No More Cheap 3rd-Party Emailers

No More Cheap 3rd-Party Emailers: a reader asks…

What’s the difference between scammers and hackers sending emails from fake addresses and legitimate organizations sending from 3rd-party emailers? I’m trying to block spam in my inbox, but too much junk gets through.

Short answer, not much difference (my opinion). Let me explain. At this point in the evolution of email and text messaging, the number of scams, hacking attempts, and unwanted and unsolicited communications exceeds 150 billion messages daily. That’s at least half of all electronic communications. By some estimates, it’s more like 80%. We should all be concerned about the wasted time and lost productivity dealing with this garbage.

One of the easiest ways to spot a fake email is to look at the actual email address in the From line. If it doesn’t reflect the organization’s domain name, the email is fake. The industry standard is that any email communications legitimately coming from an organization should be coming from that organization’s domain (the part after the @ sign, such as @positek.net).

Some cheap or free bulk emailers used by legitimate organizations also use this 3rd-party sender method. Because we all get too much email, and we lack the time and energy to be scrupulous about checking sources. It is simplest to mark ALL emails that use 3rd-party sending methods as spam (or report them as Phishing). I’m talking about sending services that use their own domain name (or another) in the From line of emails they send on your organization’s behalf.

Yes, I’m declaring war on these 3rd-party email services that don’t follow industry standards. There are correct ways to do email marketing, but too many senders don’t bother to use this standard (see below for a more detailed description if you’re interested). I urge all my readers worldwide to start reporting all emails that don’t come from the organization’s official domain name. As an example of an organization following the industry standard, you’ll note that my own newsletters are sent from an email address ending in “@positek.net”.

That means don’t pay attention to the “name” in the from line, that can be anything the sender wants to put. If your email reader shows any name (person or business name), click or tap on it to reveal the actual email address. If that email address doesn’t match the official organizational domain name, mark it as spam, junk, or phishing.

If you work for a legitimate company that uses a 3rd-party email system that doesn’t follow these industry standards, I urge you to ask your organization to take the necessary steps to ensure the From line shows your organization’s domain name. Here’s what to do:

You’ll need to edit your DNS records to allow email sent from the 3rd party to use your domain name, and also make sure that 3rd-party is configured to use your domain name, not its own. Reputable 3rd-party mailers will offer this, including SendGrid, Constant Contact, MailChimp, etc. Not to get too technical, but you’ll need DNS records for DMARC, SPF, and possibly DKIM (depending on what platform you’re using).

I know we all want to save money where possible, but cheap/free 3rd-party mailing services that don’t have this capability contribute to the proliferation of junk email. Totally not worth the cost savings in my opinion. Those same cheap/free services are accepting both legitimate and fake entities to deliver junk email. I urge organizations to boycott these service providers. 

We all need to work together to fight junk email, and fighting unscrupulous 3rd-party emailers is one way everyone can easily do so.