Digital Ocean dumps Mailchimp after attack leaked customer email addresses

Junior cloud Digital Ocean has revealed that some of its clients’ email addresses were exposed to attackers, thanks to an attack on email marketing service Mailchimp. This story starts last week when some of the blockheads in crypto-land noticed that email marketing service Mailchimp had suspended service for some of their …

[Zippy´s Sausage Factory]

Re: Crypto key

Mailchump no longer looks like the 600 lb gorilla of email, does it?

[F. Frederick Skitty]

Re: Crypto key

Their API is pretty awful - I've always assumed that people only used them because they're cheap, as there are way better options out there.

[ElRegioLPL]

Re: Crypto key

Mailchimp are anything but cheap

[logicalextreme]

Re: Crypto key

Is SendGrid one of the better options you mention? I've been eyeing it up for something recently.

[F. Frederick Skitty]

Re: Crypto key

"Is SendGrid one of the better options you mention?"

My preferred option is SparkPost. If you want to integrate with their API, then it's really well documented and consistent. A real breath of fresh air compared to the horrors I've had to integrate with elsewhere. They seem to be used by some really high volume customers, and in the six years I've used them I haven't experienced any outages.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Crypto key

Speaking as an ISP spam filter admin...

They all suck. :/

[MyffyW]

Re: Crypto key

In one of my fuller-figured moments an acquaintance once described me as the 600lb gorilla of Laura Ashley. I never stopped to ask if he appreciated the floral pattern on my Doc Martens.

[TeeCee]

Automation

...announced its clients were undertaking less blockchain-related activity.

Mentioned the B-word. Block it.

Sounds like this bunch of postal primates have never advanced beyond the sort of control that gave us "Philip K Masculine Area" and other such gems. How quaint and old skool.

[Anonymous Coward]

Sounds familiar

"The reason for that outage was that Mailchimp had suspended Digital Ocean’s account, without any warning or explanation."

I have a feeling Digital Ocean have been accused of that in the past, google "digital ocean suspended my account", as much as I like DO perhaps they know how it feels now.........

[sten2012]

Re: Sounds familiar

Never happened to me but I see loads of complaints about this on DO's forum, far too many to all be abusive users it looked

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Sounds familiar

What on earth is a hosting company (yeh, cloud provider, whatever, it's essentially a hosting company with knobs on) doing outsourcing email processing anyway? That should really be a core competency that they manage themselves, surely?

[Kevin McMurtrie]

Re: Sounds familiar

They probably ran out of IP addresses that aren't blocked for one reason or another.

Handling abuse and abusive customers is never covered by "scalability by automation" initiatives. It's amazing that email still works even a little bit.

[sten2012]

Re: Sounds familiar

I just replied for before seeing this, but yeah, this... Even AWS block SMTP outbound without making you jump through manual hoops. DO do not, but can nearly guarantee that whatever IP you get is already blacklisted..

I too assume they can't rely on it themselves.

[Detective Emil]

Where's the sign-of-the-cross icon?

Run a mile from anything MailChimp sends: every link and image is booby-trapped to send who knows what analytics to who knows where for some nefarious purpose.

Hope Digital Ocean's new supplier is less nosey.

[iron]

Love that article by the FinTech bro claiming Mailchimp are blocking crypto companies. So sure of himself. So self-righteous. So wrong.

The best bit was getting to the byline at the bottom and discovering he's just an ignorant student.

[that one in the corner]

Hey now, he is a "rising senior" at Cornell.

Though that probably just means he gets out of bed half an hour earlier than the rest.

[sitta_europea]

Digital Ocean. Mailchimp. Teapot. Kettle.

[simonb_london]

So those Career Builder dot com adverts were true

They really do base their business on buying lottery tickets!

[Kevin McMurtrie]

"Digital Ocean has vowed to learn from the experience"

It's December 2022 and I'm still waiting for that to happen. DigitalOcean now appears to be the largest botnet host on Earth. They still don't read abuse complaints, don't subscribe to public blacklists, or appear to be doing anything at all except watching their service burn to the ground.