On 9 Jan 2005 at 17:52, Dennis Bathory-Kitsz wrote: > At 04:37 PM 1/9/05 -0600, Randolph Peters wrote: > >It is completely inappropriate to make > >individual posters write back to these people essentially saying that > > "No, I'm not spamming you." > > There is a discussion on my webhost's news server about those who use > challenge/response email services. Their spam problem is their spam > problem, not mine, and if they don't know how to use filters, then > they'll never hear from me, even if they asked for something. I've > blackholed all the challenge/response services, which sends their > emails right into the bit bucket before they even get downloaded.
What do you mean by "all the challenge/response services?" Do you mean 3rd-party services? I have recently set up my own domain (though have not yet migrated to using it exclusively) and my hosting provider offers challenge/response email. I'm intending to use it on some accounts. Naturally, if I used it on an account that was subscribed to a mailing list, I'd pre-whitelist the list itself. And if I emailed someone, I'd whitelist their email address in anticipation of receiving a reply. I cannot see that there is anything at all wrong with challenge/response email systems, except that people do not yet understand how to use them properly. The problems I've seen have all been related to not whitelisting addresses that ought to be whitelisted by the person using the challenge/response system (as in the examples I gave above). Email is not going to survive without just such a system to stop spam. I get around 250-300 email messages per day of which 200-250 are spam. I am looking forward to changing email addresses so I can get away from having to review the 200-250 messages in the spam inbox for the occasional false positive. In general, the only false positives I ever get are people who are legtimate emailers but use HTML format for their email. Not one of these people that I've apologized to for missing their email had been aware at any level that they were emailing in HTML, so I continue to use HTML encoding as an indication that an email message is spam. But I still have to review the spam inbox and keep the messages (in case something important is missed and discovered only weeks later). It's sad that the email addresses I've been using since 1996 will have to be abandoned, but it's the only way for me to return to a productive use of email. And I'm going to jealously protect that by any means necessary. -- David W. Fenton http://www.bway.net/~dfenton David Fenton Associates http://www.bway.net/~dfassoc _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list [email protected] http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
