Published Monday, August 25, 2025 by Al Iverson. Click here to subscribe.

 
Hey, friend! It's that time again! Here's what's happening in the world of email deliverability as found on Al Iverson's Spam Resource.

It’s a fun week for me. Spam Resource is now twenty four years old and that gives me an opportunity to pause and reflect upon the state of email and the state of email deliverability, looking back to where things were at back in the old days, when this blog started, and thinking ahead to where things could go from here. I'll spare you those wistful remembrances (I fall down that hole a little too easily sometimes) and skip the wonky future projections and instead just say thank you for reading, thank you for subscribing. I appreciate you.

And also... oh wow, is it pumpkin spice season already? Time to start thinking about Black Friday/Cyber Monday, isn’t it.
 
24 years and counting: Where does the time go?
Spam Resource turns 24 this year. I started writing about email in 2001, mostly because I was spending my days fighting spam, running and/or wrestling with blocklists, and then, later, trying to figure out why some mail got delivered and some ... read more
Yes, it's already time to start thinking about BFCM season!
It’s only August, but if you send marketing email, you know what that means: Black Friday and Cyber Monday prep starts SOON! If not....now! BFCM is the busiest, most competitive time of year for email marketers. More volume. More competition. More risk of getting lost in the inbox, or worse, filtered to spam. read more
iOS 26 and the anger of the Unknown Senders
Wesley Hilliard at Apple Insider covers a story that has certain political fundraising groups up in arms: Apple's upcoming iOS 26 release will start automatically sorting messages from unknown numbers into a new "Unknown Senders" category. That means no notification ding, no badge on the Messages app. Just a quiet little folder of messages ... read more
Yes, Google requires opt-in
Every now and then, someone shows up in an email marketing or deliverability forum or chat room, trying to make the case that spam is somehow allowed. The argument usually goes like this: "The mailbox providers don't actually require permission, so it's fine if I just send email to whoever I want." After all, other people are sending ... read more
Google DMARC reports, now with 4xx and 5xx
Google has very recently added new diagnostic details to its DMARC aggregate reports, and they're a big help for troubleshooting. Instead of digging through scattered email logs across your various email sending platforms and marketing clouds, you can now see specific compliance and authentication-related SMTP error codes right in the ... read more
Lookalike domain finder: Fun with homoglyphs and more
Here's a cool tool that a colleague at Valimail created recently, and if you care about protecting against people spoofing your emails through lookalike domains, I think you might find it interesting. It's Valimail's Domain Lookalike Finder, created by VP of product, Scott Ziegler, and it works like this: Feed it your domain name, and it ... read more
Robservations: Tribune Publishing apologizes for phony phishing expedition
A bonus article from the archives (Thursday, September 24, 2020)
Chicago media reporter Robert Feder shared an interesting story today. The Chicago Tribune recently sent a simulated phishing email to employees, to test them to see if they would "fall for" the phish and click on the links in the email message. This is somewhat standard in the corporate world and is used as a measure of whether or not an ... read more
And that's all for now! Thanks for reading.

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Mailing address: 1522 W Jarvis Ave, Chicago IL 60626. I am not a lawyer and this is not legal advice. Duh. All opinions are mine alone and do not necessarily represent the views of any group, company, organization or other person.