On Fri, Jul 3, 2009 at 10:15 AM, Michael Grant<michael.gr...@gmail.com> wrote: > In defense of Constant Contact, they are in the business of sending > out mailings for people, they are not themselves spammers. They > perform a service and they do it as best they can given the > circumstances in which they work. >
arms dealers don't cause war, but they sure profit from it. esps by nature have a sketchy business model with a clear monetary incentive to allow as much mail to flow as they can get away with. whether or not they are the source of the spam is irrelevant, they are enabling it and they are profiting from it. there might be some good people with good intentions somewhere in the organization, but its just a dirty business. > I have used them to send out mail to mailing lists of a non-profit > organization that I help and also used it during the previous > presidential campaign. All the addresses were collected via people > coming to the website, typing in their address, getting an email from > constant contact and clicking on a "yes, I want to sign up for this > list" link. > > All mail was sent out with a return address that went to a real > person, and every message contained a link to get off the mailing. > This is required by Constant Contact. > > Secondly, if you unsubscribe using the unsubscribe link, Constant > Contact does not let that address be mailed to again unless it is > re-opted in by signing up again and the person clicking on the opt-in > link. > > Constant Contact keeps track of complaints and when it gets above > something like one or two per thousand they cancel the account. > > If you are getting spam via them, you should send it to their abuse > department. They do take the reports seriously. > despite your personal experience, there is no shortage of contradictory evidence. as many have posted here and on other spam related mailing lists (not sure if the old spam-l archives are still available online, but cc was a subject of discussion there many times). lots of unwanted mail is coming from their systems. i regularly get complaints about mail from cc to the small network i directly deal with (<300 people). > And by the way, from time to time I receive what surely looks like > spam via Constant Contact. I save all my mail. I went back and > searched and sure enough, it *was* something I signed up for but had > completely forgotten. A simple click of their unsubscribe link and no > more of that. > > I would not personally give mail from Constant Contact a higher score > just because it originated from there. The likelihood is the message > is ham, most likely the user forgot they opted like I did, or perhaps > someone is abusing Constant Comment. > "abusing" constant comment? by helping them turn a profit? the ratio of wanted/unwanted here doesn't seem to be very good. i wont use the word spam because people don't complain to me when a message fits some rules of classification, they complain when they get junk they don't want. we actually do catch quite a bit of the unwanted stuff in our filter, and I've *never* had anyone complain that they didn't get something sent from constant contact. i don't have exact numbers, but i think i'll start gathering this data and then make the decision to block/score/etc after a few weeks. > Michael Grant >
