple it was to crack DKIM keys. I didn’t post about it at the time because it didn’t really seem like news. DKIM keys smaller than 1024 are vulnerable and not secure and the DKIM spec does not recommend using keys smaller than 1024. When I asked the DKIM-people-who-would-know they did tell me that the news was that the keys had been cracked and used in the wild to spoof email.
Fair enough.
If you are signing with DKIM, use a key 1024 or longer. Anything shorter and your risk having the key cracked and your mail fraudulently signed.
This morning M3AAWG published recommendations on keeping DKIM keys secure.

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