Spamhaus answers marketer questions

A few months ago, Ken Magill asked marketers, including the folks at Only Influencers to provide him with questions to pass along to Spamhaus. Spamhaus answered the first set in March, but then were hit with the Stophaus attack and put answering further questions on hold. Last week, they provided a second set of answers and this week they provided a third.
Nothing in there is surprising, but it’s worth folks heading over and reading.
There are a couple useful things that I think are worth highlighting.
When discussing spamtraps and how Spamhaus handles the traps.

[A]ll the emphasis on spamtraps is rather misplaced. While traps are one way to detect spam problems, the goal of legitimate mailers should be to only send to fully opt-in subscribers, not simply to avoid spamtraps. If only spamtraps received spam and user mailboxes were completely free of it, Spamhaus would have no reason to exist. Part 2

When discussing proving that senders are using an opt in process.

Most systems log email address, connecting IP, timestamp, and origin of the subscription (where the address was collected). Name and other personal info may also be collected. That’s all good for your own use, but all such evidence can also be forged so it really doesn’t help in resolving an SBL. Besides, we understand that you may not be able to share private information. The important thing to show us is not the historic logs, although they might help in some case, but a documented process of address acquisition, for example a process where we could confirm a subscription for our own test address. Part 3

The overall theme of the answers is that Spamhaus’ responsibility is to their users. They take that responsibility very seriously and use whatever tools they have available to identify mail sent without recipient permission.
On a more administrative level: July has been busy and I’ve been swamped with client work. I’m working on a couple long blog posts and hoped to have one of them done today, but the world did not cooperate. But I will have posts up later this week.

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Spammer prosecuted in New Zealand

Today (well, actually tomorrow, but only because New Zealand is on the other side of the date line) the NZ Department of Internal Affairs added a 3rd statement of claim against Brendan Battles and IMG Marketing. This third claim brings the total possible fines to $2.1 million.
Brendan is a long term spammer, who used to be in the US and moved to New Zealand in 2006. His presence in Auckland was noticed by Computerworld when a number of editors and staffers were spammed. When contacted by the paper, Brendan denied being involved in the spam and denied being the same Brendan Battles.
New Zealand anti-spam law went into effect in September 2007. The Unsolicited Electronic Messages Act 2007 prohibits any unsolicited commercial email messages with a New Zealand connection, defined as messages sent to, from or within New Zealand. It also prohibits address harvesting.
The Internal Affairs department also appears to be investigating companies that purchased services from Brendan Battles.

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Are you sure? Part 2

There was a bit of discussion about yesterday’s blog post over on my G+ circles. One person was telling me that “did you forget you opted-in?” was a perfectly valid question. He also commented he’s had the same address for 20 years and that he does, sometimes forget he opted in to mail years ago.
As an anti-spammer with the idea that it’s all about consent, I can see his point. Anti-spammers, for years, have chanted the mantra: “it’s about consent, not content.” Which is a short, pithy way to say they don’t care what you send people, as long as the recipients themselves have asked for it.
This is the perfect bumper sticker policy. As with most bumper sticker policies, though, it’s too short to deal with the messy realities.
I’m not knocking consent. Consent is great. Every bulk mailer should only be sending mail to people who have asked or agreed to receive that mail.
But if your focus is on delivery and getting mail to the recipient’s inbox and getting the recipient to react to that mail then you can’t just fall back on consent. You have to send them mail that they expect. You have to send them mail that they like. You have to send them mail they will open, read and interact with.
If your permission based recipients are saying they forgot that they signed up for mail, that is a sign that the sender’s program is futile. These are people who, at one point or another, actually asked to receive mail from a sender, and then the mail they receive is so unremarkable that they totally forget about the sender.
Maybe that’s another reason the question “are you sure you didn’t forget you opted in” from clients bothers me so much. If I signed up and forgot that points to problems in your program, mostly that it’s totally unremarkable and your subscribers can forget.

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Are you sure you didn't opt in?

Yes, really. I’m sure I didn’t opt-in.
I get a lot of spam. I get a lot of spam to addresses that aren’t used to sign up for mail. But it seems inevitable that when I bring up examples of receiving spam I inevitably get asked, “Are you sure you didn’t opt-in?”
On one level I can understand the question when I send in a complaint to an abuse desk and they’re dealing with a customer who swears all their mail is opt-in. It makes sense when an ESP is working to identify what may have happened so they can correct their customers’ behaviour.
But when it’s a client who has hired me to investigate their email delivery problems and I provide examples of spam sent to me? Why, WHY would I lie to you? Why would I claim I’m getting spam if I wasn’t? What use is that? How does me forgetting I subscribed actually help fix your delivery?
And even if I did forget, shouldn’t that be a sign that maybe there is some issue with your mail program that people sign up and forget?
I am not sure what causes clients to think I would tell them they’re spamming me when they’re really not. I certainly do tell clients when I opt-in and enjoy their mail while offering advice on how to improve their marketing program. I’m not sure what’s going through their heads when I say, “Oh, you (or your affiliate) is sending me a lot of spam,” that prompts them to ask, “Are you sure you didn’t opt-in?”

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