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211 Pauline Drive #525 York, PA 17402-4637 |
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211 Pauline Drive #525 York, PA 17402-4637 |
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Anyone with an electronic email address over a few weeks old has faced the ever-growing amount of Unsolicited Commercial Email streaming, then flooding, into their mailbox. Most of us don't even need to ask why we hate it. But since some spammers, and some legitimate companies who are taken in by those spammers, don't seem to understand what's wrong with it, let's run through a few quick observations.
- Most spam is garbage
I mean, come on...seeing as how I handle better than 300K worth of spam per day, I consider myself pretty versed in the content of spam. It's generally advertising MLM and ponzi schemes, pornographic web sites, or software to allow you too to join the ranks of spammers. Sometimes, rare though it may be, there are actually spams without gramatical errors.- Spammers are not very bright, I
Many of the spams entering our server are targeted at mailing list or autoresponder addresses. Ever hear about a computer joining an MLM scam downline?- Spammers are not very bright, II
Some spammers don't understand the difference between an ISP (Internet Services Provider) and an IPP (Internet Presence Provider).- Spammers are not very bright, III
Spammers don't understand the difference between opt-in (where you chose to join a commercial mailing list) and opt-out (where you're stuck on it until you ask to be removed). This one might not be all that accurate, though, since I doubt many people would actually want to be on a list pumping out messages about how you, too, can become a millonaire simply by bilking 200,000 other people.- Spammers are cowards
Very few spam messages come from recognizable servers...these folks use every trick in the book to hide behind a cloke of unrecognizability. Even those that do come from their own servers hide behind the bizarre concept that opt-out is a "good thing."Now, I have to tell you that I personally like Solicited Commercial Email; I have subscribed to quite a number of mailing lists which advertise products and services I'm interested in. Heck, we are strong proponents of responsible Internet marketing, and we operate an opt-in list for folks to subscribe to to keep up with the products and services available from L.O.F. Communications (requiring confirmation to keep mail-bombers from using our server illegally). But we simply refuse to send unsolicited bulk email. And we refuse to permit our clients to send unsolicited bulk email (client contracts specifically include our Terms of Service. And we do everything we can to shield our clients from unsolicited bulk email.
And let me tell you, we have some mean anti-spam filters; they not only search the header information for rogue domains, but also check the body of messages looking for rogue companies, "drop box" addresses, and key phrases. Our clients appreciate our anti-spam stance, or they wouldn't be clients in the first place. (Almost all of our clients have email addresses on their local providers, but use our addresses specifically to filter out the garbage.)
If you are a legitimate business being wooed by the spammers, remember that your reputation is on the line. If you're a spammer, save your time and don't bother mailing into our domain; we'll do everything we can to get you bounced from your provider.
Other Sites that intelligently discuss the spam issue:
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