(WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) — Making it harder for spam to infiltrate its millions of hosted online mailboxes, Internet services provider Tucows (www.tucows.com) has added an email feedback loop (or FBL) service in partnership with Return Path (www.returnpath.net), an email reputation services firm.
According to Tucows’ Thursday announcement, its wholesale Internet services division, OpenSRS, provides and manages millions of mailboxes on behalf of its network of over 9,000 resellers around the world, and its OpenSRS Email Service end users are now able to easily report spam by simply pressing a “Mark as Spam” button in their webmail interface. The return path FBL service provides authorized email senders who have chosen to participate in the feedback loop with a copy of any message that recipients have reported as spam.
“Our new feedback loop will reduce unwanted inbound spam hitting our users’ inboxes by providing an effective complaint system that provides data from those end users directly to ISPs and other senders allowing them to take action to reduce spam being sent from their systems,” Tucows IT security and compliance manager Garrick Lau said in a statement.
The addition of this FBL further demonstrates Tucows’ commitment to making the Internet, and email in particular, both easier and more effective.
Return Path lets Tucows provide the feedback loop to service qualified email senders, so those senders can both identify customers who no longer want to receive similar mail, and quickly recognize problems originating from their networks, such as virus-infected, spam-producing computers.
“Partnering with Return Path keeps us connected with the largest email providers around the world as we to work together on improvements to the FBL standard and best practices,” continued Lau. “Return Path’s expertise in email deliverability and extensive partnerships in the email community allow us to maximize the effectiveness of our newly created FBL.”
Return Path business development vice president Alex Rubin said that FBL helps both email senders and email receivers improve the email experience. “They help senders by giving them actionable information they can use to improve their email programs and reduce complaint rates,” Rubin said in a statement. “Feedback loops also help receivers by making it possible to get their customers removed from email lists they no longer value. Feedback loops help eliminate unwanted email for everyone: senders, receivers and most importantly, end-users.”
