Recent Posts

What about Tom?

I use tom@hotmail.com as my default bogus email address. Tom has subscribed to so many things because of me.
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Alternate contact when mail bounces

We received an invite from a local company recently. At the top of the invite there was a sticker.
We attempted to send email, but your address bounced. Please contact either me or the tasting room to update. Thanks!

Email can't be dead

Sitting in my drafts folder is a rant I wrote during one of the “email is dead” discussions. I think there’s a core of usefulness in my rant. The discussion was about how many click bait articles claim email is dead because people under 20 don’t have email accounts, or if they don’t, then they don’t check them.
Almost everything online is tied to an email account. Want Amazon prime? You need an email address. Want an Instagram account? you need an email address. Want access to Google docs? You need a gmail address. Want to buy almost anything off a website? You need an email address. Even for stuff that’s ostensibly displayed on mobile (event tickets, plane tickets, hotel check in info) they need an email address. Want to have access to iTunes? You need an email address. Want a blog hosted on blogspot? You need an email address.
Of COURSE people have email addresses. I will say that I’m finding myself using email a little less than I did. Facebook is a bit better at social networking than old school mailing lists and usenet. I mean, nothing will ever replace trn in my heart, but Facebook does remind me of usenet in some ways.
Oh, and yes, you mostly need an email address for Facebook (although I hear you can register an account with just a smartphone).
Email isn’t dead. Email isn’t going to die. Anyone who tells you otherwise is simply looking to monetize your clicks.

DMARC=BestGuessPass

Looking at the headers within the mail received with my Office365 domain I see dmarc=bestguesspass. BestGuessPass? That’s a new.
Authentication Results
A few days after seeing dmarc=bestguesspass, Terry Zink at Microsoft posted an explanation. Exchange Online Protection, the filtering system for Office365, is analyzing the authentication of incoming emails and if the domain is not publishing a DMARC record, EOP attempts to determine what the results would be if they did. If an email is received that is not authenticated with either SPF or DKIM, the dmarc= results show none just as it always had. DMARC=BestGuessPass will appear if the message is authenticated and the matching authenticated domain does not have a DMARC record.
Having this information is helpful to see what the results would be before setting up a DMARC record. If you are seeing dmarc=bestguesspass when your mail is sent to an Office365 address and you are considering DMARC, the next step would be to publish a p=none DMARC policy and begin to document where your mail is being sent from. P=none will not have an impact on your delivery and asks the receiving mail server to take no action if a DMARC check fails. Once you have setup SPF and DKIM for your mail, p=none policy gives you the ability to begin receiving failure reports from receiving mail servers when unauthenticated mail is sent from your domain.

Clear and Clearwire.net

As of April 15th, Clearwire will no longer support their CLEAR Email/Clearwire Email services which include @clear.net and @clearwire.net mail domains. They were acquired by Sprint and these domains will bounce after April 15th 2015.
Many thanks to Anthony Chiulli from Salesforce for the tip.

It's the recipients

Most delivery problems to US ISPs boil down to sending mail to people who don’t want it or expect it. Sure, we do technical audits and find issues with how companies are sending mail. But all the technical correctness in the world isn’t going to make up for sending mail users complain about or don’t interact with.
Recently we were working with a client who was having some delivery problems for one mail stream. As we dug down into the issue, we discovered a couple things about the mail stream.

Purchased Lists and ESPs

After some thought, I’ve decided to remove a few ESPs from this list based on personal experience with them allowing customers to send to purchased lists. If your company has disappeared and you want to come back, you’ll need to actually stop the spam coming from your network. Every company that’s been removed has received a complaint from me specifically mentioning the address was purchased and allowed that same customer to continue spamming the same address. Deal with your spam and we can talk about reinstatement.

iCloud Postmaster resources

iCloud Mail (mac.com, me.com, icloud.com) has a shiny, new postmaster resources page. No whitelist, no FBL, just a good list of best practices to follow for sending bulk mail.

Verizon agrees to buy AOL

Verizon Agrees to Buy AOL for $4.4 Billion

What is the Mail From field?

When emails are sent, there are two from fields, the Mail From and the Display From address. The Display From address (technically referred to as RFC.5322 from address) is the from address that is displayed to the end user within their email client. The Mail From (technically referred to as RFC.5321 from address) is the email address to which bounce messages are delivered. The Mail From field is sometimes referred to as the Return Path address, Envelope From address, or Bounce address.
It may seem confusing to have an email with two from fields, but knowing the difference is important to properly setup your SPF records.
Taking a look at this email I received from GoPro, the Return-Path (5321.From) goes back to @bounce.email.gopro.com. If I were to reply to the email, the message would go to @email.gopro.com. The Display From (5322.From) address is gopro@email.gopro.com.

I would want to add the email address GoPro@email.gopro.com to my address book because that is the email address that is displayed in my email client. The reason why the Return-Path is different from the From address is because GoPro likely has an automated system that will process the bounce back messages (sent to @bounce.email.gopro.com) and automatically flag or unsubscribe those email addresses. This allows GoPro to setup automatic processing of the different mail streams sent to them, one stream being the bounce backs after a mailing and the second being an automated customer service system.
Where does SPF fit in?
SPF checks the Mail From (5321.From) address, not the Display From (5322.From) address. In the example above, there should be an SPF record for the subdomain of bounce.email.gopro.com. I can check the SPF record using our Authentication tools http://tools.wordtothewise.com/spf/check/bounce.email.gopro.com and I receive the following results:

Checking the headers shows that GoPro does have a SPF record setup and the message was authenticated with SPF.

For SPF records, make sure the SPF record matches the Mail From (From.5321)/Return-Path domain name. Have your recipients add the Display From (From.5322) email address to their address book so they will continue to receive your mailings.