Validity for Good grants free access to crisis comms

Email solutions provider Validity has released a crisis communications program that is free for government agencies and organisations that send critical emails, such as those related to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Validity for Good is providing agencies and organisations with temporary access to the Return Path Email Certification service, which ensures that critical emails arrive in inboxes, not spam folders. Using this email delivery service, organisations can ensure messages related to public safety and COVID-19 reach their subscribers.

“The email ecosystem is being flooded with COVID-19 communications, which means emails like critical infrastructure updates are being mixed in with a stream of marketing emails, personal communications and the unfortunate steady influx of unwanted spam,” Validity Chairman and CEO Mark Briggs said.

“With this huge global volume of COVID-19 email, we saw legitimate, critical emails struggling to reach users — and we knew we could help. That’s what spurred Validity for Good.”

As email remains the most critical communications channel related to the global pandemic, organisations face the increasing reality that their emails are not getting through to constituents, citizens and customers. Central to communications and mitigation, these organisations are finding they need to ramp up communications to both the public at large and their constituencies, requiring them to send to their full email lists, therein creating issues for the recipients’ email systems and spam filters. Further complicating the process, bad actors are taking advantage of the global emergency communication efforts by transmitting dangerous messaging, including phishing, malware, ransomware and spam, in the name of COVID-19. In many cases, this is overwhelming spam filtering algorithms and materially reducing the effectiveness of email communication.

“It’s great to see Validity’s philanthropic efforts around delivery of critical messages,” Cisco Talos architect Don Owens said.

“Cisco Talos, as well as other security organisations and products, leverages tools like the Return Path Certification program to provide positive signals to aid in allowing legitimate, important messages to reach the intended recipients. It’s very important that critical messages regarding the COVID-19 pandemic reach the inbox, while misinformation and other scams are blocked.”

According to real-time research conducted by Validity, which analyses data that covers 2.5 billion mailboxes across nearly every country around the world, in the past two weeks COVID-19 messages have been taking over email:

• Over 1 in 15 commercial emails sent globally pertain to COVID-19.
• Over 14% of COVID-19 related emails are caught by spam filters, including many legitimate, crisis-related emails that never make it to the inbox.
• Complaint rates for COVID-19-related marketing emails are steadily on the rise, suggesting an increase in bad actors.
   

For these reasons, the cornerstone of Validity for Good is a no-charge email delivery certification offering for bona fide critical and essential businesses and governmental and public agencies so their messages can more reliably be delivered to users’ inboxes.

“We purposely focused Validity for Good on email because that’s what’s critical right now — getting people important, need-to-know information,” Briggs continued.

“We are also looking for ways to expand Validity for Good over time as we find additional ways that our platform, team and resources can help bring good when the world needs it most.”

Validity for Good is powered by Return Path Email Certification from Validity, an email delivery network trusted by leading internet and email providers across the globe. Traditionally, customers must pass a multipoint email program evaluation by Validity to ensure that the sender is trustworthy and adheres to best practices, and that their email campaigns meet strict program requirements, before they’re approved to enter the certification program. Validity for Good provides an expedited path to the certification service for critical infrastructure, governmental and other essential communications related to COVID-19.

Businesses can sign up for this free service by applying at the Validity for Good microsite: https://validity.com/good/.

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