7 Things You MUST Know About Goodmail’s New CertifiedDomain Whitelist

Repost from Pivotal IQ Blog

Yesterday, Goodmail announced
that it launched the industry’s first 3rd party domain-based whitelist,
called CertifiedDomain. We had a couple of questions for the Goodmail
team and here’s what we found out, straight from the source:

1. Authentication Required. Before looking
   up a domain on CertifiedDomain, a receiver must confirm the message was
   indeed sent from the domain it purports to. Goodmail is agnostic as to
   what authentication method is used. It could be DKIM, Sender ID
   Framework, SPF, DomainKeys, or anything else.
2. Goodmail’s Whitelist is Publicly Available for ISP Use.
   The basic CertifiedDomain list is publicly available to anyone on the
   planet and can be used by receivers (ISPs and businesses) to help them
   in their email filtering. These receivers are not required to ask for
   Goodmail’s prior permission or even inform them that they are
   consulting the CertifiedDomain list. Goodmail says it expects the basic
   list to be used extremely widely. Goodmail also says that a more
   comprehensive list is licensed to ISPs, but the company does not
   publicize these agreements. Not all ISPs who accept CertifiedEmail have
   the technology to filter incoming messages based on domains yet, but
   ultimately Goodmail expects all its ISP partners to consult the
   CertifiedDomain list. It also anticipates that not partners such as
   enterprise networks/B2B etc will consult with the new whitelist. 
3. You CAN Get Booted Off the List.
   If Goodmail’s get data from its partners or other evidence showing a
   domain is no longer worthy of being listed, Goodmail will remove the
   domain from the list. Goodmail says it might publish a specific AUP for
   CertifiedDomain, but until it does, adherence to the existing
   CertifiedEmail AUP is recommended. 
4. Image Blocking Benefits are the ISPs’ Prerogative.
   At this stage, Goodmail is not aware of any ISP that intends to turn on
   images solely because of the inclusion of a domain on a whitelist, but
   says it is likely that ISPs which selectively turn images on will
   consider the inclusion of a domain on the CertifiedDomain list as a
   positive input to this message-by-message decision. Each ISP will set
   its own policy and will assign its own weight to the inclusion of a
   domain on the CertifiedDomain list. 
5. Fee Structure.
   There’s a onetime accreditation fee but, as specified in the Terms
   & Conditions document for CertifiedDomain, Goodmail might charge an
   annual renewal fee and might introduce other fees in the future.
6. CertifiedDomain Can’t Help You if Your Connection is Dropped.
   The first line of defense of all ISPs is blocking at the IP address
   level (refusing a connection), and CertifiedDomain won’t help there.
   CertifiedDomain is helpful only once a message has been accepted and
   authenticated by the ISP, when the ISP is looking for multiple inputs
   to its filtering algorithm.
7. rDNS and WHOis Not Required, But Recommended.
   Goodmail doesn’t impose such technical requirements as a precondition
   to being listed on CertifiedDomain. However, an ISP sophisticated
   enough to validate the authentication of incoming messages and to
   consult the CertifiedDomain list is also likely to perform such checks
   and to use the results of these checks as yet another set of inputs to
   their algorithm.

Cheers!

-Len Shneyder
Director of Partner Relations
& Industry Communications
www.pivotalveracity.com