IMO, Plaxo is fully legit, at least so far. Every time that I have
received a message asking me to update a contact that I wasn't familiar
with, I was able to track down the relationship to the sender. The
issue really is that many installations of Outlook and Outlook Express
will automatically add any recipient to one's address book, and then
when they sign up for Plaxo, they send out one of these broadcasts to
everyone listed. For many, they won't recognize the sender, but with a
little research I have found that there is always, in my case, a
connection of some sort.
Blocking the Plaxo notifications isn't a big issue unless you actually
have users that are customers of their service, but some administrators
will haphazardly ban anything with their URL, and that causes personal
E-mail to be blocked. I have run into this on at least 3 occasions.
While some are saying that there is abuse, I have never seen a single
instance of such. Plaxo is even responsible enough to include an
opt-out for their entire service if you don't like their
notifications. Their business model is built around growing awareness
and upgrading customers to a paid package. Their business is not built
around spamming. They do not sell their list of subscribers, and they
certainly don't sell their subscriber's contacts. I am near certain
that there has never been a spamtrap hit on their notifications (real
spamtraps, not retired accounts).
That being said, I do not use Plaxo and never will. I see problems
with there being massive databases of this information regardless of it
being secured. AOL has had their address list stolen in the past and
the same can happen to Plaxo. I also think that the practice of
broadcasting these messages to full address books is unwise, especially
because it is clear that a number of people don't remember the sender
and it causes mass confusion.
I would recommend that people not use Plaxo, especially since they can
be blacklisted by less knowing administrators, but also because of the
other issues that I listed above. I would also not recommend
blacklisting their servers, and certainly wouldn't blacklist their URL.
Matt
Martin Schaible wrote:
Hi,
We blocked plaxo for a while. We had to reopened it. I had no idea, how much users are
using this service.
We informed our users (again...) about the risks giving away an email address to a public
service. This is we can do as an ISP. The decision to use plaxo must be done by the user.
============================================
Am Montag, 6. Dezember 2004 um 00:03 schrieben Sie:
Actually all I meant is I wouldn't use it or add any contacts, however I've
not blocked them I don't think. If I start seeing a lot of emails from them
in my logs I may be tempted to block them. I seriously think they are just a
front for gathering legit email addresses for spammers, but that's just a
suspicion or opinion not based on any hardcore evidence other that what a
client told me happened to him. That particular client is really nice but
not the sharpest PC owner on the block.
Ted
-----Original Message-----
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] On Behalf Of William Van Hefner
Sent: Sunday, December 05, 2004 1:50 AM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: RE: Re[2]: [IMail Forum] Plaxo
Ted,
I guess that it depends upon what kind of mail hosting situation you have. I
am not going to add them to my blacklist, where e-mails would be deleted. I
will check to see if I can reject these e-mails at the envelope using my
Postfix box though. Fortunately (I guess), I'm not personally in a situation
where I have thousands of hosting customers that I need to pander to. I only
have a handful of clients that I all know personally, and in my situation it
makes much more sense to block this stuff outright and warn my customers
against using it.
William Van Hefner
Network Administrator
Vantek Communications, Inc.
http://www.vantekcommunications.com
-----Original Message-----
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] On Behalf Of Ted
Galerneau
Sent: Sunday, December 05, 2004 1:41 AM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: RE: Re[2]: [IMail Forum] Plaxo
So I guess this depends on who you ask, personally I am not a gambler.
-----Original Message-----
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] On Behalf Of Darin Cox
Sent: Saturday, December 04, 2004 8:11 PM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: Re[2]: [IMail Forum] Plaxo
Agreed. We get plaxo'd all of the time from people we've had
brief correspondence with. Quite annoying.
Darin.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Pete McNeil" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "Internet Relations" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Saturday, December 04, 2004 8:54 PM
Subject: Re[2]: [IMail Forum] Plaxo
On Saturday, December 4, 2004, 8:35:45 PM, Internet wrote:
IR> I use it personally, as do many of my associates. Its fantastic
IR> functionality and extremely useful.
I hate it.
I've seen tremendous amounts of apparent abuse from plaxo,
and yet legitimate folks - even some that I work with - have
decided to use it and so all of the rules that started out
banning this content have had to be removed to support the
small, and unfortunately growing number of people who actually use it.
I rarely see a week go by that a plaxo message is not
submitted as spam to us. And yet, I cannot block it because
too many people use it - those rules have long since been
removed due to FP complaints.
This is a controversial position to take, but I think it has
to be said - plaxo should go away or significantly alter it's
operations. IMO, the people who are using plaxo are setting
themselves up for big trouble later on.
_M
To Unsubscribe: http://www.ipswitch.com/support/mailing-lists.html
List Archive:
http://www.mail-archive.com/imail_forum%40list.ipswitch.com/
Knowledge Base/FAQ: http://www.ipswitch.com/support/IMail/
To Unsubscribe: http://www.ipswitch.com/support/mailing-lists.html
List Archive:
http://www.mail-archive.com/imail_forum%40list.ipswitch.com/
Knowledge Base/FAQ: http://www.ipswitch.com/support/IMail/
To Unsubscribe: http://www.ipswitch.com/support/mailing-lists.html
List Archive:
http://www.mail-archive.com/imail_forum%40list.ipswitch.com/
Knowledge Base/FAQ: http://www.ipswitch.com/support/IMail/
To Unsubscribe: http://www.ipswitch.com/support/mailing-lists.html
List Archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/imail_forum%40list.ipswitch.com/
Knowledge Base/FAQ: http://www.ipswitch.com/support/IMail/
To Unsubscribe: http://www.ipswitch.com/support/mailing-lists.html
List Archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/imail_forum%40list.ipswitch.com/
Knowledge Base/FAQ: http://www.ipswitch.com/support/IMail/
============================================
--
=====================================================
MailPure custom filters for Declude JunkMail Pro.
http://www.mailpure.com/software/
=====================================================
|
