Comments on: Will Yahoo block messages that aren’t authenticated?

By: Ben

Ben — Fri, 23 May 2008 16:31:31 +0000

Hi Ryan, Authentication is now pre-checked, and opt-out. Thanks for your input!

By: MailChimp joins Authentication and Online Trust Alliance (AOTA) | MailChimp Blog

Fri, 23 May 2008 16:17:08 +0000

[...] get through some spam filters, and lets your customers know your email’s authentic. Big ISPs have been hinting that one day, they’ll throttle or block non-authenticated emails. MailChimp comes with [...]

By: How Fast Can Spammers Harvest Your Emails? | MailChimp Blog

How Fast Can Spammers Harvest Your Emails? | MailChimp Blog — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 12:33:52 +0000

[...] Clearly, the FTC is concerned with the impact of Phishing, and they feel authentication is an effective technological weapon against it. This is a sign that they intend to push ISPs to penalize non-authenticated emails. On a related note, check out this interview with Yahoo: Will Yahoo block messages that aren’t authenticated? [...]

By: Ben

Ben — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 12:15:56 +0000

Thanks Ryan, I’ll forward your comments on to the team.

By: Ryan Thrash

Ryan Thrash — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 05:35:49 +0000

Opt-out is still a choice … you get to proactively choose to do something destructive, but do the right thing for the majority (and allow those that are corner cases to address their needs too).

This way the folks like me that would totally forget to check that box when they’re hurriedly trying to send a campaign would still get the benefit of continuing to expect that best practices are defaults, and not an opt-in feature.

Alternatively, an account preference/setting would solve this too. “Always Authenticate my campaign…”

By: Ben

Ben — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 17:00:43 +0000

Great question, Ryan. It’s because the first time we rolled out authentication a couple years ago, we made it mandatory, and our customers gave us a beat-down like you wouldn’t believe. People seem to like choice. Also, some email readers display the “from” and “Sent on behalf of” fields differently, which makes some senders uncomfortable. Finally, there are some edge cases where someone’s server might have authentication that conflicts with authentication sent from an outside service. Until they square things away on their server, they’d want this turned off for their campaigns. I think this will all one day become moot, and authentication will just be “always on” like you recommend.

By: Ryan Thrash

Ryan Thrash — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 16:47:56 +0000

With the preponderance of evidence (and clearly the trends) suggesting that authenticated emails means increased delivery rates, why isn’t this an opt-out option in MailChimp – or even better done automatically on every campaign from MC?