It is with a heavy heart that we note the passing of dear friend, colleague and member of the CAUCE board board of directors, Don Blumenthal on September 28, 2019 in Ann Arbor, Michigan. He was 67.
Don was an anti-spammer for as long a there was an anti-spam community: he helped design, deploy and maintain the famous ‘Spam Fridge’, the repository of junk email maintained by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). He contributed the wisdom he gleaned from that experience to the design process of Canada’s Spam Freezer.
Don Blumenthal later worked at the Public Interest Registry (PIR.org) maintaining anti-abuse work for the .ORG TLD
Don was a welcome, active participant to the Anti-Phishing Working Group (APWG.org), at the meetings held by the Messaging Anti-Abuse Working Group (M3AAWG.org), the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (icaan.org) and, of course, he was a long-time board member of the Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial Email (CAUCE.org).
His interests also lay outside the realm of anti-abuse work, Don was a football scout for the Oakland Raiders.
Don Blumenthal worked tireless to make the Internet a better place, had a considerable degree of success doing so, and he will be sorely missed by us all. Simply put, he was a tremendously nice guy.
Rest in peace, Don.
