I've been getting a lot of these, and forwarding them (along with the raw source of the email headers) to abuse@sendgrid.com with some success.
SendGrid isn’t emailing about ICE or BLM – it’s a phishing attack
61–70 of 152 posts
Re: SendGrid isn’t emailing about ICE or BLM – it’s a phishing attack
#62> Can this be fixed? For popular senders: sort-of: in your incoming mail server, substring-match the display name of the sender against popular brands, and ensure the actual domain matches. This works remarkably well for proper brands (FedEx et al), but breaks down when the brand name regularly occurs in "normal" names, the sending brand sends mail from all over the place, or "innocuous" impersonation takes place all…
Use @ as your email address when signing up, and check the To header when receiving emails.
And/or, long-press or right-click on any link to inspect the linked domain.
Re: SendGrid isn’t emailing about ICE or BLM – it’s a phishing attack
#63Earlier quoted context omitted.
Maybe one day our knee jerk reactionary outrage will be quelled not by any enlightenment but because we are forced to grow weary of falling prey to phishing attacks. I'd feel pretty stupid getting worked up about something only to realize that getting worked up about it was used against me. I'm writing this because for a moment I did get worked up and then had the slow realization it was a phishing attack, slightly b…
I agree. It can demonstrate the knee-jerk affect in real time for the reader. Someone who reacts strongly to the title of this thread would have experienced a similar reaction if they had received the SendGrid phish email. Never seen clickbait wording actually be appropriate before.
When I see stories that make me want to click, I read HN comments first, and 8 times in ten that saves me a from a "won't get fooled again" moment.
There's got to be a way to generalize this for anyone who still cares about the difference between real facts and manipulation.
Re: SendGrid isn’t emailing about ICE or BLM – it’s a phishing attack
#64Before anyone launches themselves into the sky: the title is clickbait. This is about phishing attempts that use ICE to persuade you to click. Sendgrid the company is not emailing about supporting ICE. But technically Sendgrid the infrastructure is.
Author here. I quickly thought of the title for the article and shipped it. I agree it's clickbait-y and apologize to SendGrid (and any confused readers) but yes, as you say it's _technically_ correct in a very narrow sense – SendGrid's infrastructure and users are sending these emails, it's just that they're fraudulently associated with SendGrid the company.
In any case, I revised the title to "SendGrid isn’t emailing you about ICE or BLM. It’s a phishing attack."
Maybe someone can edit the title of the submission on HN accordingly?
Re: SendGrid isn’t emailing about ICE or BLM – it’s a phishing attack
#65Before anyone launches themselves into the sky: the title is clickbait. This is about phishing attempts that use ICE to persuade you to click. Sendgrid the company is not emailing about supporting ICE. But technically Sendgrid the infrastructure is.
Author here. I quickly thought of the title for the article and shipped it. I agree it's clickbait-y and apologize to SendGrid (and any confused readers) but yes, as you say it's _technically_ correct in a very narrow sense – SendGrid's infrastructure and users are sending these emails, it's just that they're fraudulently associated with SendGrid the company. In any case, I revised the title to "SendGrid isn’t emaili…
Ok we changed the article from https://fredbenenson.com/blog/2026/01/09/why-is-sendgrid-ema... to https://fredbenenson.com/blog/2026/01/09/sendgrid-isnt-email... and the HN title accordingly.
Re: SendGrid isn’t emailing about ICE or BLM – it’s a phishing attack
#66Before anyone launches themselves into the sky: the title is clickbait. This is about phishing attempts that use ICE to persuade you to click. Sendgrid the company is not emailing about supporting ICE. But technically Sendgrid the infrastructure is.
I think HN should embrace AI to the point of having an alternative AI-generated title next to the original title, to reduce clickbait and reduce the global rage index.
That's a pretty good idea as long as humans could review/approve.
Re: SendGrid isn’t emailing about ICE or BLM – it’s a phishing attack
#67Earlier quoted context omitted.
I have some bad news for you...
^ Can anyone TL;DR this comment?
Most people on Hacker News don't bother to read the linked article and either comment based on their impression of the title or whatever random thing happens to be on their mind at the time. Most people who do bother to read the linked article stop as soon as they encounter javascript or formatting or too much whitespace or a minor logical, spelling or grammatical error and then that will likely become the subject of the entire thread.
The number of people who actually read the entire article and then attempt to comment in good faith are few and far between.
Re: SendGrid isn’t emailing about ICE or BLM – it’s a phishing attack
#68> Can this be fixed? For popular senders: sort-of: in your incoming mail server, substring-match the display name of the sender against popular brands, and ensure the actual domain matches. This works remarkably well for proper brands (FedEx et al), but breaks down when the brand name regularly occurs in "normal" names, the sending brand sends mail from all over the place, or "innocuous" impersonation takes place all…
Use @ as your email address when signing up, and check the To header when receiving emails. And/or, long-press or right-click on any link to inspect the linked domain.
I often go one step futher by appending a short random identifier, `{service}.{id}@{domain}`, to make it harder to guess (in case someone learned of my email address policy).
I created a little GTK program to help: https://github.com/LightAndLight/gen-alias
Re: SendGrid isn’t emailing about ICE or BLM – it’s a phishing attack
#69Before anyone launches themselves into the sky: the title is clickbait. This is about phishing attempts that use ICE to persuade you to click. Sendgrid the company is not emailing about supporting ICE. But technically Sendgrid the infrastructure is.
The title is genius; it uses the same psychological trick as the phishers are, to point out to us how vulnerable we are. Obviously, for you to know the title is clickbait, you'd've had to click through and read it, which is the exact social engineering vulnerability the author is trying to demonstrate being exploited.
I thank the author for getting me this way, as I would have likely fallen for the unsubscribe trick.
Re: SendGrid isn’t emailing about ICE or BLM – it’s a phishing attack
#70Earlier quoted context omitted.
Use @ as your email address when signing up, and check the To header when receiving emails. And/or, long-press or right-click on any link to inspect the linked domain.
I often go one step futher by appending a short random identifier, `{service}.{id}@{domain}`, to make it harder to guess (in case someone learned of my email address policy). I created a little GTK program to help: https://github.com/LightAndLight/gen-alias
Yes, it’s really .