Spam & anti-spam
Articles and advice about spam (aka unsolicited commercial email, or UCE), including spam filters, anti-spam legislation, seminal lawsuits, industry initiatives, and more.
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ListManager 10 Takes Aim for Better Email Deliverability
Lyris has introduced ListManager 10, an email marketing engine that promises "unrivaled email deliverability."
A recent Harris Interactive survey found that while 58 percent of consumers consider email a good means of maintaining contact with companies, only 77 percent of invited email [...]
Posted: Tuesday, August 12th 2008
Public Feedback Wanted on Global Mobile Ad Guidelines
The Mobile Marketing Association is soliciting public feedback for its global Mobile Advertising Guidelines.
Like the Interactive Ad Bureau (IAB), which releases guidelines for various forms of interactive marketing, the MMA believes unified guid [...]
Posted: Monday, August 11th 2008
How-To: 5 Ways to Increase Email Deliverability
Return Path's Q2 2008 Reputation Benchmark Report (pdf) found e-mails sent from "legitimate" e-mail servers averaged a delivery rate of 56 percent. 20 percent were rejected; 8 percent filtered out of the inbox. The rest — 16 percent — were bounces.
So nearly half of the time, e-mail marketers' messages don't get through. But there are ways to increase deliverability, insists George Bilbrey, Return Path's general mana [...]
Posted: Wednesday, August 6th 2008
Gmail Creates 'Never Send it to Spam' Filter
Google's Gmail, which lets users filter emails based on certain criteria (all email from a certain address, or featuring given keywords, can be automatically archived, labeled, or deleted, for example), just added a new option to its filtering system: "Never send to spam."
"Ticking this should ensure that a certain email [with defined criteria] will not be accidentally sorted into the spam folder," wrote Blogoscoped.
The "Spa [...]
Posted: Wednesday, August 6th 2008
Online Security a Growing American Concern
Americans are increasingly worried about the safety of their identities and financial information online, according to new research from Mintel, reports MarketingCharts. However, identity theft is actually on the decline, Mintel said.
Nearly two-thirds of US adults (65 percent) are more conce [...]
Posted: Tuesday, July 29th 2008

Click Fraud Stabilizes but Botnets Burgeon
The industry-average click-fraud rate was 16.25 percent in Q2, down from Q1's 16.3 percent but up from 2Q07's 15.8 percent, according to pay-per-click (PPC) figures from Click Forensics and click-fraud reporting service Click Fraud Index, MarketingCharts [...]
Posted: Friday, July 25th 2008
Spam Still a Problem; 'Finance' Tops Spammers' Favorite Topics
Without spam protection, the average web user can expect to get 70 spam messages each day, according to a survey by McAfee, the BBC reports.
For the McAfee spam test, 50 people worldwide were asked to web-surf without a spam filter. Some results follow:
UK residents are most likely to receive sex spam, and emails from Nigerian nobles in "dire straits."
The most popular offers were financial: usually solicitat [...]
Posted: Wednesday, July 2nd 2008
ExactTarget Publishes New Rules, Best Practices for Updated CAN-SPAM Act
ExactTarget released a whitepaper (pdf) to familiarize marketers with updated clauses to the CAN-SPAM Act.
The CAN-SPAM Act applies to commercial email and requires the following:
That all email contain a clear, valid, opt-out mechanism. The opt-out cannot demand a password, or any other email beyond the perso [...]
Posted: Thursday, June 26th 2008
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Download Clickatell's 'How-To' guide & start implementing your own mobile campaigns today!Marketers Slow to Respond to Problem of Blocked Email Images
Over 50 percent of images in promotional emails are routinely blocked by email and webmail programs, says a recent survey by the Email Experience Council (eec), the email marketing arm of the Direct Marketing Association (DMA), wr [...]
Posted: Wednesday, June 11th 2008
Google Goes to Court for Deceptive PPC Ads
New Jersey resident Jenna Goddard is suing Google for serving pay-per-click ads that bamboozle searchers into registering for paid subscription services, reports MediaPost.
The ads in question offer users ringtones and other mobile services on a subscription basis.
Goddard claims Google violates its mob [...]
Posted: Thursday, June 5th 2008
Email Marketers Fail to 'Welcome' New Subscribers, Personalize Emails
While 70 percent of companies request more than an email address during user registration, 85 percent of them fail to personalize email messages to new subscribers, according to Return Path.
The finding was part of Return Path's Subscriber Experiences study.
Strategic services director Bonnie Malone-Fry said failing to customize an email "really damages your brand because you're not living up to the exp [...]
Posted: Wednesday, June 4th 2008
Microsoft 'Echoes' Liberates Personal Contact Info to Networking Circles
Microsoft is preparing a platform that enables mobile carriers to provide Windows Live and other software to subscribers.
Code-named "Echoes" and headed by Microsoft's Israeli Strategic Development Center, the premises are simple: broaden the reach of Microsoft software, unite users, and maybe "get rid of phone numbers" -- according to a speech Bill Gates recently made.
Echoes p [...]
Posted: Friday, May 30th 2008
Consumers Like Each Others' Email; Daily Marketing Messages, Not So Much
A study from online firm Habeus shows consumers primarily connect with one another by using email, reports MediaPost.
Email is expected to remain an oft-used communication tool, despite the rise of social networks like Facebook, which lets them pass messages to each other in other ways.
67 percent of respondents said they prefer email today, and 65 percent claim they will proba [...]
Posted: Friday, May 23rd 2008
Epic Gets Off Easy in ASIS Spam Lawsuit
Epic Advertising, formerly AzoogleAds, has won a suit charging it for CAN-SPAM violation.
The suit was filed by ASIS, an internet service provider. ASIS alleged AzoogleAds violated federal and state anti-spam regulations by sending over 10,000 unsolicited emails to potential clients.
A San Francisco-based federal district court ruled AzoogleAds -- now Epic -- was not responsible for spamming users [...]
Posted: Wednesday, May 21st 2008
Court Awards MySpace $230M in Spam Case
A federal judge has awarded MySpace $230 million in a case against a notorious spammer, reports The Associated Press.
The complaint was filed against "Spam King" Sanford Wallace and partner Walter Rines, which hijacked MySpace profiles by obtaining passwords through phishing schemes. The pair fa [...]
Posted: Wednesday, May 14th 2008
Yahoo, McAfee Partner for Secure Search Experience
Yahoo is partnering with McAfee on a system that flags potentially unsafe search results.
The system integrates McAfee's Site Advisor technology into results from Yahoo Search. Red text and other alerts will warn searchers if a site contains any malicious software or is affiliated with any other online fraud activity.
The security offering was christened SearchScan and is positioned as the only [...]
Posted: Tuesday, May 6th 2008
Yahoo, Click Forensics Partner to Foil Click Fraud
Yahoo and Click Forensics have announced a partnership in the fight against click fraud, reports CNET.
Per the terms of the collaboration, Yahoo will provide data on click fraud rates and Click Forensics will send advertiser feedback Yahoo's way.
What Yahoo won't be sharing is how it detects click fraud in the first place. Releasing that information could empower fraudsters to find loopho [...]
Posted: Wednesday, March 19th 2008
Google's Take on 'Tasters' May Impact AdSense Growth
Google is planning a change in policy that could severely impact its own revenue and that of domain "tasters," reports Silicon Alley Insider.
Domain "tasting" exploits the Add Grace Period (via ICANN), a window of time when purchased domains can be returned. "Tasters" buy d [...]
Posted: Wednesday, January 30th 2008
Return Path Whitelist Blankets 1.2 Billion Inboxes
Return Path's Sender Score Certified whitelist has broadened to over 1.2 billion email inboxes. According to Return Path, this represents a 100 percent growth from the same time last year and marks the acceptance of authentication procedures as standard.
ISPs that accept the Sender Score Certified whitelist include GoDaddy, Yahoo, Time Warner Cable and Windows Live Hotmail, reports [...]
Posted: Tuesday, January 29th 2008
Loyal Rewards Gets Sender Score Certified
Email marketer Loyal Rewards has earned accreditation under Return Path's Sender Score Certified whitelisting program.
To qualify, Return Path evaluated Loyal's list maintenance, security, authentication records, inclusion of unsubscribe options on every email, and consumer complaint history.
With the DMA reporting a [...]
Posted: Thursday, January 24th 2008
Most Received High Volumes of 'Junk' and 'Spam' Email during Holidays
More than half (56.4 percent) of consumers reportedly got high volumes of "junk" from marketers ("email from companies I know but that is just not interesting to me"), second only to "spam" ("email I never asked to receive"), which 65.7 percent say they received in high volumes during the holidays, according to Return Path.
Below, some of the findings of Return Path's "Fourth Annual Holiday Email Consumer Survey," [...]
Posted: Tuesday, January 22nd 2008
ICANN Targets Domain Tasters
The practice known as "domain tasting" is getting another look by the Internet's main oversight body, reports the Associated Press.
ICANN, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, said it will begin drafting proposals to crack down on "tasters" -Â those who buy up domains only to return most of them later.
The practice takes advantage of a s [...]
Posted: Thursday, January 10th 2008
Jupiter: Email Marketing to Hit $2.1B in 2012
Spend on email marketing will hit $2.1 billion by 2012, near double what it is now, reports DestinationCRM.
The prediction was gleaned from a report by JupiterResearch. Over the next four years, budgets for email marketing will rise from $1.2 billion spent in '07 to $2.1 billion spent in '08.
Increased spending follows the rise in [...]
Posted: Tuesday, January 8th 2008
'East London Decapitator' Makes Grisly Mark on Outdoor Ads
A London-based vandal dubbed the Decapitator is transforming outdoor ads into platforms for bloody decapitations.
Londoners are split on whether the Decapitator is making a strong commentary on urban spam or if the artist is just plain nuts-- the Decapitator targets women over men in advertisements by a five-to-one ratio, according to words & pictures.
Ads targeted include Moet & Chandon's "Be [...]
Posted: Tuesday, January 8th 2008
MarketingVOX Snookered by Trojan Horse
Yesterday morning MarketingVOX ran an ad campaign containing a trojan-horse-like Flash mechanism that produced a pop-up ad for a fake "performance optimizer."
The campaign, which launched the 26th of December, tested fine -- showing an ad for a multimedia technology called Sound F/X -- and exhibited trojan horse behavior only after its launch.
MarketingVOX ran about 1,300 impressions of the ad before it was caught and terminated.
MarketingVOX trafficking staff was warned [...]
Posted: Friday, December 28th 2007


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