Thought the list might be interested in this. This was a conversation I had with Michael Giles, who claims to be a technical director for the marketing company that sent me spam from Super8 Motels. He wrote me after I submitted the spam to SpamCop.
From:
Frank Pineau
<XXXXXXXXX>
To:
Michael
Giles
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject:
Re: [SpamCop
id:1018879444]
Date:
Thu, 20 May
2004
10:18:48
-0500
Michael,
Thank you for taking the time to investigate and to ask what your
company can do to alleviate the spam problem. Responsible marketers
like you are, unfortunately, the exception rather than the norm. I can
tell you from experience that "Click here to remove me from your list"
almost never works. In fact, almost always, it only serves to verify
that the address is, in fact, a valid one. It's a sure-fire way to
receive *more* UBE rather than less. You claim that you honor those
requests and I choose to accept that claim at face-value based on your
interest in my complaint. However, in virtually 100% of the spam I
receive, that claim is not worth the digital paper it's printed on.
Sadly, "guilty until proven innocent" is the only way I can get my
spam-to-ham ratio below 80% (yes, up to 80% of the e-mail that passes
through my servers is spam, which translates to significant overhead
cost for me and directly affects my wallet).
You say that you send mail to lists you get legitimately, but I can
guarantee you that I *never* sign up for any type of marketing material
with this e-mail address. When I *do* need to provide an e-mail
address, I use a throw-away one. I do not provide my general e-mail
address for that purpose. Therefore, while you may have acquired it
legitimately, the people you bought it from most certainly did not.
If you would like some suggestions on how to market to customers
without becoming a spammer, I recommend two things. First, change to an
opt-in system, rather than opt-out. (And I mean *actually* opt-in, not
where you bought a mailing list from a "partner"). This way, you can be
absolutely sure that the people you are marketing to are really
interested. Frankly, I find it astonishing that the fact that you have
to process thousands of unsubscribe requests per week has not clued you
in to the fact that you're doing something wrong.
Second, subscribe to anti-spam mailing lists. Many of the lists will
give you suggestions on how to market legitimately.
On Thu, 2004-05-20 at 09:26, Michael Giles wrote:
> Can you please tell me what is going on here? I am the technical
> director of a marketing firm. We send mail to lists we get
> legitimately. Are your complaints as legitimate or is everyone guilty
> until proven innocent as with most supposed spam fighters. I could
> find nothing specific anywhere saying what we supposedly did wrong.
> If the person does not want to receive email from us, they are free to
> unsubscribe. We process thousands of these requests weekly and we
> honor them all to my knowledge. If anyone has evidence to the
> contrary, I would love to hear it and I will make sure it is
> corrected. Spam is bad, it hurts our biz. I get it every day also
> and people who do it move servers so fast it is difficult to even find
> ways to block them. I do wish there was a "cop on the block", but if
> you only annoy the people you can find, that will not be them, I think
> because they are harder to find. I tracked a couple back to source,
> but it was some free ISP in the Netherlands or Phillipines where you
> could set up an account a week.
>
> Hopefully you can give me information on how to avoid this sort of
> thing in the future. Thanks.
--
Just say 'Here' and we will take it to mean
'Here I am...rock me like a hurricane.'
--Ignignokt
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