Comcast

Comcast having a bad day

Comcast announced this morning that they’re having problems receiving mail and their customers are seeing significant delays.

We are currently experience an issue which is causing a significant delay in receiving email. This is not a good thing and we are very aware of the problem and are working hard to restore it.
Technical description for those who are interested:
A problem on a couple of the network switches caused our blob storage to get into a bad state. Lots of peering errors etc, this coupled with a bug in the blob storage vendors software is prolonging resolution. We have an incident bridge going with the team and the developers.
Official notice on Xfinity Forums

Mythbusting deliverability and engagement

Yesterday I published an article talking about an engagement webinar hosted by the EEC and DMA. I made a couple predictions about what would be said.

How to send better emails: engagement

Today Direct Marketing News hosted a webinar: ISP Mythbusters: How to Send Better Emails. The speakers were Matt Moleski, the Executive Director of Compliance Operations from Comcast and Autumn Tyr-Salvia, the Director Of Standards And Best Practices from Message Systems.
The webinar went through a series of myths. After Autumn introduced the myth, Matt commented on it and explained why the statement was, or was not, a myth. Throughout the webinar, Matt clearly explained what does, and does not, get mail delivered. Don’t let the Comcast after Matt’s name fool you. He is very active in different fora and discusses filtering strategies with experts across the ISP industry. His insight and knowledge is broadly applicable. In fact, many of the things Matt said today were things I’ve heard other ISPs say over and over again.
One of the very first things he said was that ISPs want to deliver mail their customers want. They want to give customers the best inbox experience possible and that means delivering mails customers want and keeping out mails customers don’t. He also pointed out that recipients complain to the ISPs when they lose wanted mail, perhaps even more than they complain about spam.
He also touched on the topic of engagement. His message was that absolutely engagement does matter for inbox delivery and that engagement is going to matter more and more as filtering continues to evolve. There has been some discussion recently about whether or not engagement is an issue, with some people claiming that some ISP representatives said engagement doesn’t matter. The reality is, that engagement does matter and Matt’s words today only reinforce and clarify that message.
Matt did say is that ISPs and senders have a bit of a disconnect when they are speaking about engagement. ISPs look at engagement on the “macro” level. They’re looking to see if users delete a mail without reading it, file it into a folder, mark it spam or mark it not spam. Senders and marketers look at engagement on a much more finite level and look at interactions with the specific emails and links in the email.
When discussing the relationship between senders and ISPs, he pointed out that both senders and ISPs have the same goal: to personalize the customer experience and to give customers a great experience. As part of this, ISPs are mostly aligned when it comes to blocking principles, but each ISP responds slightly differently. ISPs do adhere to best practices for handling incoming email, but those practices are implemented based on the individual company and handles incoming mail in ways that better supports their company specifically.
Matt talked about Comcast’s Postmaster pages and says they try to give feedback to senders before putting a block in place. He mentions that invalid recipients and poor list hygiene as the fastest way to be blocked or throttled when sending to Comcast. He also said that the core filtering rules at Comcast are static. Changes are mostly “tweaks around the edges.”
During the Q&A portion, Matt took a number of questions from the audience.

Delays at Comcast

I’m seeing a significant amount of chatter on various lists that queues to Comcast are backing up right now. Looks to be something on their end.
Error messages are 421 “Try again later.” I’ll see if I can find someone at Comcast to give me some info.

DMARC and organizations

Comcast recently published a statement on DMARC over on their postmaster page. The short version is that Comcast is publishing a DMARC record, but has no current intentions to publish a p=reject policy for Comcast user email. Comcast will be publishing a p=reject for some of their domains that they use exclusively to communicate with customers, like billing notices and security notices.
Comcast does point out that Yahoo! and AOL’s usage of p=reject is “not common usage.”
This is something a lot of people have been arguing loudly about on various mail operations lists and network lists. DMARC is about organizational identity. In fact, I was contacted about my DMARC primer and told that I didn’t mention that it’s not about domains, it’s about organizations.
The way I read the DMARC spec, it is all about organizational identity. The underlying theme being that the domain name is linked to a particular organization and everyone using email at that domain has some official relationship with that organization. I’ve always read the spec mentally replacing organization with corporate brand. This was for brands and organizations that strictly control how their domains are used, who can use those domains and how the mail is sent with those domains.
I never expected any mailbox provider or commercial ISP to publish a p=reject message as it would just break way too much of the way customers use email. And it did break a lot of legitimate and end user uses of email. Many organizations have had to scramble to update mailing list software to avoid bouncing users off the lists. Some of these upgrades have broken mailbox filters, forcing endusers to change how they manage their mailboxes.
Even organizations see challenges with a p=reject message and can have legitimate mail blocked. At M³AAWG 30 in San Francisco I was talking with some folks who have been actively deploying DMARC for organizations. From my point of view anyone who wants to publish a DMARC p=reject should spend at least 6 months monitoring DMARC failures to identify legitimate sources of email. The person I was talking to said he recommends a minimum of 12 months.
This is just an example of how difficult it is to capture all the legitimate sources of emails from a domain and effectively authenticate that mail. For a mailbox provider, I think it’s nearly impossible to capture all the legitimate uses of email and authenticate them.
It remains to be seen if the other mailbox providers imitate Yahoo! and AOL or if they push back against the use of DMARC reject policies at mailbox providers. Whatever the outcome, this is a significant shift in how email is used. And we’re all going to have to deal with the fallout of that.

New player in the DMARC space

Over on the DMARC-Discuss list, Comcast announced they had turned on DMARC validation and companies that publish DMARC records should start receiving reports from Comcast.

Comcast blocking outgoing port 25

Comcast announced today they’re blocking outbound port 25 for their residential customers. What does this mean for email marketers? Not much, unless your home connectivity is through Comcast and then you’ll just need to follow Comcast’s directions in order to send mail. What does it mean for email receivers? It means a lot of us will be seeing a lot less spam from infected Windows machines.

Comcast changes

I updated the Wiki a few weeks ago when I heard, but don’t think I posted anything here. Comcast has changed their delisting form page to http://postmaster.comcast.net/block-removal-request.html. The old form is currently non-functional. You can fill it in, but it’s unconnected to anything on the back end and it won’t result in an IP being delisted from the various Comcast blocklists.
My understanding is that the old form may come back to life at some point, but it’s much safer to use the new form and the new Comcast Postmaster Site.

Mickey's take on e360 settlement

Mickey has the full docs of the settlement, and talks about the implications of the confession of judgment.

Comcast and e360 settle lawsuit

e360 initially filed suit against Comcast early in 2008. They asserted a number of things, including that Comcast was fraudulently returning “user unknown” notices and that they were certified by ReturnPath. Comcast filed a countersuit alleging violations of CAN SPAM, violations of the computer fraud and abuse act, as well as a number of other things including abuse of process. In April of 2008 the judge ruled in favor of Comcast and dismissed e360’s case, while allowing the countersuit to proceed.
Over the last 18 months, the suit has moved through the courts. There have been significant delays in the case, and e360 seems to have been dragging their feet based on some of the motions filed by Comcast asking the judge to compel e360 to follow through on discovery.
Today, only weeks before the trial date, a settlement agreement was filed. The settlement agreement prohibits the defendants and any group associated with them from transmitting email to any domain owned by Comcast without affirmative consent (as defined by CAN SPAM). All mail sent by the defendants must comply with the Comcast Terms of Use or AUP. The defendants must not attempt to circumvent Comcast’s spam filters, must comply with CAN SPAM and must not help anyone else violate any of the provisions of the agreement.
The agreement also prohibits mail from defendants that:

Changes at Comcast Postmaster

Two changes at the Comcast Postmaster page that I think are worthy of mentioning.

Comcast FBL open to the public

The Comcast FBL has been moved out of beta testing an into production. ISPs and senders can sign up for the FBL at http://feedback.comcast.net/
All of the applications are currently reviewed by hand, so there may be some delay as they deal with the launch rush. Please be patient. If you currently have a FBL through the beta program, you do not need to do anything, the FBL will continue.

Judge rules in e360 v. Comcast

Yesterday Judge Zagel ruled on Comcast’s motion for judgment on the pleadings. I think the tone of the ruling was clear in the first 3 sentences.

e360 v. Comcast: part 4

Today I have a copy of the e360 briefing on Comcast’s motion for judgment on the pleadings.
On a superficial level, the writing of e360’s lawyers not as clear or concise as that of the Comcast lawyers. When reading Comcast’s writings it is clear to me that the lawyers have a story to tell and it has a beginning, a middle and an end. They take the reader through the setup, then through the evidence and case law, then proceed to the remedies requested. There is a clear narrative and progression and it all makes sense and the reader is never left standing. This briefing meanders hither and yon, prompting one person to ask was this written on the back of a placemat in crayon.
I still think e360 is misunderstanding or misstating some crucial facts in this case.
e360 argues that because they comply with CAN SPAM, then their mail is therefore not spam. This is not true (see Al’s post, and my post and John’s post). Complying with CAN SPAM does not mean you are not sending spam. I will go even farther to say that sending super-duper-double-confirmed-with-a-cherry-on-top-opt-in email does not mean you will always get through an ISPs filters. The ISPs have moved away from being in the position of having to decide between a mailer who insists a recipient opted in and a recipient who marks mail as spam. Now, the ISPs look at complaints and if you annoy your recipients, then the ISP is going to filter that mail. It is all about relevancy. It is all about not sending mail that is going to make those users hit the “this is spam” button. And endusers have never cared about permission, spam is email they do not want and if you send it, they will complain about it.
They also seem to have this impression that Comcast is letting all e360’s competitors send email to Comcast. Again, it is all about relevancy. If e36o’s competitors are sending mail that users do not complain about then yes, that mail is going to get through. The problem here is not that Comcast is picking and choosing which ESP gets to mail the users, it is that the recipients are choosing which emails they do not object to. Send emails recipients find useful and relevant, and it does not matter that you scraped their address off a website, they will not report it as spam.
Comcast points out that under the Communications Decency Act (CDA) they are not liable for blocking content. The CDA provides for “Good Samaritan” blocking and screening of content under 2 separate circumstances: 230(c)(1) and 230(c)(2). 230(c)(1) says

e360 v. Comcast: part 3

A couple weeks ago I posted about e360 suing Comcast. The short version is that e360 filed suit against Comcast to force Comcast to accept e360’s email. Comcast responded with a motion for judgment on the proceedings. This motion asked the judge to rule on e360’s case without going through the process of discovery or depositions or all the normal wrangling associated with a legal case. Comcast appears to be saying to the judge even if everything e360 alleges is true, we have done nothing wrong.
The judge asked for each party to prepare full briefs on the motion. e360’s response is due tomorrow and the Comcast reply to that is due on March 27.
Comcast does not appear to be content with just having the case dismissed. Today they filed a counterclaim and third-party complaint. The counterclaim is against e360, the third-party complaint incorporates David Linhardt, Maverick Direct Marketing, Bargain Depot Enterprises, Northshore Hosting, Ravina Hosting, Northgate Internet Services and John Does 1-50. Docs are up over on SpamSuite.
Comcast states the nature of the action in 4 short paragraphs.

e360 v. Comcast: part 2

Yesterday, I talked about e360 filing suit against Comcast. Earlier this week, Comcast responded to the original filing with some filings of their own.

e360 v. Comcast: part 1

A few weeks ago I very briefly touched on the recent lawsuits filed by e360 against Comcast and a group of anti-spammers. In the Comcast suit (complaint here) e360 argues that Comcast is unfairly and incorrectly blocking e360’s email and are liable for damages to e360’s business.
They have a number of claims, including

Comcast rate limiting

Russell from Port25 posted a comment on my earlier post about changes at Comcast.

SenderScore update

Matt has posted a bit more about the SenderScore Blacklist, following up on my post about the changes at Comcast. George Bilbrey, VP and General Manager, for Return Path followed up with him to explain a bit more about the blacklist. George says:

Changes at Comcast

I can usually tell when one of the ISPs makes some change to their incoming spam filtering just by my call volume. The past few weeks the ISP in most of my calls has been Comcast. And, what do you know, they have made changes to how they are filtering email.
According to their bounce message, Comcast is using ReturnPath’s proprietary SenderScore product to filter mail. Reports on thresholds vary, but IPs with SenderScores of 70 and below have been blocked with messages similar to: