On Sat, Oct 17, 2009 at 5:47 AM, rich...@buzzhost.co.uk <rich...@buzzhost.co.uk> wrote: > On Fri, 2009-10-16 at 13:29 -0700, John Hardin wrote: >> On Fri, 16 Oct 2009, John Rudd wrote: >> >> > Me. I work for one of their clients (a University). One or two of >> > our divisions use them for large mailings to our internal users. >> >> How is Constant Contact better than (say) GNU mailman for that purpose? > > It's so you can pay someone to send spam, skip past lots of things like > Barracuda Network$$$ devices and other filters and not have to face the > music and termination from your provider for spamming. > > Constant Contact = Constant Spam. A IPTables dropping all of their > ranges from SYN is a great way to cut *lots* of crap mail > >
For a personal server, I'd agree they send nothing I want to receive. However, for anything more, I think you will get complaints. Constant Contact is one of the "better" ESPs, kind of like a kick in the shin is "better" than a kick in the teeth. They do have some legitimate customers, and they do have some spamming customers. The truth is not so good as Tara would like it to be, and not so bad as some have claimed. What I really can't understand is why they are on any kind of whitelist. Putting this type of company on a whitelist is great if you're trying to support their revenue model.. now they can tell their clients to use their service because they are on whitelists, this is very attractive to spammers. But what good does it do for anyone else? Why not let their messages meet the same scrutiny as any other potential source of spam? If they get blacklisted, great, now their revenue model is hurt until they find ways to avoid it. If they manage to stay off the lists, even better, they are running as spam free as they claim to be. Why are we covering for their mistakes and supporting a company that profits from sending spam, even if its only sometimes, by whitelisting them?
