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      Page 9 of 68     |

      Jan
      12

      Easiest Prediction Ever: Spam Will Suck in 2010

      by J.D. Falk
      Director of Product Strategy, Receiver Services

      Hey there, fellow spam fighters. Read this quick, because any second now all those infected machines that were powered down over the holidays will boot up, get fresh orders from their bot masters, and start sending spam again. Most of 'em already have.

      We've published a bunch of predictions recently, because that's apparently the cool thing to do. Here are our thoughts on how those same trends (plus a few more) will affect you, the spam fighter, as you work to reduce how much unwanted crap your users see in their inboxes.

      Email Still Isn't Dead

      You've seen the stats: Facebook and Twitter aren't replacing email, they're sending email. This will continue in 2010, and become more complex now that Facebook wants application developers to ask users for their email addresses in order to send them notifications them directly.

      Tell me more

      Categories: Email Deliverability

      Jan
      08

      New Postmaster Page at BlueTie

      By Melinda Plemel
      Senior Receiver Relationship Manager

      Congratulations to our partners at BlueTie for launching a new postmaster site (http://postmaster.bluetie.com). If you don't recognize the name BlueTie, you are most likely familiar with one of their biggest domains - excite.com. BlueTie is the leading provider of hosted email and calendaring solutions for small to mid-sized businesses (SMBs) and service providers worldwide.

      We have mentioned that many ISPs and mailbox service providers have launched postmaster sites in past posts, but what is special about this one?

      Tell me more

      Categories: Email Deliverability

      Jan
      07

      RETURN PATH IDENTIFIES TOP 10 EMAIL TRENDS IN 2009

      For immediate release - Return Path, the leading email deliverability and reputation management company, today released its Top Email Trends in 2009 report. While 2010 promises even more changes in the email industry, Return Path has identified the top trends in email in the past year.
      "Return Path is dedicated to ensuring that consumers receive the emails they want to receive and offering ISPs the tools and knowledge to identify legitimate, permissioned email," said George Bilbrey, President, Return Path. "With our extensive knowledge of the email industry, we feel it's important and valuable to learn from the past to foresee where the industry is headed in 2010. By understanding the industry trends in 2009, marketers can work to improve their email programs in 2010."

      The Top 10 Emails Trends in 2009, include:


      1. Spam growth continues - Reports in early 2009 estimated daily spam volumes are more than 117 billion emails every day. In addition, image spam increased in 2009, a problem for enterprises and ISPs using outdated email security software
      2. Tell me more

        Categories: News | Press Releases

      Jan
      06

      An Email Retrospective

      By Melinda Plemel
      Senior Receiver Relationship Manager

      We're pleased to present a special report on the top ten email trends in 2009 based on our experiences working with top marketers and the world's leading ISPs. We hope this look back will help you look forward and make 2010 the best year yet for email.

      The Top 10 Emails Trends in 2009 include:

      1. Spam growth continues
      - Estimated daily spam volumes for 2009 were more than 117 billion emails per day. In addition, image spam increased in 2009, a problem for enterprises and ISPs using outdated email security software.

      2. False positives increase - 2009 also saw a rise in "false positives". This is when a legitimate, requested, and wanted email is mistakenly blocked outright or delivered to a bulk folder by a spam filter. ISPs increased their use of trusted whitelists in an effort to more accurately identify legitimate email and prevent false positives.

      3. Phishing impacts everyone - Criminal enterprises phished even more 2009 - sending forged emails purporting to be from banks, social networks, and brand marketers to gain access to account information. Return Path recommends authenticating your email as a way to combat phishing.

      Tell me more

      Categories: Email Deliverability

      Jan
      04

      2010 Email Predictions: Good News for the Good Guys and More Mischief from the Bad Guys

      Matt Blumberg
      By Matt Blumberg
      CEO & Chairman

      As we embark on a new year and a new decade (and Return Path's second decade in business), I'm back with my annual predictions for the email industry. My 2009 good news-bad news predictions were somewhat prescient but certainly not my best effort. So, after considerable thought and a fair amount of internal debate, here's what I've got:

      1) ISPs will focus more of their anti-spam efforts around picking out the good guys rather than blocking the bad guys. Why? There are just so many more bad guys - and we've reached a tipping point where it is faster and cheaper to cherry pick the good senders. Along with their internal tools, we'll see more ISPs rely on 3rd party white lists like Return Path Certification for more accurate filtering.

      Tell me more

      Categories: Email Deliverability | News

      Dec
      29

      A new and improved Sender Score for a new year

      George Bilbrey
      By George Bilbrey
      President

      As 2010 begins and many head to the gym to fulfill New Year's resolutions, here at Return Path we'll be getting our workout strengthening our data! As the world's most comprehensive email reputation data source (collecting data from over 150 million mailboxes worldwide), we are dedicated to ensuring our reputation scores are accurate, current and thorough.

      We know the email universe relies on our Sender Score. For anyone who sends email, it's the foremost measure of email reputation - a direct reflection on sending practices based on universal reputation metrics: user complaints, spam trap hits, unknown user counts, and more. For those receiving mail, Sender Score can be used to inform inbound email handling and assist with the Herculean task of separating good email from spam.

      Tell me more

      Categories: Email Deliverability | News

      Dec
      28

      Good News, Bad News: Reckonings of my 2009 predictions

      Matt Blumberg
      By Matt Blumberg
      CEO & Chairman

      We're at the end of another year and that means its time for reckonings. So lets look back at my 2009 good news, bad news predictions and see how I fared.

      #1 Q1 will be tough but things will look up in Q2.
      Thumbs down: Sadly, this conservative prediction was a little too optimistic. The recovery has taken longer to materialize than we had hoped with businesses in most sectors anticipating a recovery in Q1 2010. However, digital marketing did better than many sectors because it's measurable and relatively inexpensive when compared to print and other channels.

      Tell me more

      Categories:

      Dec
      23

      2009 European Anti-Spam Report Released

      Alex Rubin
      By Alex Rubin
      Reciever Business Development

      Enisa (European Network and Information Security Agency) just released their third survey on anti-spam measures implemented by European providers. They interviewed 90 EMEA xSPs (Internet Service Providers, Telcos, Hosting companies, etc) in 30 European countries to compile the results.

      The survey is a comprehensive look at spam issues affecting Europe and highlights how spam is truly a global problem. European mailbox providers echo concerns raised in the United States and globally.

      Tell me more

      Categories:

      Dec
      21

      There Never Was a Time Before Permission

      by J.D. Falk
      Director of Product Strategy, Receiver Services

      Think about what you were doing on the Internet fifteen years ago, as 1994 rolled over to 1995. The Mosaic browser was brand new; Netscape 1.0 shipped that December. Windows 95 hadn't been released. Bill Clinton was still considered a hip, young president. And me? I was already dealing with spam.

      Some people may try to tell you that spam started in the seventies, but that's just shoddy research. Up until the mid-nineties, there were maybe a handful of misguided marketers sending out spam‚ email or otherwise, each year. It wasn't anything like we've got today, and it wasn't a big deal because they were always slapped down quick. The early Internet had an Acceptable Use Policy which basically forbade all commercial activity, and violating it meant you lost access.

      But within just a few years, it all changed. The last vestiges of the non-commercial Internet were replaced by paid access, which led to the expectation that if you paid your bills on time you could do whatever you damn well pleased. Mom & Pop dial-up ISPs were borged into a few corporate conglomerates, yet neither had ever imagined they'd have to deal with any email activity worse than the occasional chain letter.

      Tell me more

      Categories: Email Deliverability

      Dec
      17

      MAAWG, IETF, and BITS

      by J.D. Falk
      Director of Product Strategy, Receiver Services

      As announced this morning, the Messaging Anti-Abuse Working Group (MAAWG) has established formal relationships with the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) and the BITS/Financial Services Roundtable.

      MAAWG is comprised of ISPs, technology vendors including Return Path, ESPs, and a small but growing number of big brands, all interested in talking about email spam and other abuses of messaging systems. Some of their published documents include the Senders Best Communications Practices, which could be called the deliverability bible, and Message Sender Reputation Concepts and Common Practices, the best publicly available resource for understanding reputation systems like Sender Score.

      Tell me more

      Categories: Email Deliverability | News

       
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