Yahoo changes may affect email deliverability

Yahoo has recently changed its policies to authenticate emails sent from yahoo.com addresses.

This may affect the deliverability of emails to your customers if you use a yahoo.com email address.

What does the change mean

Since last weekend, Yahoo has changed its email authentication policy (using a protocol called DMARC), so that if an email is sent with a yahoo.com address in the From field, but it was not sent directly by Yahoo's own servers, it will be reported as spam.


Any receiving mail server that checks such email details with Yahoo will believe that the email is spam, and reject it. It is not clear how many mail providers/ISPs perform this check but for example Yahoo itself obviously does, and so apparently Comcast.

Does this change affect you?

Bookeo sends email to your customers using as "From" address your business email address, as set by you in Settings/Business details and logo.

- If you have set a yahoo.com address as your business address, then this change affects you. Many of your customers may not receive confirmation emails, reminder emails, etc.

- If you have not set a yahoo.com address as your business address, then this change does not affect you, and you may ignore the rest of this post.

This problem is obviously not specific to Bookeo. It has affected every service that sends email on behalf of its users. This change has been analyzed (and criticized) widely in recent days. See for example:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/04/08/yahoo_breaks_every_mailing_list_in_the_world_says_email_guru/

http://www.pcworld.com/article/2141120/yahoo-email-antispoofing-policy-breaks-mailing-lists.html

http://blog.mailchimp.com/yahoo-changes-may-affect-your-deliverability/

http://blog.getresponse.com/alert-change-yahoo-dmarc-policy-affects.html

How to solve the problem

Login to your Bookeo account as manager, then click on Settings/Business details and logo.
If you have not set a yahoo.com address in the field "Email address", then this problem does not affect you. You do not need to take any action.

If you have a yahoo.com address in that field, then we recommend simply using a different email address. You can for example sign up for a free address at Gmail, or Outlook.com, and use that address as "Email address" in Bookeo.

For example you can also consider setting up a filter in a Gmail account so that any email sent to yourname@gmail.com gets automatically forwarded to your old yahoo.com address, so that you can still receive all emails as usual.

Bookeo NOT affected by Heartbleed bug

3 days ago a major vulnerability has been uncovered in OpenSSL, a popular software library used in many Heartbleed bug".
web sites to encrypt communications with browsers. This has been commonly referred to as the "

This is a potentially dangerous vulnerability, and has been widely reported in mainstream media.

Unfortunately some media reports have been rather misleading and alarmist, and in some cases even alerted that "the whole Internet is affected". Although an attention-grabbing headline, this is incorrect.

Many of our customers have recently contacted us worried about this issue and the reports they've read.

It is important to know that the vulnerability does not affect the SSL protocol itself, which is the mechanism by which web browsers and web servers encrypt their communication.

This vulnerability only affects a software library, called OpenSSL, that many web sites use to implement SSL encryption.

So a web site is affected by this bug only if it uses OpenSSL for its data encryption. Unfortunately there are many such web sites, but they're certainly not all the web sites out there.

To reassure our customers: Bookeo does not use, and has never used, OpenSSL for its communication encryption. So Bookeo is NOT affected by the "Heartbleed Bug".

We recommend however to enquire about this issue with your web hosting company, your mail service provider, your payment gateway, and any other online service that you regularly use, as they may have been affected by this bug.

A change of password may be a good idea (it is always a good idea to change passwords regularly, anyway!)

On our end, all our servers are tested every day for vulnerabilities from a third party security scanner, and we have also collaborated (and will continue to do so) with "white hat" hackers to probe our systems for possible other complex vulnerabilities. Security is an ongoing process, and we'll keep working to monitor developments in this space.

If you have any further question about this issue, please contact our support team at http://help.bookeo.com .

New Feature: Pay Balance. Your customers can now pay the balance of their bookings online!

Based on numerous feedback and suggestions from our users, we are pleased to unveil Bookeo’s Pay Balance feature: your customers can now pay the balance of their bookings online.

We believe that flexibility is very important, and keeping this in mind, our developers designed the Pay Balance feature so that you can decide for which class, tour or workshop you want to enable it. If enabled, the feature will apply to all your services, personal lessons and personal tours.

So how does this feature work?

Once you've enabled the Pay Balance feature and your customers make a booking, a Pay Balance link will be automatically included:

• in the booking confirmation and reminder email sent to your customers
• in the customer area, where customers review their bookings

When customers click on the Pay Balance link, they are automatically redirected to a web page where they can review their booking: a Pay Balance button will show.

They can click on the Pay Balance button to finalize their payment

When a payment is made, you will immediately receive a notification in your Bookeo’s home page. Sounds easy? Because it is!

For more information on this new exciting feature, please see our tutorials:

• Bookeo Appointments: http://help.bookeo.com/customer/portal/articles/1472357
• Bookeo Classes & Courses: http://help.bookeo.com/customer/portal/articles/1472369
• Bookeo Tours & Activities: http://help.bookeo.com/customer/portal/articles/1472383

Let us know what you think of this new feature and what else you'd like to see us working on to make Bookeo even better! As always, we’re listening and we encourage your feedback. If you have thoughts or suggestions, please email help@bookeo.com