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QuoteNotes
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From: TN USA
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RE: SPAM - tastes good when your hungry? - 2/19/2003 17:50:20
As a related story to the RoadRunner tale, I publish a biweekly email newsletter that goes out to over 12,000 people. If you have a RoadRunner email account, you can' t receive it.
RoadRunner has identified our newsletter service (MS bCentral) as a spam haven and it' s on several Blackhole lists. So, while 99.99% of bCentral subscribers send true opt-in newsletters, the occasional spammer has resulted in untold problems for the rest of us and our clients.
The problem is compounded (i.e., in addition to the problems caused by the spammers themselves) by ineffective spam filters. We constantly fight battles with corporate email filters that block our newsletter simply because it includes the word " unsubscibe" or similar terminology known to be present in a lot of spam.
The use of these poor excuses for filters just makes the problem worse by blocking legitimate email. Even worse, professional spammers can figure out these systems in a manner of hours or days and, in many cases, get around the filters. The most effective spam filters are those that are work station, not server, based. Often, they will screen an email as potential spam and send a reply email. If you respond to that email, your address is " white listed" and subsequent emails can go through. That defeats professional spammers since they don' t respond to individual replies.
There is definitely a need for legislation to control the problem, particularly pornographic spam (especially to minors)...you can' t display Penthouse magazine at eye level in a convenience store, but kids can get the vilest form of pornography in their email inboxes. More important, there must be enforcement in the form of HUGE fines and, if necessary, incarceration. Otherwise, within a few short years, the internet will be choking on this stuff.
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mc6pack
Posts: 17
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RE: SPAM - tastes good when your hungry? - 2/19/2003 19:15:35
I think you are right. I am planning to email (using my RR account) my legislators. While I believe that spam should be opt in only, porn should also be opt in (subscribe to), I am opposed completely to an ISP filtering my email. It is monitoring. How do they know what is legit mail and what is opt in? I am old enough to think and decide for myself! This infringes on my rights I believe. And for an ISP to say only that email gets through or someone who hosts with the same ISP is blackmail. Enough!
Thank you for your note of support and ' in the same boat' type message. It shows me that it is a bigger problem than I thought!
Theresa
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PBailey
Posts: 907
From: San Antonio, Texas USA
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RE: SPAM - tastes good when your hungry? - 2/19/2003 19:49:36
quote:
I think porn spam should be legislated against.
Dan,
It would do no good to pass laws against porn spam (as much as I would like to). Those laws only are in effect in our country. The internet is not limited to our country. The porn would just be routed differently. The ISPs would pay the price because they would most probably be held liable for passing it on to their customers and can you imagine the filters they would put out there in that case? Remember the AOL filters which caused sites about breast cancer not to be reached.
Actually, it has been tried in Oklahoma. I' m not sure if any other states have tried. The result...it didn' t work and because of ISP filtering there was much that was not porn which could not be accessed. Some of the techies tried getting around it just to see if they could. They did.
quote:
More important, there must be enforcement in the form of HUGE fines and, if necessary, incarceration
QuickNotes
Who are you going to fine? The ISP whose filter missed something? The guy in Nigeria who sent it? The ghosted IP? It won' t work. Sounds good but as a further question.......who decides what is porn? This is the problem that has stalked the Supreme Court for years. So who gets fined and on what definitions of porn? (Please know, I am not defending porn but these area issues that would have to be addressed.)
Think very carefully about filtering. Even on Outfront there are certain words that the filters catch and won' t allow even when used in a legitimate context. We can live with that but would you want every single e-mail you get or receive to be subject to that? I have a friend whose name could never be used in an e-mail.
The basic reality is that the internet is to large to be adequately policed. I don' t believe it can be done successfully.
< Message edited by Pbailey -- 2/19/2003 7:50 PM >
_____________________________
Paula
Thought for the day: Never be afraid to try something new. Remember that a lone amateur built the Ark. A large group of professionals built the Titanic.
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PBailey
Posts: 907
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RE: SPAM - tastes good when your hungry? - 2/19/2003 20:04:50
Again, not a defense of spam but let us look at other items.
It is not only spam that fills e-mail boxes and waste time. What about all the e-mail chain letters that everyone gets. Those things blossom into hundreds of thousands of e-mail a week. What about the jokes that everyone gets at least twice or the " beautiful sentiments" and slide shows that make the rounds over and over again.
When I worked in the corporate world I always had more jokes and chain letters in my e-mail box then I did spam. I still get more of those then I do spam.
The bandwidth that these items take is tremendous. Should they be outlawed? Are they OK because they are sent by friends with good intentions? They still clog the mail servers and the corporate e-mail boxes.
There is more to this this question then quick assumptions.
_____________________________
Paula
Thought for the day: Never be afraid to try something new. Remember that a lone amateur built the Ark. A large group of professionals built the Titanic.
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QuoteNotes
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RE: SPAM - tastes good when your hungry? - 2/19/2003 20:17:16
Nobody says enforcement would be easy. Your points are well taken regarding pornography, but let' s face it, there' s " soft" porn that could be debatable, but there' s also pornography that would fit anyone' s definition of pornography, particularly when sent to a minor.
You' ll never be able to police every porn spammer in the world, but there' s plenty that comes from right here, and not just pornographic spam. Ideally, it should all be opt-in, but for now, I' d settle for a legitimate opt-out. It should also be illegal to forge headers to conceal the source and identity of senders. Nope, it wouldn' t get rid of spam, but it would impact it significantly, particularly those that send it as a misguided marketing tool.
I wouldn' t advocate going after an ISP unless they won' t take action against spammers using their systems. But if you can make examples of a few it' s bound to have some effect. As it stands now, there are professional spammers that aren' t only not bothered about the cost they impose on others, but actually brag about it.
Just my opinion. I could be wrong.
_____________________________
Bill Wilson, CPCU, ARM, AIM, AAM
Supreme Allied Commander
IIABA' s Virtual University
Professional Speaker & Writer
Corporate Web Site:
http://vu.iiaa.net
Professional Web Site:
http://www.BrightPath.com
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PBailey
Posts: 907
From: San Antonio, Texas USA
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RE: SPAM - tastes good when your hungry? - 2/19/2003 21:20:04
quote:
there' s also pornography that would fit anyone' s definition of pornography, particularly when sent to a minor.
Bill,
I agree with you above statement about pornography and I am certainly not defending porn. I also agree that an opt-out would be ideal...I just don' t think it is ever going to be a reality.
quote:
I wouldn' t advocate going after an ISP unless they won' t take action against spammers using their systems
Then who? If something is coming in from out of country you can' t enforce a US law outside the country. Who is the law enforced against...the company that owns the backbone lines? where does the ball stop and who pays the price of the law? I' m not trying to be facetious. I just don' t think there is an easy answer.
_____________________________
Paula
Thought for the day: Never be afraid to try something new. Remember that a lone amateur built the Ark. A large group of professionals built the Titanic.
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Reflect
Posts: 4767
From: USA
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RE: SPAM - tastes good when your hungry? - 2/20/2003 7:42:02
Hi,
I am on a project to find the spam/spoofing/content management solution be it an install app/hosted/appliance to use at our gateway. I am a email administrator (one hat of varied). We only have a small user base of around 25,000 people. I am at the point where the field is weeded down to 5 solutions. We are getting ready to have demos given by the vendors. We are not even to determining the filters yet and it is becoming a three ring circus. Different departments and management all have different views of the definition of spam. It seems that one persons spam is another persons want to read. One person thinks anything with the word " unsubscribe" should be trashed. Guess what all Novell newsletters (We are a Novell shop) have that word in it. There are more than a few ways that we can setup the filters yet everyone has valid comments on what weight to give what action/trigger. I see this dragging out for a much longer time than the project' s timeline dictates.
The worst part....
No matter what we decide on since I am the " lead" I know flame mails will fly the first few weeks as people will be upset that their favorite news letter no longer is being delivered.
Anyway sorry to ramble but the point I am trying to make is there are a LOT of grey lines. Sure the obvious are porn, viagra, etc. but what about the grey??? That is where I am unsure of the benefit of a company trying to say what is spam and what is not for an end user.
MHO,
Brian
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QuoteNotes
Posts: 21
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RE: SPAM - tastes good when your hungry? - 2/20/2003 9:48:22
quote:
" I wouldn' t advocate going after an ISP unless they won' t take action against spammers using their systems."
Then who? If something is coming in from out of country you can' t enforce a US law outside the country. Who is the law enforced against...the company that owns the backbone lines? where does the ball stop and who pays the price of the law? I' m not trying to be facetious. I just don' t think there is an easy answer.
I' d say you go after the person/organization behind the solicitation and, if a different party, the person doing the physical spamming. Some people don' t have a message of their own...they just provide the vehicle for spamming. I think an awful lot of spamming is misguided, like term life insurance, home refinancing, etc. Threaten them with crippling fines and/or jail time and I think you' ll see a reduction.
A cure? Of course not, but ANYTHING would help!
_____________________________
Bill Wilson, CPCU, ARM, AIM, AAM
Supreme Allied Commander
IIABA' s Virtual University
Professional Speaker & Writer
Corporate Web Site:
http://vu.iiaa.net
Professional Web Site:
http://www.BrightPath.com
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QuoteNotes
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RE: SPAM - tastes good when your hungry? - 2/20/2003 9:59:01
Another thing I' m noticing is an increasing use of HTML spam. My understanding is that most spam is filtered/rejected by one of two methods: (1) blocking an ISP, and/or (2) filtering based on content.
In the first instance, if I' m not mistaken (someone correct me if I' m wrong), spammers can forge the relay header information so that it appears that the email is coming from a legitimate source. So, as I mentioned in an earlier post, you' re more likely to be punishing legitimate opt-in email from a provider like Microsoft' s bCentral.
In the second instance, if spammers move to HTML email that includes only a graphic (no text to scan or analyze), won' t that defeat content filters?
If the above are accurate, isn' t the war already lost?
_____________________________
Bill Wilson, CPCU, ARM, AIM, AAM
Supreme Allied Commander
IIABA' s Virtual University
Professional Speaker & Writer
Corporate Web Site:
http://vu.iiaa.net
Professional Web Site:
http://www.BrightPath.com
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Alex2020
Posts: 25
Joined: 12/22/2001
From: Miami FL USA
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RE: SPAM - tastes good when your hungry? - 2/20/2003 13:38:10
So far so good ladies and gentlemen.
I just have one question, which I can' t get answer for.
If you start new web site with product how do you let people or better potential customers to know about it?
If you are large corporation there is no problem to buy TV, radio, newspaper advertising.
The problem starts, when there is limited budget for big advertising.
I tried all kinds of news letters and Enzines. With some companies you find out they just want to sell you their product and do not care about yours. Specially some Enzines.
For someone who just started internet business there is sometimes only one solution - spam.
I do not like it personally, specially those from Nigeria, viagra or loose weight programs, but many times I was glad that I received " spam" , because it helped me to find new product witch I will not come across. There are millions of web site. I do not mind to get mail from decent companies. I do not care how small they are.
So my question is: how can you let people know about your product if you do not want to send a spam? Any sugestions?
Alex
http://www.mynameday.com
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Gil
Posts: 7533
From: North Carolina, USA
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RE: SPAM - tastes good when your hungry? - 2/20/2003 14:15:43
Wow, what a great discussion!
<Opinion>
As has been pointed out, it is close to impossible to regulate spam. And do we really want a government entity deciding what we see and don’t see? I do not! The obstacles of regulation are many – from the issue of international boundaries to host header spoofing. But, as with almost every issue we face, it comes down to economics – Why do spammers spam?, Because it works. Economics 101! Every time you or any one else clicks on a link in a spam email (including *or especially* the “unsubscribe” link) the spammer is encouraged to spam again. The only reason they send spam is because it is profitable, and as long as it is profitable they will continue. Regulations, filters, fines and the like ‘may’ lessen the amount of spam, but will not stop it. When it becomes unprofitable, the spammers will stop it on their own.
So, set up your filters, add software – do whatever you can to make it bearable. But in no case EVER, EVER, EVER click on a link in a spam message!
</Opinion>
_____________________________
Gil Harvey, 1947-2004
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Yzywyz
Posts: 132
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RE: SPAM - tastes good when your hungry? - 2/20/2003 15:08:02
I have to delete over a hundred messages every day before I can get down to the day' s real work -- answering the company' s emails.
I can' t use filters because we have customers who don' t understand if their email gets filtered and sometimes have very poor written communication skills. The best I can do is look quickly at the header and decide whether the email warrants a closer look.
I guess I should suggest that the appearance of respectability and forthrightness means a great deal to me in deciding whether to open an email or just delete it. If you have to send unsolicited email, don' t call me " friend" until we are on close enough terms that I think you are one, don' t refer to me by my (or someone else' s) email address, don' t play games or blare out spectacular claims, and for your own good, make your header and message look like your business MIGHT be reputable.
If I do look at your site, you can bet I' m not following any of your links and leaving immediately if your site makes you look underhanded or overly slick. I' ve come across even " sites of ill repute" where the owners still invest the time and concern to look responsible and earnest.
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QuoteNotes
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RE: SPAM - tastes good when your hungry? - 2/20/2003 16:34:08
quote:
If you are large corporation there is no problem to buy TV, radio, newspaper advertising. The problem starts, when there is limited budget for big advertising.
I tried all kinds of news letters and Enzines. With some companies you find out they just want to sell you their product and do not care about yours. Specially some Enzines. For someone who just started internet business there is sometimes only one solution - spam. I do not like it personally, specially those from Nigeria, viagra or loose weight programs, but many times I was glad that I received " spam" , because it helped me to find new product witch I will not come across. There are millions of web site. I do not mind to get mail from decent companies. I do not care how small they are.
So my question is: how can you let people know about your product if you do not want to send a spam? Any sugestions?
Alex...I certainly don' t have all the answers, but I don' t think spam is one. You can start your own ezine if you really have something to sell or information to provide. You can buy targeted advertising on and off the internet. You can use search engines. There are many ways, but my personal feeling is that you' ll alienate far more people than you' ll ever sell. If money is your only criteria and justification for running an online business, then obviously spam works. But the right to do something doesn' t mean that doing it is right.
I' m like you...I' ve gotten some spam that appeared to be a product that would interest me. However, I would never, ever buy it because that' s how these people stay in business and prosper. For every legitimate, valuable product being marketed this way, I' d bet there are thousands that are worthless, of no interest to the vast majority of recipients, offensive, or outright frauds.
Don' t spam and never respond to spam. If you have a good product or service to sell, don' t lower yourself to that level no matter how profitable it may be. BTW...what are you selling?
_____________________________
Bill Wilson, CPCU, ARM, AIM, AAM
Supreme Allied Commander
IIABA' s Virtual University
Professional Speaker & Writer
Corporate Web Site:
http://vu.iiaa.net
Professional Web Site:
http://www.BrightPath.com
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Alex2020
Posts: 25
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From: Miami FL USA
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RE: SPAM - tastes good when your hungry? - 2/20/2003 22:54:23
Hi Bill
I know about enzines and my personal opinion is, that they are waste of time. In your opinion, what is the percentage of people on internet participating in enzines? Yes, most of the time writers or so called " internet gurus" trying to sell you their " knowledge" . I had opportunity to " cooperate" with one of them. Total waste of money.
You are recommending to buy targeted advertising.
I have done that. I paid several hundred dollars and later found out they didn' t even send the e-mails.
In search engines my site is #1 if you type for example " name day" in Google or Yahoo. I am not complaining about not having visitors or sales from my site. Opposite is true. And believe me, money was not motivation behind my product. You can find thousands of sites with no product to sell.
As you can see on my site, people can subscribe to receive our newsletter.
I do not spam. My question was what else you can do before you make enough to pay for some advertising.
What about spam from big companies. I never subscribed to receive anything from them and I am receiving plenty of " offers" .
I personally think if you give option for people to be removed from mailings and really remove them from your list you are honest internet businessman.
quote:
I' m like you...I' ve gotten some spam that appeared to be a product that would interest me. However, I would never, ever buy it because that' s how these people stay in business and prosper.
If you do not sell, how can you stay in business? I am not talking about thousand' s of dollars but at least you should be able to make enough to pay for hosting. On your site you offer product also.
I am sure you are great speaker and you do not have your site just because you have nothing better to do.
You too believe that people will contact you and ask for your service.
To answer your last question, you can see what I am " selling" here:
http://www.mynameday.com
Best Wishes
Alex
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QuoteNotes
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RE: SPAM - tastes good when your hungry? - 2/21/2003 9:22:32
Alex...nice web site!
I think one of the problems with your poor results using ezines could be that you don' t really have a target market. Your product appears to be one with pretty general appeal, so I' m not sure who you' d target. My guess is that you' d be better off selling through retail outlets and/or web sites that sell stationery, greeting cards, party supplies, baby gifts, etc.
I have associates in my industry who have done very well advertising in ezines. They might sell a certain type of insurance agent software, so they advertise in ezines going to insurance agents. Specific product, specific market. One acquaintance spends $500 a month advertising in four ezines and generates $8,000 in sales.
From the standpoint of your own ezine, or mailing list, it looks essentially like a marketing vehice...sign up for product announcements and sales. I' d think very few people would be interested in volunteering for a sales pitch. Visit our corporate web site at http://vu.iiaa.net and click on " FREE Newsletter" at the top of the page. If you look at past issues, you' ll see that our approach is providing lots of practical information in the form of articles for our constituency.
We currently don' t accept advertising, but plan to soon. Currently, we occasionally " soft sell" some of our products or services, but readers know that the main purpose of our ezine is to inform, not sell. I have an acquaintance who has an ezine with over 40,000 subscribers. His ezine basically republishes press releases for our industry on a daily basis. He generates $12,000 per issue in advertising revenue because of his targeted readership. In order to keep from having an ezine dominated by advertising, he limits the number of ads and has a waiting list of advertisers. As a result, he increases his ad rates every quarter.
Have you tried more traditional marketing? While I' d hope it isn' t true, is it possible that there just isn' t a lot of interest in your product and that could be the reason for poor results? When you put your heart and soul into something you believe in, that' s sometimes hard to face, but it' s a possibility.
Actually, if I had to get spam, I' d rather it be something like what you' re selling...as long as I didn' t get hammered daily with sales pitches. I think the net is saturated with enough body part enhancement sales pitches. However, before you resort to spam, I' d explore other marketing and advertising approaches.
Just my thoughts. I could be wrong.
_____________________________
Bill Wilson, CPCU, ARM, AIM, AAM
Supreme Allied Commander
IIABA' s Virtual University
Professional Speaker & Writer
Corporate Web Site:
http://vu.iiaa.net
Professional Web Site:
http://www.BrightPath.com
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QuoteNotes
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RE: SPAM - tastes good when your hungry? - 2/21/2003 9:26:50
Oops...correction: The guy generating $12K in sales per issue actually generates $12K PER MONTH.
_____________________________
Bill Wilson, CPCU, ARM, AIM, AAM
Supreme Allied Commander
IIABA' s Virtual University
Professional Speaker & Writer
Corporate Web Site:
http://vu.iiaa.net
Professional Web Site:
http://www.BrightPath.com
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ajdevies
Posts: 113
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From: Holly Hill, FL
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RE: SPAM - tastes good when your hungry? - 2/21/2003 14:26:04
I use spam filters and NEVER click on ' unsubscribe' links. I forward particularly offensive ebiz offers like diet programs (I weigh 92 pounds and I can' t afford to lose anymore) to the Federal Trade Commission: uce@ftc.gov.
What I' ve found most effective in slowing the deluge of spam (generally debt reduction scams and Britney Spears-doing-nasty-things porn) is to ' mask' my email address on my websites. I also ' mask' my client' s email addresses as well. There have been threads about this on OutFront, which is where I learned about this trick.
Since I use Yahoo mail for ' portability' (accessing email from various computers), I use their ' This is Spam' option to report an email as spam if they don' t automatically filter it for me. It has worked well IMHO. I' ve gone from 10-15 spams per day to perhaps one per week.
If I don' t recognize the sender' s name/email address or the subject is suspect I' ll delete the message without opening it, particularly if it is suggestive of porn.
IMHO spam wastes my time which I consider valuable, wastes bandwith and storage and does little to improve the bottom line. There is nothing worse than ' turning off' a potential client with unsolicited email. I' d stick with search engines, link exchanges or targeted ezine ads.
I also read (maybe in OutFront?) about a postal card-based snail mail campaign using the company' s existing mailing list announcing the ' Grand Opening' of their ecommerce site. I didn' t see a follow up to the post stating the success of the campaign, but if you have an existing snail mail list, this would be a relatively inexpensive way to go.
Also, never, never forget about the best advertising method ever devised: word of mouth. It works the other way too: become identified as a spammer and you risk the big turn off.
I used to work for a company that handles subscription renewal services for magazines and newsletters. Their main source of income was 1) multiple renewal reminders, 2) insert cards, 3) ' free gift' with renewal/subscription offers and recently, at the request of some clients, 4) telemarketing. I had a moral objection to what this company does with regard to 10 insert cards in one issue of a magazine or 3 renewal reminder per month, but at the time I had a mortgage to pay and there are very few tech jobs in my area.
As a number of posters have said: porn, weight-loss, viagra and other spammers are out there. They' re not going to go away as long as people patronize their products/websites. All you can do is protect yourself using whatever tools are available.
_____________________________
AJ
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xeerex
Posts: 77
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From: Texas
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RE: SPAM - tastes good when your hungry? - 2/21/2003 14:27:18
I' d like to add my 2 cents here for what it is worth, and let me make it clear that I am NOT an advocate of spam. I wouldn' t recommend that a client use spam, but there are always 2 sides to every coin.
First, most " internet purists" believe that the internet was created solely for the sharing of infomation. That theory still holds true even in the commercialized world of today' s internet. Companies and inviduals have every right to share their product or service information just as " internet purists" have every right to share their information. Let' s not forget how the Internet was really started, by the DoD and enhanced and forwarded by universities and persons far more skilled than me. Even those that can' t stand the commercial nature of the Internet today need to rethink their positions. What does the com in .com stand for anyway?
Secondly, I receive tons of junk mail every day by snail mail. I know that I didn' t request that it be sent to me. It just arrives. It drives up the cost of stamps, wastes fuel, wastes paper, ink, and untold numbers of other things that drive up my own cost of living. While those companies may have paid for the bulk mailing and printing costs, I have to pay for it as a consumer and taxpayer. Now how does spam in snail mail and spam in email relate? They relate because they follow the same principle. To be sure, I don' t receive pornographic material in the snail mail since that can be regulated far easier than the freedom and global scale of the Internet, but I consider spam to be spam whether virtual or printed. At least I don' t waste garbage bags and landfill space with email spam.
Next, yes email spam does cost bandwidth and affect the performance of the Internet as a whole. However, I also personally consider all the jokes and email attachments as spam. How much do all the generally internet illiterate AOL users drag down the Internet? I can' t get out of the address books from all those people. I get jokes from people I' ve never conversed with in my whole life.
Is there a way to police the spam? Blacklists are one attempt, but they are an absolute failure. They are too easy to get around for spammers and only cause havoc for non-spammers. What about filters? I am not a technology expert, but simple logic dictates that you will end up filtering " legimate" emails somewhere in the process while the spammers work around the filters.
Let' s not forget the problems with government intervention. I am not a conspiracy and big brother nut, but I prefer NOT to get the governments involved in anything unless it is absolutely needed. I mean lets look at the Child Protection Act for example. How much do you really think that really protects kids? They just simply click " agree" and proceed on pretending to be an adult. I' m for protecting children but give me a break. Parents need to do the job of protecting their children not the federal government. Lets imagine that a law is passed that supposedly prevents spam, which has been tried in at least a couple of states. How much of a dent is that really going to make in the billions of spams? I can guarantee you that it will cost you and I in higher ISP charges, hosting costs, etc., since the providers are going to pass their increased expenses to regulate spam to the consumer. Let' s face it. The government is not going to be the true regulator.
What is the solution to spam? That is a million dollar question with no answer. I get around 75-100 a day. It takes me about 5 secs to use shift (or ctrl) and delete them. That' s 30 mins a year. I waste more time than that watching useless commercials when (and if) I watch TV. The only way I see to stop the spam is using supply and demand. If there is no demand there will be no supply. It kind of goes with the old saying " One mans junkyard is another mans kingdom." What you and I consider as worthless spam is not so worthless to someone else and so they click and buy. Where do you draw the line?
_____________________________
Webmaster in Perpetual Training
Xeerex The Wizard
aka Rex Moncrief
Web Design / Web Hosting / Graphics / eCommerce
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Alex2020
Posts: 25
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RE: SPAM - tastes good when your hungry? - 2/21/2003 14:36:20
Thank you Bill for your help.
Alex
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