SenderID, include:, and Google Apps

We’ve run into an interesting edge case involving SenderID and Google’s SPF record.

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Is Amazon Playing Chicken With Mailbox Providers?

The market for an easy outbound mail API “in the cloud” may well be gigantic; it’s pretty obvious that email is the last thing that the latest social/cloud/whatever startup entrepreneur wants to think about. When the next hot site discovers that deliverability isn’t ever guaranteed, will they blame Amazon, or will they blame the mailbox provider who rejected the message?

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You Can Stop the Backscatter

Backscatter occurs when your mail server unintentionally sends auto-generated replies to recipients who didn’t send the email in the first place. Confused? Wait, there’s more.

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Validating Addresses in an Unbounded Namespace

Though they don’t always realize it, accuracy in domain names is important to end users when it comes to their email addresses — and it’s equally important to anyone who collects email addresses, for any purpose. Mistyped email addresses can have far-reaching consequences.

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Lacking a Common Language

Some of the terms I see floating around the industry are silly and annoying, but probably harmless. Are you really a rock star if you’ve never gyrated on stage in front of 50,000 screaming fans? Can you call yourself a ninja when you want everyone to be able to see you, or a guru when your wisdom does not lead to enlightenment?

But misunderstanding common terms can also lead to far bigger mistakes.

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Return Path Welcomes Christine Borgia and Todd Herr to Our Receiver Services Team

I’m very pleased to announce today that Return Path has hired Christine Borgia, formerly of AOL and Todd Herr, formerly of Time Warner Cable/Road Runner.

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Christine Borgia and Todd Herr, Formerly of AOL and Time Warner Cable/Road Runner, Join Return Path

Email Industry Experts Bring Experience In the Complex, Massive, 24×7 Fight That ISPs Wage Against Spam and Messaging Abuse

April 29, 2010 – New York, NY – Return Path, the global leader in email deliverability and reputation management services, today announced that Christine Borgia and Todd Herr, email industry veterans, have joined the company.

Borgia, former head of the Postmaster team at global ISP AOL, and Herr, former Postmaster at Time Warner Cable/Road Runner, will work with Return Path’s team of email/spam experts, including J.D. Falk, formerly of Yahoo!’s Postmaster Team, and Neil Schwartzman, long-time spam fighter, among many others. …

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Categories: Press Releases Return Path View Comments

A new and improved Sender Score for a new year

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.

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The Battle Up North: Canada Fights for a Spam Law

No, Canada is not being invaded by Russia, or even Greenland, although that might be an easier battle than this. Like many in the email and privacy space I am keeping tabs on our colleagues to the north as they work to pass Canada’s first national spam law. Canada is the only G8 nation that has not already enacted such a law.

The process began many years ago, but it only really got rolling this past April. The draft law was introduced, read, reviewed and referred to committee in June, where experts and others testified publically in support of the law. The process was well underway and seemingly on track.

But over the past few weeks things have taken a turn that could lead to the law being weakened or scuttled altogether. In particular, the Canadian Marketing Association, having already stated their broad support for the law, recanted on some points and began lobbying on a number of issues, including subscriber consent.

As I watch this unfold I can’t help but think that this process of vigorous debate is ultimately what will ensure Canada gets a solid, useful spam law that actually matters. …

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An Unwelcome Afterlife for a Long-Dead Blacklist

There’s still a few weeks before Halloween, but have we ever got a scary story for you — and every word of it is true. (Imagine we’re sitting around a campfire, chowing down on s’mores, flashlights under our faces.)

Seven years ago, on this very internet, there was a man named Matthew who was angry about spam. Now sure, there are lots of people angry about spam, and some of them are named Matthew, but this particular Matthew decided that he was going to do something about it.

Matthew noticed that a lot of spam came from foreign countries, and that he didn’t get any real mail from people who lived there. So he created blacklists for each country that sent him spam. Then he noticed that a lot of spam came from particular large ISPs, and he created blacklists for each ISP that sent him spam. Soon Matthew had a lot of lists, and some of them were very big.

Five years passed, and suddenly Matthew and his lists disappeared! …

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