Is BIMI Dead?

When Google, Yahoo and Apple announced their email applications would support BIMI, it appeared that BIMI was ready to become an important standard in email marketing. Think about it: Your precious logo directly attached to every email you send, right there in the subject line. You get instant brand recognition and, thanks to the DMARC […]

Google’s Recent SMTP Relay Exploit and DMARC Policies

In April, Google began to see an uptick in spoofing attacks that utilized their SMTP Relay system and compromised Google accounts. They have closed the loophole by May, however, at least 30,000 malicious emails were detected in a two-week period. While this is an extremely small chunk of Google’s email traffic, similar exploits can affect […]

Inbox Provider Insider Junk Scams

Inbox Providers work hard to stop email fraud and phishing scams from outside. Google, Yahoo! and Office365.com all utilize a mix of algorithms that include Blacklists, SPF, DKIM and DMARC compliance, Spam scoring and Relevance scoring to make inbox placement decisions. However, scammers have found an interesting loophole, by sending the spam from the Inbox […]

Blacklisted? Get DMARC

Blacklisting is the oldest form of spam protection.  Inbox Providers keep a list of IP addresses and domains that recently sent spam and block them from the inbox.   Blacklisting eventually evolved to include 3rd parties maintaining and selling blacklists derived from spam traps, honey pots, and lists gathered from multiple inbox providers.  As an […]

Does email content affect your email delivery?

Absolutely! Google, Outlook.com/Office365 and Yahoo! have different algorithms for picking up on Spam, Phishing and Fraud emails and content is a key factor in their decisions to place an email in the user’s inbox. What factors do the algorithms use? While each Inbox Provider uses a different algorithm for weighting incoming email, there are several […]

The State of Government Email Delivery

Recently the CDC found itself in the awkward position of advising the public on email fraud and phishing.  The reason: COVID contact tracing efforts have been thwarted by fraudulent email from professional phishing groups.  Email phishing and email delivery are a systemic problem for governments and businesses alike. As more federal, state and local agencies […]

The Economics of Blacklists

Blacklists have been around for over two decades, meaning that blacklists (blocklists or deny lists) existed before most humans were on the Internet. The goal of blacklists is to remove Spam email from the Internet, however, the implementations and algorithms vary dramatically. A few of examples: Spamhaus ZEN CBL reports the IP address of sources […]

Why do you need DMARC?

At MxToolbox, we keep saying “DMARC adoption is imperative for successful delivery of your business email“. Without implementing DMARC, your messages are vulnerable to poor inbox placement, and fraud, phishing and spoofing campaigns. The DMARC standard gives you visibility into who is sending email “from” your domain, including bad actors. And, big Inbox Providers are […]