Charles Gregory wrote:
All this debate about 'legitimate' mail services like 'returnpath'
being abused by 'sneaky' spammers. How is that possible? There should be
easy ways to prevent it. Here's a few ideas:
As soon as any whitelist service like 'returnpath' accepts a client,
they perform the following:
1) Review the client's address list - look for honeypot addresses.
If any are found, clearly the client has not vetted their list.
2) Perform their OWN 'opt-in' mailout to that list.
"Hello, we at (company eg. Retunrpath) have contracted to operate a
mailng list on behalf of (client name). They have provided your
address as one that has *requested* advertising mailouts from their
company. We respectfully request that you verify this
subscription/request by replying to this e-mail. IF you do nothing,
this will be your last mailing from this company."
That wouldn't ever happen because the whole point of the CAN-SPAM
act is to allow the spammers to send out the "first" mail. Direct
e-mail mailers just setup fake company after fake company, so they can
repeatedly spam the "first time" over and over again.
I'm sure we would all live with the occasional true 'opt-in' request, if
we knew that the end result would be that it would stifle spam by giving
the legitimate mailers, the ones whose mail we *want* anyway,
Who exactly are those mailers? Just curious since I've never in my
life seen an unsolicited commercial e-mail from a list that I never
opted in on in the first place, that I "wanted"
Ted
