> True, objectively, but there is a significant subjective difference. > In one way I had the opportunity to see the mail, and didn't, and the > other way something hid it from me without my explicit per-message > consent.
This is a huge issue with large scale systems like Brightmail, which provides filtering services for ISPs. We have a licensee who got caught this way - with no bounce or other rejection messages they had _no_ way of knowing that all of their mailing list subscribers at ($BIGISP) were simply not getting their mail, until suddenly they got a rash of complaints from said subscribers at $BIGISP saying "what has happened to our mailings??" Because, of course, as you point out, their mailing list mail was (worse than 'hidden') simply undelivered to them, not only without their consent, but in direct contravention of their stated desires (all of our licensee's mail is confirmed opt-in, so the $BIGISP was failing to deliver mail that their users had explicitly requested and confirmed). [Fortunately, a call to the $BIGISP pointing out exactly that had an effect, as it nearly always does, but that's hardly the point...the false positive problem is a huge one, especially for mailing list owners - and made larger because they often have *no* idea how much of their mail is *not* being delivered!] Another of our licensees, TidBits, experienced as much as a *10%* delivery failure rate when one issue contained the word "Viagra" once. [That was before they were a Habeas licensee. :-)] You can read about that here: http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tbart=06866 Macslash.com had to change over to Macslash.org when their registration for Macslash.com *expired*, and someone grabbed it, because their ISP, mac.com, bounced their registration renewal notice as "spam". For those who think that the false positive situation isn't a problem... Anne
