Sending mail to the wrong person, part eleventy

Another person has written another blog post talking about their experiences with an email address a lot of people add to mailing lists without actually owning the email address. In this case the address isn’t a person’s name, but is rather just what happens when you type across rows on they keyboard.
These are similar suggestions to those I (and others) have made in the past. It all boils down to allow people who never signed up for your list, even if someone gave you their email address, to tell you ‘This isn’t me.” A simple link in the mail, and a process to stop all mail to that address (and confirm it is true if someone tries to give it to you again), will stop a lot of unwanted and unasked for email.

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Motion to dismiss in Penkava v. Yahoo case

Earlier this month Yahoo filed a motion to dismiss in the Penkava v. Yahoo. This is the class action lawsuit where an Alabama resident is attempting to sue Yahoo for violation of the California wiretapping law.
Here’s the short synopsis.
People send mail to Yahoo. Yahoo “creeps and peeps” on that mail so they can profit from it. Plaintiff doesn’t like this, and thinks that he can use the California Invasion of Privacy Act (“CIPA”), (Cal. Penal Code § 630, et seq;) to stop Yahoo from doing this. Additionally, there is a whole class of people who live in every state but California who have also been harmed by Yahoo’s actions. The plaintiff would like the court to make Yahoo stop doing this. (First Amended Complaint)
Yahoo’s motion to dismiss is actually pretty dry and there aren’t really any zinger pull quotes that make sense without reading the whole 35 pages. The short version is that what Yahoo is doing is not a violation of California law, it is simply handling email as it has to be done to get it to recipients. Plus, California law cannot apply to mail sent from a non-CA resident to a non-CA resident because that would violate the dormant commerce clause. The class as defined makes no sense. Finally, the plaintiff continues to send mail to Yahoo addresses knowing the mail is being “scanned” and that is implicit permission for Yahoo to do it.
In the initial complaint there was an allegation that Yahoo’s behaviour was a violation of Federal and/or California Wiretapping laws. These allegations appear to have been dropped in the First Amended Complaint.
Right now there is a hearing scheduled for March 13, 2013. I’ll keep an eye on the filings.

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Address verification

In the comments on my Address Verification in Real Time Ken asks:

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Can you verify email addresses in real time?

In a recent discussion about spamtraps and address lists and data collection a participant commented, “[E]very site should be utilizing a real-time email address hygiene and correction service on the front end.” He went on to explain that real time hygiene prevents undeliverable addresses and spamtraps and all sorts of list problems. I was skeptical to say the least.
Yes, there are APIs that can be queried at some of the larger ISPs to identify if an account name is taken, but this doesn’t mean that there is an associated email address. Yes, senders can do a real time SMTP transaction, but ISPs are quick to block SMTP transactions that quit before DATA.
I decided to check out one service to see how accurate it was. I’m somewhat lucky in that I created a username at Yahoo Groups over a dozen years ago but never activated the associated email address. This means that the account is shown as taken and no one else can register that address at Yahoo. But the address doesn’t accept any mail.

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