Email Beyond English

Expanding beyond the initial English alphabet and characters was, and remains, a challenge for email systems.

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Understanding the “Precedence:” Header

Though never formally standardized, the Precedence: header has been around since the earliest days of internet email. Google’s use of the Precedence: header for labeling is a new idea, and (probably) unique.

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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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AOL’s MX Record Disappeared Temporarily Overnight

AOL’s MX record vanished for three hours this morning. What does that mean? What happens when the MX record disappears?

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“Delivered” Depends On Context

When an email sending system reports that a message has been ‘delivered,’ that may not be an accurate portrayal of the final destination of the message. To understand why that is, and why ‘delivered’ has been the term of art for so long, we just need to look at the email delivery process.

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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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What Does It Mean to “Certify” Email?

In the certified email concept, what’s certified is that the sender of the message is following a set of standards or practices, and thus should be allowed to send the message. In the certified postal mail concept, what’s certified is that the message was successfully sent and/or delivered and/or received, depending on the level of service. The same word, applied to different aspects of the transaction, results in very different products.

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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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Catch More Spam with Zombies

Zombie email addresses are once-valid addresses which have been literally abandoned by their users, yet remain on marketers’ subscriber lists more or less forever. Spam trap operators we spoke to all agreed that it’s best if the address or domain reject all mail for a period of months or (preferably) years before being recycled as a spam trap.

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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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Categories: Commentary Research View Comments