Disqus - Latest Comments for jdfalk

Re: Introducing Tweephone – The World’s First Analogue Twitter Client [VIDEO] - AllTwitter

J.D. Falk — Fri, 28 Oct 2011 11:20:29 -0000

Very impressive, but not the first to go analog: http://teletweety.com/

Re: http://www.returnpath.net/blog/received/2011/09/dkim-hpf/

J.D. Falk — Sun, 02 Oct 2011 16:51:53 -0000

Absolutely! Thanks for the correction/addition.

Re: http://www.returnpath.net/blog/2011/07/marketers-field-guide-gmail-inboxes.php

J.D. Falk — Fri, 12 Aug 2011 12:46:16 -0000

Interesting...I'm not aware of any published standard for greylisting. There are a few web pages, and some commonly used open source packages, but no actual standard — not even a BCP.

Re: http://www.returnpath.net/blog/2011/07/marketers-field-guide-gmail-inboxes.php

J.D. Falk — Tue, 02 Aug 2011 15:35:39 -0000

About a month ago, we published a field guide for Yahoo! which should answer your questions:

http://www.returnpath.net/b...

Re: http://www.returnpath.net/blog/2011/07/marketers-field-guide-gmail-inboxes.php

J.D. Falk — Mon, 01 Aug 2011 20:07:28 -0000

We've confirmed with Google staff that their whitepapers on anti-spam methods were all out of date long before publication. The papers give you a good idea about their underlying philosophy, but they've updated the technology multiple times since then.

Re: http://www.returnpath.net/blog/2011/07/word-of-the-week-google.php

J.D. Falk — Thu, 21 Jul 2011 20:16:38 -0000

So far, it's being used by actual people to communicate and share with each other. Perhaps we could call it a social network for socializing.

Re: Email List Predicament: Is This OK?

J.D. Falk — Tue, 12 Jul 2011 11:12:38 -0000

CAN-SPAM is the bare minimum you have to do to comply with the law. Following CAN-SPAM isn't enough to stay within the real best practices (over which there is little disagreement), or to remain polite.

That's the real question: are you being polite? Are you being respectful of your recipients' time and attention? If not, it doesn't matter whether they've opted in or not — you'll still be a spammer in their eyes, and in the eyes of the majority of internet users.

One might think that Congressional staffers are different, and I could imagine making an argument that addresses @house.gov or @senate.gov can be treated differently. But when you get a staffer's gmail address, how do you know what's acceptable to them?

Never assume you have permission. That's what spammers do.

Re: http://j.coffeecup.com/?page=4&post=return-path-login-dance

J.D. Falk — Thu, 26 May 2011 17:09:10 -0000

What would you suggest instead?

Re: http://www.returnpath.net/blog/2011/05/how-inactive-addresses-hurt-deliverability-plus-3-tips-on-what-to-do.php

J.D. Falk — Tue, 17 May 2011 23:33:03 -0000

True, automated reputation systems only consider recent behavior, so better list management will help eventually — but the definition of "recent" varies, from days to months.

What matters most, though, is how the actual recipients feel about the mail. If they like it, they're not likely to mark it as spam. If they don't like it, they could continue disliking it (and thus you) forever.

Re: http://www.returnpath.net/blog/received/2011/04/precedence/

J.D. Falk — Tue, 03 May 2011 14:16:27 -0000

There's no direct correlation between "Precedence: bulk" and spam filtering at any of the major mailbox providers. Google's "bulk" filter is not an indication that Google thinks the mail is spam.

Re: http://www.returnpath.net/blog/2011/04/bulking-at-gmail-and-hotmail.php

J.D. Falk — Wed, 27 Apr 2011 15:04:15 -0000

Yesterday, in response to Ram's question, we published an article which describes the history and purpose of the Precedence: header: http://www.returnpath.net/b...

I hope it helps to clarify things, but feel free to comment there if you have additional questions.

Re: http://www.returnpath.net/blog/received/2010/11/delivered-context/

J.D. Falk — Wed, 27 Apr 2011 14:41:53 -0000

Mailbox providers often consider the "purpose" of a feedback loop system to be to alert their peers about ongoing issues, rather than individual unsubscribe requests. This is discussed in more detail in MAAWG's Complaint Feedback Loop Best Common Practices document: http://www.maawg.org/sites/...

Re: http://www.returnpath.net/blog/2008/05/the-comcast-feedback-loop-is-available-exclusively-from-return-path.php

J.D. Falk — Wed, 27 Apr 2011 14:41:29 -0000

Mailbox providers often consider the "purpose" of a feedback loop system to be to alert their peers about ongoing issues, rather than to convey individual unsubscribe requests. This is discussed in more detail in MAAWG's Complaint Feedback Loop Best Common Practices document: http://www.maawg.org/sites/...

Re: http://www.returnpath.net/blog/received/2011/04/srv/

J.D. Falk — Tue, 12 Apr 2011 11:56:50 -0000

Well, I heard Cyrus talking about it at an IETF meeting last year...and it makes sense, given the reports of improved automation in iOS Mail and the authorship of the RFC...but I may have misunderstood, maybe it'll be in a future version.

Re: http://www.returnpath.net/blog/2011/04/how-to-be-a-great-at-ping-pong-and-email-marketing.php

J.D. Falk — Mon, 11 Apr 2011 14:25:01 -0000

also: if you're only thinking about serving (sending) and not about receiving, you'll probably get hurt...and so will whoever's standing behind you.

Re: http://www.returnpath.net/blog/2011/02/goodmail-shuts-down.php

J.D. Falk — Tue, 15 Mar 2011 22:02:29 -0000

Certification adds certainty. If your mail is Return Path Certified, you can be far more certain that it'll be delivered to the recipient's inbox than you could without the certification.

But that doesn't mean your mail will be blocked or deleted if it isn't certified. The vast majority of email that reaches users' inboxes was sent without any type of certification or whitelisting. Nobody had to pay. That's just how email works, always has been.

Re: Best Practices: Annual CEO Expense Audit

J.D. Falk — Tue, 15 Mar 2011 21:52:47 -0000

I'm one of those employees, and yep, we have an expense reporting system. It's ugly and non-intuitive, but that's almost always true of that kind of site/service.

(Business opportunity for someone, perhaps?)

Re: Netflix for iPad updated with a new custom UI but loses features like DVD queueing

J.D. Falk — Thu, 03 Mar 2011 23:30:01 -0000

Bad move. I primarily use the app for browsing movies & queue management, hardly ever stream to my iPad. Why would I, when I can stream to my DVD player and project on the living room wall?

Re: http://www.returnpath.net/blog/2011/02/return-path-launches-domain-assurance-an-anti-phishing-service.php

J.D. Falk — Wed, 23 Feb 2011 17:33:31 -0000

Good point!

For marketers and other types of senders: http://www.returnpath.net/c...

For ISPs, maibox providers, filtering vendors, and others who're interested in the receiving/verifying/filtering side of the process: http://www.returnpath.net/i...

And if the answers you need aren't there, please do contact us: http://www.returnpath.net/c...

Re: http://www.returnpath.net/blog/received/2011/02/auth-important/

J.D. Falk — Tue, 08 Feb 2011 19:20:49 -0000

The issue is that underscore isn't permitted in hostnames, but that shouldn't be a barrier because the _domainkey record isn't trying to be a hostname. Still, some DNS hosters' configuration software may have been written before service records became common.

(Or, to quote RFC 5863: "DNS administrative software varies considerably in its abilities to support DKIM names, such as with underscores, and to add new types of DNS information.")

Unfortunately, the only advice we can give -- the same advice you'd hear from all of the DKIM and DNS experts -- is that if your DNS hosting company can't or won't support these records, you'll have to find another DNS hosting company.

Re: http://www.returnpath.net/blog/received/2010/09/arf-demystified/

J.D. Falk — Tue, 25 Jan 2011 16:13:40 -0000

I haven't heard of one, but it may be out there.

Re: http://www.returnpath.net/blog/received/2011/01/spear-phishing/

J.D. Falk — Wed, 05 Jan 2011 18:50:19 -0000

I'll pass this along to the web developers.

Re: http://www.returnpath.net/blog/received/2011/01/spear-phishing/

J.D. Falk — Tue, 04 Jan 2011 16:52:56 -0000

Very important point, Sam, thanks.

Re: I Hope You’re Looking for a New Job

J.D. Falk — Mon, 03 Jan 2011 14:59:40 -0000

I really, really wish I could agree, but...there are still email marketing consultants and SEO consultants hawking the same old bullshit they always have.

The problem, as Laura Atkins described beautifully in http://blog.wordtothewise.c... , is that there are always marketing newbies ready to shell out cash to anyone who claims to be a guru or ninja or whatever. There's always a new crop of well-meaning idiots who need to learn the same lessons their predecessors learned, hell-bent on the exact same destructive behaviors that their predecessors engaged in until they got smarter.

Maybe, if we're lucky, a few of the next crop of newbies will stumble across this site and get themselves bitch-slapped early.

Re: http://www.returnpath.net/blog/received/2010/12/mx-record/

J.D. Falk — Wed, 22 Dec 2010 12:16:58 -0000

It's possible. What is the exact error message you received?