Several months ago, we warned of pending changes to gmail, hotmail, outlook and a host of other services. That time is now. They are now requiring a SPF record, DKIM record, and are recommending a DMARC record. These are TXT entries made into your DNS server. If you have incorrect or missing entries, sending an email for delivery is either intermittent, or stops entirely. Here are the 3 records, and what they do.
SPF
SPF is used to authenticate the sender, and ensure that only
specific, authorized servers can send emails for your domain. This
makes it much harder for someone else to pretend to be you and
send out emails in your name.
DKIM
DKIM is used to verify that messages haven’t been tampered with in
transit. Because email is generally sent as a plain text, someone
could intercept your email, change it, and release the modified
version to an unsuspecting recipient. Think like a criminal. If you
send out an invoice or bill, they could change the “send a check to”
address. They’d get the payment due to you, you would not be paid,
and your customer would still owe the bill amount. DKIM makes this
much harder to accomplish.
DMARC
DMARC suggests what to do with mail that isn’t legitimate. It tells a
sending server what is wrong with an email. You can set it to pass
suspect emails, or delete them automatically. You can also set it up
to alert you about suspect emails on a daily, weekly or monthly
basis.
For our customers, we automatically set SPF and DKIM, and upon
request will set up DMARC.
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Fidelity Wes Luxury Home Builder
Fidelity Wes is a luxury home builder based in Long Grove, Illinois. Specializing in new construction, they offer a range of custom and semi-custom homes in Chicago’s North and Northwest suburbs. Established in 1991, the company has built an excellent reputation for quality craftsmanship and customer satisfaction.
Fidelity Wes operates primarily in residential construction, focusing on high-end, custom-built homes. They are known for developing luxury communities and working closely with municipalities in the region to ensure high-quality developments.
“From custom luxury homes to semi-custom single-family residences, we pride ourselves on our custom home-planning services ability to deliver superior craftsmanship and outstanding commitment to satisfaction. We invite you to experience our work as high-end luxury home builders in Chicagoland’s North and Northwest Suburbs, in outstanding communities such as Deerfield, Northbrook, Buffalo Grove, Long Grove, Kildeer, Lincolnshire, and Lake Forest, IL.” says Michael DeMar, one of two principal owners.
Their headquarters is located at 201 Robert Parker Coffin Road, Long Grove, IL 60047. They offer various services, including customizable floor plans, visual walk-throughs, and in-person tours (Fidelity Wes Builders) (Long Grove Illinois). Contact them for more information. (847) 883-0131
Are recent Google updates punishing good SEO?
Cyrus Shepard ran a 50-site case study to see if recent Google updates are targeting common SEO practices. Here’s what he found:
- Losing sites were far likelier to have more anchor text variations per page, than winning sites.
- Losing sites appeared to be updating their content more frequently (yes, more!) than winning sites
- On average, losing sites used more structured data than winning sites.
As you can imagine, this goes directly the opposite of conventional SEO wisdom, and past practices. Because it was a small sampling (50 sites only), it is possible the data is not accurate. More to follow on this as we monitor Google results. We are monitoring further.
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Microsoft Threat Intelligence researchers issued a recent warning that Russian state-sponsored hackers have been targeting Windows users with a custom tool for stealing credentials and even installing backdoors.
Hackers known as APT28, or Fancy Bear (tracked by Microsoft as Forest Blizzard), are using the post-exploitation tool, GooseEgg, against government, education and transport sector organizations in Western Europe, Ukraine and the United States since at least June 2020.
The vulnerability (CVE-2022-38028) was fixed as part of the October 2022 Patch Tuesday rollout, having been first reported by the NSA. Microsoft stresses importance of patching vulnerabilities and organizations, and users are urged to apply the CVE-2022-38028 security update to mitigate this attack. Microsoft Defender Antivirus detects the specific Forest Blizzard capability as HackTool:Win64/GooseEgg.
The short and simple solution is to ensure your version of Windows is up to date, and let Microsoft worry about it for you. Automatic updates are usually performed by Windows (sometimes this feature is turned off for some reason). To check if you are up to date, visit SETTINGS>UPDATE SECURITY and perform a scan.
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On a different subject, did you know Windows is more environmentally friendly than macOS?
Windows puts your deleted files in the Recycle Bin; macOS just throws them in the Trash. (I
never thought of that before!)
