RE: The "goo.gl" shortner is OUT OF CONTROL (+ invaluement's response)
WARNING FOR ESPs AND MARKETERS: Google's "goo.gl" shortner is OUT OF
CONTROL.
Spammers are starting to use this to evade spam filters, and Google
isn't keeping up with the abuse, nor shutting these down fast enough.
Along with blackhat spammers, we're seeing evidence that many
gray-ish-hat spammers are jumping on this bandwagon, in the hopes that
they will get more mail delivered if they can avoid using their domain
in the clickable links. Keep in mind that, if a marketer is doing things
the right way, they should have no need to obfuscate their own domain
name. They should instead proudly use it and not feel the need to hide
behind Google's shortner. Yes, there are many legitimate uses of
Google's shortner, too. However, we are now at a point where a VERY
large % (a majority?) of uses of these headed to a typical user's
mailbox are egregious spams, and a significant additional portion are
likely-spams. THEREFORE: If you like having NOT-blacklisted IPs, be
advised that the invaluement anti-spam DNSBL system is now adding "bad"
points to the scoring of all messages that use the "goo.gl" shortner,
and we're amplifying other "bad" points. (We're also doing various
sophisticated things to minimize potential resulting FPs, too. But this
will still put MANY marginal IPs and domains into our blacklists that
normally might have barely avoided an invaluement blacklisting!)
YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED! DON'T ALLOW YOUR CLIENTS TO DO THIS!
ALSO: We're very seriously evaluating the option of converting each
shortner to the URL it redirects to - and then potentially starting to
add those domains or IPs within those URLs to our ivmURI domain/URI
blacklist. This might not cause other such messages to get blocked, but
it will have other negative repercussions for other uses of that domain.
--
Rob McEwen
https://www.invaluement.com
