For my blog today, I thought I would share with you some of the tools that I use almost on a daily basis to help clients with their deliverability and reputation issues. While these tools can sometimes provide copious amounts of data, sometimes it takes a combination of them to truly understand the reputation of a sender.
Senderbase:
Senderbase is the world\’s largest email and web traffic monitoring network. It aggregates data from over 100,000 organizations receiving email and tracks approximately 5 billion messages per day, equivalent to over 25% of the world\’s email traffic. Data aggregated through this service that helps to determine reputation includes:
- Blacklist data
- User complaints
- Spamtrap hits
- Message volume and changes to volume
- Sender industry
- URL frequency
SenderScore:
Similar to Senderbase, SenderScore aggregates data from multiple email receivers including ISP\’s and email filtering companies that includes monitoring of over 20 million sending IP addresses. The service measures and ranks:
- Complaints
- Volume
- External reputation
- Unknown users
- Rejected messages
TrustedSource:
TrustedSource gathers data on the behavior of senders across the internet. They analyze global email traffic patterns, volume, network characteristics and public blacklists and whitelists. TrustedSource anayzes billions of messages across 77 countries.
ARIN WHOIS Database:
ARIN, which stands for American Registry for Internet Numbers, is a nonprofit corporation that serves as the Internet registry for IP addresses in the United States and Canada. Among other things, they are responsible for the allocation, transfer, and record maintenance of IP addresses.
news.admin.net-abuse.sightings:
Also known as NANAS, this is a Usenet newsgroup whose focus is to identify abuse of email, and the senders that are responsible.
news.admin.net-abuse.email:
Also known as NANAE, this also is a Usenet newsgroup devoted to the discussion of the abuse of email system (including what is found in NANAS). Some of the topics discussed include:
- Mailbombing
- Unsolicited email
- Email address lists
- Mail list abuse
- Large scale mailings
- Chain letters
- Email viruses
- Pyramid schemes
- Email filtering software
DNSstuff.com:
A potpourri of DNS related tools that are helpful in monitoring and maintaining a user\’s DNS settings. As of late, DNSstuff only allows a number of free searches before requiring the user to register for an account, and then even after doing this, eventually the user has to pay for the service.
SPF/SenderID/Domainkeys Test:
The Email Sender and Provider Coalition (ESPC) provide a free tool that allows senders to check to see if they are using correctly set up (or not set up at all) authentication methods. Senders simply send a test email to a provided address, and the results are displayed on the site.
Until next time,
Drink Responsibly, Drive Responsibly, Email Responsibly
Jaren Angerbauer
Director of Deliverability
mobileStorm