Al has another post about another company sending mail to a customer that gave an email address that didn’t belong to them. The person receiving the misdirected email has no effective way to make it stop, and is getting more and more frustrated with the ongoing spam. (Consumerist article)
In an effort to get a blog post out yesterday before yet another doctor’s appointment I did not do nearly enough research on the company I mentioned selling list cleansing data. As Al correctly pointed out in the comments they are currently listed on the SBL. And when I actually did the research I should have done it was clear this company has a long term history of sending unsolicited email.
Poor research and a quickly written blog post led to me endorsing a company that I absolutely shouldn’t have. And I do apologize for that.
With all that being said, Justin had a great question in the comments of yesterday’s post about data cleansing.
There’s a certain type of sender that thinks every ISP block or email delivered to the bulk folder is a false positive. They’re so sure that the filters aren’t actually supposed to catch their mail that they’ll spend any amount of money and do every possible thing to get their mail to the inbox.
The problem for these senders, though, is that their mail is exactly the type of mail filters are designed to catch. They’re sending mail without recipient permission. I’m not talking about the lists that get a few typos or problem addresses on them. I’m talking about senders that buy and trade mailing lists. I’m talking about senders that don’t believe they have to have permission to send mail.
This mail getting filtered is a sign that the filters are working as intended. They’re keeping the unsolicited email out.
A lot of us take for granted that all commercial mail, at least that isn’t selling fake watches or herbal viagra, is always sent with permission. But there’s an awful lot of mail out there that doesn’t even have a minor fig leaf of permission. Filters stop that mail. And senders have very little recourse when they do.