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Archive for February 28th, 2010

Does Your Email Marketing Software Includes Spf

Didier Grossemy says that Digital is no longer the “under dog” of the marketing world campaigns and strategies are now built around digital media with digital media becoming the centre piece of any activity so a digital agency really needs to work at that strategic level with their clients.

Sender Policy Framework SPF

SPF is the breakthrough for sending emails from an external email technology other than Outlook. This document is to make you understand the importance of setting up your SPF before starting sending emails.

Common Types of EMail Abuse where the Sender Address is Forged

Spammers want to avoid receiving nondelivery notifications bounces to their real addresses.
Fraudsters want to cover their tracks and remain anonymous.
Computer worms want to cause confusion or just dont care about which sender addresses they use.
Phishers password fishers want to impersonate wellknown trusted identities in order to steal passwords from users.

The Problem: Sender Address Forgery

Today nearly all abusive email messages carry fake sender addresses. The victims whose addresses are being abused often suffer from the consequences because their reputation gets diminished and they have to disclaim liability for the abuse or waste their time sorting out misdirected bounce messages.

You probably have experienced one kind of abuse or another of your email address yourself in the past e.g. when you received an error message saying that a message allegedly sent by you could not be delivered to the recipient although you never sent a message to that address.

Sender address forgery is a threat to users and companies alike and it even undermines the email medium as a whole because it erodes people’s confidence in its reliability. That is why your bank never sends you information about your account by email and keeps making a point of that fact.

But it does not have to be this way!

Sender Addresses in EMails

Like paper mail letters email messages have at least two kinds of sender addresses: one on the envelope and one in the letterhead.

The envelope sender address sometimes also called the returnpath is used during the transport of the message from mail server to mail server e.g. to return the message to the sender in the case of a delivery failure. It is usually not displayed to the user by mail programs.

The header sender address of an email message is contained in the “From” or “Sender” header and is what is displayed to the user by mail programs. Generally mail servers do not care about the header sender address when delivering a message.

The Solution: SPF

The Xmail X2 Email marketing software uses SPF standards.

The Sender Policy Framework SPF is an open standard specifying a technical method to prevent sender address forgery. More precisely the current version of SPF called SPFv1 or SPF Classic protects the envelope sender address which is used for the delivery of messages. See the box on the right for a quick explanation of the different types of sender addresses in emails.
There are other solutions that protect the header sender address or that do not care at all about who sent the message only who originally wrote it.

Even more precisely SPFv1 allows the owner of a domain to specify their mail sending policy e.g. which mail servers they use to send mail from their domain. The technology requires two sides to play together:1 the domain owner publishes this information in an SPF record in the domain’s DNS zone and when someone else’s mail server receives a message claiming to come from that domain then 2 the receiving server can check whether the message complies with the domain’s stated policy. If e.g. the message comes from an unknown server it can be considered a fake.

Once you are confident about the authenticity of the sender address you can finally “take it for real” and attach reputation to it. While IPaddressbased reputation systems like Spamhaus or SpamCop have prevailed so far reputation will increasingly be based on domains and even individual email addresses in the future too.

Furthermore additional kinds of policies are planned for a future version of SPF such as asserting that all of a domain’s outgoing mail is S/MIME or PGP signed.

An Example Policy : Didier Grossemy

Let’s look at an example to give you an idea of how SPF works. Bob owns the domain example.net. He also sometimes sends mail through his GMail account and contacted GMail’s support to identify the correct SPF record for GMail.Since he often receives bounces about messages he didn’t send he decides to publish an SPF record in order to reduce the abuse of his domain in email envelopes:

example.net. TXT “v=spf1 mx a:pluto.example.net include:aspmx.googlemail.com all”The parts of the SPF record mean the following: v=spf1 SPF version 1
mx the incoming mail servers MXes of the domain are authorized to also send mail for example.net

a:pluto.example.net the machine pluto.example.net is authorized too
include:aspmx.googlemail.com everything considered legitimate by gmail.com is legitimate for example.net too

all all other machines are not authorized

This example demonstrates but a small part of SPF’s expressiveness.

Do not take it as a guideline for building your own record things might not work out as you expect and legitimate messages might get blocked! Instead learn more about the record syntax or get the complete picture by studying the full specification. Community support is available.

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Xmail X2 Email Marketing software has built in triggers to generate an SPF record.

Meaning that all you email communication will not end up in the spam box.

Need professional help? Didier Grossemy Linkedin
As web sites and Internet marketing become more complex a growing number of businesses are discovering the value of outsourcing the implementation and management of their Web 2.0 initiatives to trusted service providers that employ a staff of people with a full range of competencies. Call us! on 612 9238 8125 or enquire now. Click Here

About the writer:nbsp;nbsp;Didier Grossemy has over 15 years of Digital experience.

Didier Grossemy is specialised in Startup and growth strategy solutions.

Didier Grossemy management skills and expertise has strategically guided some of the largest companies in the world to the Internet space.

Didier Grossemy has and is assisting publicly listed Telecommunication companies Shopping centres Fashion designers Insurance groups to launching 140 content managed websites for the Le Meridien five stars hotel group to implementing the first interactive environment for Columbia Tristar Films.
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Review – Dreamhost Web Hosting

Dreamhost has been synonymous with professional and reliable web hosting and the company has been around since 1997. Over the years the company has garnered ample popularity in the hosting industry as a reliable web host. Their servers are located in Southern California and although the company has experienced some server shut downs the pattern is no different than any other professional hosting company.

The company’s hosting plan starts at 7.95 per month and a free domain name registration is included within this hosting plan! Furthermore the customer gets access to 160GB of storage 1.65 TB of monthly bandwidth as well as the ability to host unlimited number of domain names. This therefore is an unbeatable deal and offers complete value for money.

The host offers yet more unique benefits and features to its customers. These include rewards and bonuses in terms of an increase in monthly storage space and bandwidth. So when a customer signs up for a hosting plan with Dreamhost he would automatically be entitled to an increase in disk storage every week! This amount is in fact determined by the type of plan that is purchased. So if a customer plans to sign up for their lowest priced hosting package 7.95per month then he would get an increase in disk space of 1 GB every week and the bandwidth grows by 16 GB every week. Furthermore the company keeps adding special bonuses and offers from time to time and this further enriches the customers’ hosting experience.

The company has garnered mixed reviews and testimonials but a majority of their reviews reflect the professionalism and reliability offered by the company. Customers signing up for Dreamhost would not be disappointed by the customer support either. Their interactive forum is very helpful for people who are looking for hosting or company related information guidelines and tips.

Their singleclick installs are a favourite among many users as it facilitates one click installation of plugins like WordPress. With a web hosting service that is reasonably priced and boasts of a satisfied customer base potential customers need not worry about risking their investments. It is however advisable to have any queries or concerns addressed before you sign up for their web hosting plan. This would also help you choose a hosting package that is best suited for your website as well as fits your budget.

About the writer:  HostingCoupons.org is a web hosting blog providing coupons for godaddy bluehost and hostgator