February 5, 2013
They really think we're stupid
05February
January 25, 2013
A Spam Blast from the Past
25January
A couple of days ago an ex-employee of Opt-In Inc., was kind enough to do a Reddit AMA answering questions about their experience working with Steve Hardigree in the “legitimate” email marketing industry, back in the early 2000s. The whole thing is worth a read, but I thought I’d share some of his more interesting answers here. Everyone knows everyone The spam business was super...
December 11, 2012
TWSD: Adapt to filters
11December
This morning the new Yahoo! CEO posted about changes to Yahoo! mail. I logged into one of my Yahoo accounts to check and see if I had access to the new Yahoo! mail client yet. I don’t, but I did notice that spammers have adapted to the new Yahoo model of disabling filters in the mail folder. Most of the mail in my inbox has, at the very top of the message “Click not spam to enable...
October 30, 2012
Harvesting and forging email addresses
30October
For the contact address on our website, Steve has set up a rotating set of addresses. This is to minimize the amount of spam we have to deal with coming from address harvesters. This has worked quite well. In fact it works so well I didn’t expect that publishing an email address for taking reader questions would generate a lot of spam. Boy, was I wrong. That address has been on the website...
September 7, 2012
Just Block It
07September
I tend to go back and forth about reporting spam these days. On one level I know that it’s all a numbers game, and policy enforcement is more about the quantity of complaints than the quality. Knowing this I don’t often send in complaints. I do make a few exceptions: when I know the policy enforcement team or when it’s a current or former client. The responses I’ve gotten...
May 14, 2012
Things Spammers Do
14May
Much like every other day, I got some spam today. Here’s a lightly edited copy of it. Let’s go through it and see what they did that makes it clear that it’s spam, which companies helped them out, and what you should avoid doing to avoid looking like these spammers… Received: from [213.144.59.132] (114.sub-75-210-142.myvzw.com [75.210.142.114] by m.wordtothewise.com...
May 4, 2012
You opted in
04May
One thing I get in some of the comments here and in some of the discussions I have with email senders is that no commercial emailer ever sends unsolicited email. That, clearly, at some point the recipient opted in to receive mail and if that person doesn’t want mail they shouldn’t ever give out their email address. I have an old yahoo address that’s used primarily as my Flickr...
February 1, 2012
What not to do
01February
There’s a London concert promoter that’s been spamming our old sales address for 5 or 6 years now. I’ve sent in complaints, I’ve tried to unsubscribe, and the mail still keeps coming. They managed to get through my filters, again, this morning. In a fit of frustration I tweeted about how frustrated I was that they would not stop spamming me. Well, that got someone’s...
December 19, 2011
Spamming ESPs
19December
In my mailbox there is a definite uptick in spam from ESPs advertising their services. Today’s email was from a company that has the following in their anti-spam policy: To send email to anyone using [ESP name], you must have clearly obtained their permission. We consider qualifying methods for obtaining permission are as follows: An email newsletter subscription form on your web site. An...
November 8, 2011
Does it look like you're spamming?
08November
There are lots of terribly complicated rules in email marketing and retention. “Only send email to people who opted-in”, “Never use a pink background”[1], “Have a working unsubscription link”, “Don’t put FREE in the subject line”[1]. Another one should be “How does what you’re doing look to a typical recipient?”. I’ve...
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