If ESPs were like ISPs…
Everyone wants to protect users and trap data. As a result, people like to send redacted complaints to email service providers (ESPs). Generally, I’m pretty happy to work with redacted data. I need to be able to tell which client sent mail. I need to be able to tell when they sent the mail (the…
Spammer escapes slammer (Updated)
The Lompoc Record is reporting that Jeffery Kilbride has escaped from the minimum security federal lockup. Kilbride was convicted in 2007 of offenses primarily related to the CAN-SPAM Act. Among the things that were apparently included was an allegation that Kilbride and his partner had impaired the ability to track them down by using false…
Make money that’s worth it…
Was that Day Off Worth his Life^ – NARA – 534698 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
I’m in the midst of putting some old posts back up. That means searching through the Wayback Machine, looking for interesting posts (like many other writers, I think that a lot of what I’ve put out in the past is drivel), and then copying and pasting it into the blog platform, and then altering the date (so that the URL doesn’t change). I came across this postfrom December 14, 2006. In re-reading it, it occurred to me that with
just a few edits, it’s all still relevant today. So, rather than put it back in its old place, I’m putting up a new post (with appropriate edits), exactly 7 years after posting it the first time.
“Forward to a Friend” and Germany
Lots of folks have been talking recently about a September German Federal Court ruling[1] that “emails sent using a ‘send to a friend’ function are to be considered spam, unless the recipient had given prior express consent.” This is a fairly significant development in law. As a general rule, people advise that using a “Forward…
Don’t opt-out of spam?
Yesterday, Laura Atkins wrote a blog post which suggests that unsubscribing from spam doesn’t result in receiving more spam. I know that this is a project that she’s been working on for at least a month, and I don’t have any reason to doubt her results. [1] Interestingly, this morning there was a new post by Brian…
Wherein Zoominfo causes spam
Zoominfo, DiscoverOrg, and Lead411 are popular lead generation sources. Every once in a while someone comes along and tries to defend the use of crowd sourced list generation services (of which ZoomInfo and Jigsaw seem to be the largest). These systems work by allowing people to download contact information for third parties in exchange for the…
Looking at a spam stream: The story of Jimmy Walker
I was recently asked about how to go about proving that someone was not obtaining email addresses in a direct, opt-in manner. The methodology won’t surprise you, and if you have been involved in helping problematic clients for a while, the results might not even surprise you. The “someone” at issue was a payday loaner.…
Deliverability Relationship Marketing
A teaser for a Delivera whitepaper by Ken Magill provided blog fodder for Laura Atkins over at Word to the Wise. Ken’s premise, with which Laura agrees, is that ESPs which start talking about the wonderful relationships they have with folks at Spamhaus or at various ISPs should cause you to be extremely skeptical. Andrew…
Starting over
I recently moved this blog to a new server as I was losing access to the old server (which is a long story best told in person). For some unknown reason, the backup that I created of my site’s database didn’t include the posts. I’m still not sure why that happened, but this wasn’t noticed…