MindComet

The Best Looking SPAM I’ve Ever Received

This email “from” Apple is SPAM.

I must say, this is some of the best looking SPAM emails I’ve ever received. I almost marked it as “Not Spam” until I began looking at it with a bit more scrutiny. The subject line (way too long with some share code tacked onto the end), reply-to (some gobbly-gook hotmail address) and links (all directing to a Polish domain) were all huge warning signs. It’s engaging, convincing and has clearly gotten the Apple email look and feel down pat… right down to the correct Cupertino physical address. But make no mistake, this is SPAM.

I’m sure that if this has made it through any of the major ISP filters and into users inboxes, it’s duping them left and right to click through. This just goes to show that SPAM is constantly evolving and becoming as sophisticated as ever. Make no mistake, with emails like this out there, ISPs will be battling uphill for years to come.

View Comments

Posted by Bryan Quilty on Jan. 28, 2011

Microsoft’s Hotmail Update: Social Media & SPAM-Centric

Microsoft recently unveiled a new look & feel to Hotmail including additional features focused on eliminating inbox clutter and social media. Here are a few key takeaways:

Hotmail Highlights:
This is a dashboard breaking down emails from your contacts, social networking sites, flagged emails and any upcoming events you’ve marked. They’re more or less built-in filters from the get-go. Nicely done.

Filters:
There are also filter tabs that sort out all of your inbox messages based on the criteria of the filter. On-the-fly sorting.

Categories / Quick Views:
Photos, Shipping Info, Documents. The most common emails sent to you will be sorted out automatically based on their contents.

Sweep:
Most importantly, Microsoft has implemented a “Sweep” feature that allows users to remove clutter from their main inbox. For email marketers, this means that your campaigns may suffer with Hotmail users.

Trusted Senders:
You can boil this down to being Microsoft’s equivalent to Goodmail. They pre-approve specific senders and IP addresses for users to ensure delivery, complete with a safety logo next to the subject line.

Their SPAM handling techniques are quite interesting, too. They’ve developed a way of sorting out legit email that you may have signed up for unintentionally (which they dub “graymail”) and actual SPAM, which they’re calling “SmartScreen”.

Most of the updates on the surface seem to be “too little too late” to covert a Gmail user, for instance. But the advances of the new Hotmail user experience as a whole makes the argument that email is further planting itself as the hub for all social communication online. Unfortunately, I don’t think these fundamental changes to Hotmail will go over well with their users, since they skew older and spend less time online. But nonetheless, it’s progress. It’s one step forward and not two steps back (*ehem* Outlook 2007, *ehem*).

There are more features listed on their preview page including Office and cloud storage implementation. It’s a definitive step in the right direction for Microsoft & Hotmail and I’m curious to see what they release next.

So what do you think this means for email marketing? If these features are widely adopted by Hotmail users will email campaigns of the future just be “swept” away, overlooked to never be opened again? I think it’s a definite possibility and one that deserves discussion. Comment below if you have any thoughts.

View Comments

Posted by Bryan Quilty on Jun. 17, 2010