Phishing filters are getting more and more restrictive. And rightly so. There's a lot of fake mail out there, trying to scam you out of your credit card info or your online banking password. Emerging technologies, like DKIM (DomainKeys Identified Mail), are going to help in the long term, by enabling ISPs to better determine which mail is legitimate (authenticated mail) and which mail isn't. But, until we reach a level of broader industry adoption of email authentication, and perhaps even after that point, content filters are going to continue to look at URLs in messages very closely, looking for signs that a message is trying to trick recipients, trying to take them to a website other than the one you think you're going to.
Here's the most common way you can run afoul of a phishing filter. See this bit of HTML code?
<a href="http://www.cnn.com">www.yahoo.com</a>
That bit of code says it is linking you to Yahoo, but it's actually taking you to CNN. It's a very simple trick, but it is a trick employed by bad guys, and if your URLs look like this -- where the link domain doesn't match the domain written out in your email -- your message will look like a phish or a spoof.
You're much less likely to have this issue, if you make sure the domain matches in both places:
<a href="http://www.cnn.com">www.cnn.com</a>
Even better yet, try not to write out the URL domain at all. Use something like this instead:
<a href="http://www.cnn.com">Visit CNN's website</a>
That way there's no domain to compare to, and you'll avoid a phishing issue, even if you enable link tracking in ExactTarget (and aren't using a custom domain with ExactTarget).
Here's the most common way you can run afoul of a phishing filter. See this bit of HTML code?
<a href="http://www.cnn.com">www.yahoo.com</a>
That bit of code says it is linking you to Yahoo, but it's actually taking you to CNN. It's a very simple trick, but it is a trick employed by bad guys, and if your URLs look like this -- where the link domain doesn't match the domain written out in your email -- your message will look like a phish or a spoof.
You're much less likely to have this issue, if you make sure the domain matches in both places:
<a href="http://www.cnn.com">www.cnn.com</a>
Even better yet, try not to write out the URL domain at all. Use something like this instead:
<a href="http://www.cnn.com">Visit CNN's website</a>
That way there's no domain to compare to, and you'll avoid a phishing issue, even if you enable link tracking in ExactTarget (and aren't using a custom domain with ExactTarget).
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