The Eleventh Commandment
3 February 2010
When you do business with a government agency, at just about any level, you surrender a certain amount of privacy. Whatever you give to the agency is likely going to be subject to so-called “sunshine” laws that go by names like “Freedom of Information” or “Freedom of Access.” Recently, some sportsmen have discovered this the hard
Settlement in Comcast v. e360Insight
19 January 2010
I’ve got a lot of catching up to do on Spamsuite.com, but there is a new document up there tonight. It appears that there has been a settlement filed in Comcast‘s counter-claim against David Linhardt and his (multiple) email marketing (and hosting) companies. I have a bit of analysis up there at Spamsuite, but I think it’s important to
Spammer is as spammer does
10 December 2009
Laura has an outstanding post about coming changes to reputation systems up at her blog. If you haven’t had a look at it, you should. Part of one of the comments, though, has caused a bit of a commotion: While I’m with you in spirit, I’m not optimistic that “blocking ESPs” will have much of a lasting
Barry Speaks: We won’t shut-up and eat your spam
3 December 2009
Today we have a guest post from the ever popular Barry. Al Iverson, Too Much Contact, Spam Resource (2009), http://www.spamresource.com/2009/10/too-much-contact.html. Barry is overworked, underpaid, and wants to get the word out: I’ve been hearing a lot of chatter about how ESPs think the ISPs should just shut up and eat their spam. That if the
When is transactional mail not transactional anymore?
2 December 2009
An interesting question came across my desk this morning. Here’s the request from someone we’ll call “Joe”: I need some help understanding CAN-SPAM requirements. I represent a membership organization. From time to time, we send marketing message to our members and, of course, some of the unsubscribe from those messages. Now we are getting to
The hard truth about email
30 November 2009
Many clients expect email to be sort of an automatic thing. The thinking is “I should hit ‘Send’ and it should arrive within moments.” So, sometimes those of us who work in email hear comments like the following: I understand that these delays may not be your fault, but we can’t have delays. and: It’s
Breaking: SORBS bought by GFI (with confirmation!)
5 November 2009
Jed Smith is reporting that SORBS has been purchased by GFI Software for “for a cool half a mil”. Not being one to sit idly by, I went for comment directly to GFI. Here is their response, sent via David Kelleher, GFI’s PR Manager: GFI Software, a leading infrastructure provider, has acquired SORBS, one of the premier anti-spam reputation services
Use Private Domain Registration and Go to Jail?
4 November 2009
The 9th Circuit opinion in USA v. Kilbride has been released. This is primarily an obscenity case against the defendants for sending pornographic spam email. But, it also includes a challenge to 18 U.S.C. § 1037 on vagueness grounds. 18 U.S.C. § 1037 is the part of the [acp id=”Wikimedia-01″ media=”wiki” title=”CAN-SPAM Act of 2003″
Filters are stupid
3 November 2009
Sometimes it bears remembering that many content filters aren’t score-based, but rather string-based. Because of this, you may have to more carefully craft your messages to deal with the fact that the filter cannot take context into account. And so, today I wish to share with you three different strings actually seen to have caused
Guest Blog: Consumers Cautiously Optimistic about the Future
22 October 2009
Today, we have a guest blog from the Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial Email (CAUCE). CAUCE has been heavily involved in crafting a worthy anti-spam law in Canada, so I reached out to them to see if they would like to guest blog here. Neil Schwartzman, CAUCE’s Executive Director, wrote back with the following: Neil Schwartzman