On 21 Jun 2000 07:22:35 -0500, Alan S. Harrell wrote:
>Postmark.net was a webmail service that apparently added pop3 access
>back in November. I just now learned of this.
>
>I signed up for an account. The signup procedure was long, arduous and
>intrusive, I thought. It begins on a page with a shorty form but the
>next page brings up a monster profile form. At the end I got the idea
>that this service will be sending me a lot of "opt-in" spam into my
>newly created account.
...
snip
...
>Alan
>[EMAIL PROTECTED]
I had signed up for my first postmark.net (then webmail only) account in Oct. 1999.
Around Dec. 30, 1999 I made it POP3 by configuring the user profile.
In March-April this year I switched my ISP here ( - BTW, "here" is Colombo, Sri Lanka)
to one which is nearly 65% cheaper than the previous one for a similarly limited
internet access package. During that one month switching / overlap period, for couple
of reasons I got motivated to setup remote POP3 accounts for my mailing lists /
newsletters subscriptions. Then I was having one POP3 account each with Yahoo,
SoftHome, Pmail, Postmark and Mailandnews. My experience *then* was that Postmark was
the fastest to get connected and get the mails downloaded. So in addition to using my
first Postmark account for two subs., for most of the rest I set up two more PM
accounts including the one seen in the "From:" address of this posting. For some other
newsletters I use my M&N (at present I have two M&N accounts)
Now on the question of "opt-in" spam possibilites that, Alan raises:
So far, only for the first account I have got commercial promotional postings from
"TargitMail" - (see www.targitmail.com - it describes itself as "permission-based
direct e-mail database marketing"). I forgot when it started coming - but it was
probably only 2~3 months after signing up for POP3. I have however kept the
TargitMail postings from April onwards - from 04 April till today there had been 10
postings - total size for these 10 is 75 kB. The largest one (with Subject: FREE trip
to France from Wine Today) was about 18kB and smallest ones about 4 kB. The frequency
of posting is rather sporadic than periodic.
Each TargitMail postings start with the following statements
>You are receiving this exclusive promotion from TargitMail as part of the
>terms of service agreed to when you signed up with Postmark.net. Please
>follow the instructions at the end of this message if you would prefer not
>to receive these special offers in the future.
and at the end of the message is the following statement:
>If this message does not match your interests, you may change your
>preferences, or opt-out entirely by clicking here.
My guess isthat the "opt-out entirely" option is also giving up the POP3
accessability.
For the other two PM accounts I set up in April (and also my wife's which was setup a
few weeks later) so far there is no TargitMail (or any other commecial postings),
yet! - I think it is likely that those accounts will start getting TargitMail in
another few weeks.
For me the size and the frequency of the "opt-in" spam does not seem a problem yet. I
guess in the likely event of all my accounts getting same Targit Mail postings I
would make use of Filter in my Eudora to send duplicates to trash.
However, I will reduce my current dependence on Postmark.net for another reason: I
got awareness from the postings to this list 2 months back (when I had subscribed and
begun to lurk on this list) on the risks involed in having all (or most like I do)
subscriptions to one remote POP3 server. As I was wary of making frequent changes,
then I chose to bide time - guess soon I shall be making those intended changes.
Sethu
