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If you use email for any purpose at all, you should read this issue's main article. If you use email in any way for business, you MUST be aware of this information.Contents:
Yahoo.com email users who are subscribed to either "TalkBiz News" or "Business Success Chronicles" should seriously consider changing your subscriptions over to an ISP based email address or one at your own domain soon. In the near future I'll be unsubscribing all Yahoo.com addresses from both lists, and refusing any further subscriptions from them. Yes, all 4000 or more of you. Why? Mainly because Yahoo.com addresses represent over 90% of the mailbox full bounces I get every issue. They're a majority of the bad address bounces I remove every time I send the newsletter out. And the response rate among Yahoo.com subscribers is so low that it's barely measurable. It might be due to the ridiculous "anti-spam" system Yahoo has, that assumes that pretty much anything sent in bulk, or in which the From address doesn't agree with the originating IP, is spam. That stuff generally ends up in the junk mail folder, so most people don't see it. It might be because they're so often used as a source of throw-away mailboxes. It might be something else entirely. Frankly, my dear, I don't give a ... dang. It's a consistent pattern, and it's a huge waste of time and bandwidth. The folks that are serious won't mind using a REAL (as in, paid) email address to resubscribe. Of course, the rest of them won't even see this, but at least the public notice has been given. At the same time I'll be dropping users from: themail.com, email.com, mail.com, rediff.com, rediffmail.com, netscape.net, altavista.net, hotpop.com, and pretty much any other free email service. So, if you get any use from this newsletter, change addresses. If not, just wait around and I'll unsub you soon enough on my own. Oh yeah. Don't make it a Hotmail address. They're probably next.
I'm going to hear all sorts of nonsense about that decision. I'll answer some of the more predictable objections up front: Objection: "I use my free email address for all my newsletters and lists, so I keep the clutter down in my main mailbox." My response: Use filters. They're cheap. And if you consider this newsletter clutter, you ought to unsubscribe. Objection: "I use VSNL (an Indian ISP). Their mail service is terrible and they don't give us enough disk space." My response: I know. That IS a problem. Perhaps you need to start working on them to get that corrected. It's been a problem for at least 6 years that I know of. Same response for any other "My ISP sucks" comments. Change if you can, get them to fix it if you can't. Or get a cheap domain hosted somewhere that handles mail properly. Come on, people, there are $2 and $3 and $4 a month web hosting packages with much more space than most of you will ever need for email. And they often let you have more than one mailbox, so you can still "Keep down the clutter." Objection: "I share an ISP account with my (whatever). I only have web access." My response: You have Internet access, not just web access. This is a business newsletter. If you can't afford $13 a year for a domain and $2 or $3 a month for cheap hosting, you ought to consider whether you're really serious about business. And the number one objection: "I don't give out my main address because I don't want spam." My response: If you think I'm going to spam you, you haven't been reading this newsletter. You're wasting both our time. Unsubscribe. There. That ought to handle 90% of the objections, except... Oh yeah. Dumbest objection: "That's not fair. That's discrimination! You can't tell me who I can and can't get my email through!" My response: Life ain't fair, bubbie. And I ain't telling you anything about who you can or cannot use to receive email. I'm telling you where I'm deciding not to send it. This is a NEWS publication, as much as a business one. News is only useful if it's received and processed by a human being. Dropping into your spam filters to get deleted unread a month later ain't helping anyone.
If your ISP or web host has installed content based filters on their systems, you may be losing a whole lot of legitimate email that you shouldn't be losing. A LOT. What kinds of mail could be getting bounced, deleted, or dropped into a "Spam folder"?
Are there any types of email there that you'd be unhappy to see bounced or deleted without so much as a... "You HAD mail?"
My definition of spam: Unsolicited. Bulk. Email. Long time subscribers know why I apply this definition. It's the only one that can logically, empirically and effectively be applied to ensuring that email remains viable as a communications tool. To keep spam from overwhelming the system, without interfering with private communications. And without making judgments on content. This was allegedly the reasoning behind the actions of the majority of the anti-spam community. Was. Not no mo', babeee. Now it's about control. If you think I'm paranoid, just keep reading. See if you still think so when you're done.
The anti-spam community will tell you that all the power resides with the ISPs, web hosts and other service providers. That's true, to the extent that they choose to exercise their own judgment. However, when they default on their obligations to their customers in the search for an easy and cheap fix to the spam problem, the power slips into the hands of the anti-spammers themselves. The anti-spam community knows this. They tell themselves that the service providers are trusting their judgment, or that they "whole-heartedly embrace" the extreme measures many of these people apply. Truth is, the service providers are swamped, and trying to find a way to handle the situation and salvage their businesses. They often have no idea just how extreme these "remedies" are. I spoke with a web host yesterday who was considering installing one of these programs. When I told him some of the things it considers signs of spam, his thoughts on the subject changed. Fast. He had no idea. He was trying to do something useful for his business clients, and didn't realise he could be killing their ability to use his services for business. In discussions with members of the anti-spam side of the debate, with whom I tend to agree in principle, I discovered that most of them are fully aware that service providers don't have time to examine the filtering criteria in depth. Yeah. The service providers are in control. Right.
Many of these same people actively resist an understanding of the publishers' side of the issue. I'm not talking about spammers here. I'm talking about publishers of email content that they never knowingly send to anyone who hasn't requested it. They want to tell us how to run our businesses or hobbies, but they have no interest in learning what's involved. "Don't bother me with facts. My mind is made up!" Yep. Those are the kinds of people I want making decisions for me.
Okay, no big deal, right? Not as long as the attack is simply a verbal barrage of frothing nonsense. We've all gotten enough of that to know it's not an issue. We just put on the Kevlar undies and get back to work. Yawn. It doesn't always stop with that, though. I've seen (and been on the receiving end of) more substantive attacks from people on both sides of this issue. Subscription forgery attempts, simple mailbombings, list bombings (they sign you up for a lot of high traffic lists), forgery of my email address and domain into mass spam runs, and a lot of other (less annoying) nonsense. To me it's just part of the price for expressing strong opinions. It's only electrons, after all. For people whose incomes depend more on their connectivity than mine does, this can be a Very Big Problem. As an example, consider a friend of mine who runs an affiliate program. He is VERY anti-spam. Yet he ended up on one of the big spam blacklists. How? Seems one of the more rabid and rude anti-spam folks ticked off one of the more rabid and rude spammers. This creep (the spammer creep) started doing things intended to get the "anti" flooded with commercial email. The "things" included forging his email address into systems designed to generate a LOT of email to the target. One of the systems was used by one of my friend's affiliates. The "anti" sent in a complaint and told my friend to shut down the affiliate or get blacklisted. The program owner replied promptly, saying that it would be investigated and, if the affiliate was found to be spamming, would result in him being terminated. (As an affiliate, of course.) The "anti," in a position of power at the blacklist in question, responded quite rudely and told my friend that investigation wasn't needed. Terminate the affiliate or get blacklisted. "Because I said so" was the tone and very nearly the wording. Mind you, the "anti" in question KNEW he was being attacked in this way, and that the "spam" he alleged was very likely the result of a forgery. Knowing this, and despite the prompt reply from the owner of the program, he went ahead and listed my friend in the blacklist anyway. Just because he didn't like being asked to wait while the facts were found. The result: My friend's email was rejected at a Very Large Number of sites throughout the world, until he could get to the person in charge at the list in question and get the issue resolved. So much for who has the control, huh?
They will gladly, even gleefully, cut off significant chunks of your income with no more "evidence" than the fact that they're ticked off about something. Every group with a cause has this problem. The real concern to me is that I see very little interest among the anti-spam folks in reining in the loons in their ranks. They know. They say and do nothing about them. They're as guilty as the loons.
Leave aside for the moment the question of the rationality of people who use a word they flatly and proudly refuse to define. (Ask most anti-spammers for a definition of "spam" and watch the waffling. Compare the definitions you do get, and they'll vary as wildly as the individuals using them.) Leave aside the fact that technical solutions, even when well implemented, are not ever going to solve the spam problem. That road leads to the problem we have right now: An arms race with a LOT of collateral damage. Let's consider whether we want anyone at all making decisions on what content can and cannot be in email we receive. And if so, who, and by what standards.
My first encounter with content filtering (the practice of bouncing email automatically based on words in the message) occurred several years ago. One of my subscribers used an ISP in Indiana that bounced a copy of my newsletter because it contained a phrase the ISP had determined must be a sure sign of spam. The phrase? "Search engines." Ummm... Yeah. I put out a newsletter about online business. Search engines are a regular part of the business. Not to mention the number of people who use the phrase in casual conversations. Or the bounces it probably caused from search engine registration responses... No matter. He controls the mail server, so he MUST know better than his customers what's okay for them to read. Doesn't he? The next week, the same ISP bounced the newsletter because of another sure sign of spam. The phrase: "bulk mail." Helloooo... It was an anti-spam rant in the editorial section! After asking him some rather pointed questions, the admin at the site admitted that his customers didn't know the filters were in place, had no choice about using them, and had no access to the list of banned phrases. It would be possible, but inaccurate, to describe my thoughts about such a person without resorting to the use of expletives that would bump the rating on this piece up over a PG. As it turns out, our beloved Hoosier server admin was ahead of his time.
The amount of legitimate email that gets dumped is increasing. Significantly. How much? That's very tough to get statistics on, for obvious reasons. It's getting dumped. It doesn't all get bounced, and when it does, it can be impossible to tell from many of the bounce messages WHY it got bounced. Some of them are outright lies, claiming that the address the mail was sent to no longer exists. (There's that ratings problem again...) I've been hearing increasing numbers of stories about this problem, and the anecdotal evidence is mounting. One case recently got quite specific: A publisher aquaintance of mine discovered that her ISP had installed a second spam-blocking program on their systems. What prompted her to dig into that? She went from getting hundreds of emails a day (not uncommon for an online businessperson, especially one with a successful newsletter and/or affiliate program) to getting 4 emails in a week. She lost email from her sister about family matters, subscriptions (including paid ones) that were important to her business, contacts regarding jobs she had bid on, and subscription requests ... that she knows of. It's anyone's guess what else got trashed. Hopefully no domain renewal notices or other time-sensitive stuff that can't be fixed later... Her family was scared silly because of the totally uncharacteristic silence. She had to spend days patching client relationships and fixing customer service problems. In my opinion, any person that recommends the use of any content-based email filtering system should be required to re-take their IQ test, to see if they still have one. Any service denier who actually uses it, without giving prior notice to their customers and a way for the customers to control its impact on their incoming email, should be promptly sued into oblivion.
Note: I have just received an email from someone claiming to be a lawyer. He quotes a CT law that apparently exempts service providers from liability for any damage caused to their subscribers by the implementation of spam blocking systems. The ISP used by the publishr here didn't bother telling anyone in advance that they were doing this. Just... WHAM! "You HAD mail."
In this case the culprit was a spam filter system called "Spam Assassin." It's true that most anti-spam filtering systems are intended simply to reduce spam, not to apply judgments to the content of email. They fail, as any dumb, brute force filtering system will do, but their intentions are generally good. Generally. Consider the following line in the docs for Spam Assassin:
I am told by one of the participants in the project, (it's a collaborative effort), that this was inserted by one of the programmers as a joke. Let's accept that as truth. (I'm not convinced, but I haven't finished my mindreading course yet, so we'll go with his assertion.) It seems in incredibly poor taste to make "dirty money" jokes when working on something that has such potential for seriously interfering with another person's legitimate business efforts. Maybe I'm too sensitive, huh? Ya think?
Let's see. From his documentation, signs of spam include:
(The various phrases and conditions are assigned points. In the default configuration, 5 points gets your message tagged as spam. It doesn't take much to rack up 5 points...) That's just a small sampling of the "triggers" that help set this puppy off. Let's look at some of these... Unsubscribe instructions: Yep. That's a dead certain sign of spam. Except that every legitimate publisher and list owner also includes unsubscribe instructions. So, doing things the right way makes it more likely that you'll get your mail tagged as spam. Toll free numbers: Same thing. Many legitimate businesses include toll free numbers in their mailings. And a whole lot of people use them in their signature files. Ooops. Customer courtesy just became a liability. HTML mail with non-white background : Hmmm. This group doesn't seem to know that huge numbers of users of Microsoft emailers like to decorate their mail with fancy backgrounds. Personally, I find it annoying, but I'd hardly call it spam. Below is the result of your feedback form: Yet another winner. This is from one of the most popular feedback scripts on the net. Use it without knowing your ISP is using Spam Assassin, and you could be losing ALL of that feedback. If the site you're visiting uses that script and has this problem, your questions or comments are likely to be ignored. The phrase "check or money order": Of course. Legitimate businesses NEVER talk about money. Contains word 'AMAZING': Ever use that word in conversation? Contains word 'guarantee' in all-caps: Nope. Legitimate businesses NEVER use THAT word. No way! Offers a full refund: Same as above. Discusses money making: Ummm... What about business publications, or private emails concerning business deals? Spam? Talks about bulk email: I LOVE this one. Every email that discusses STOPPING spam is subject to various filters in this guy's list. Including a lot of spam complaints to ISPs that use Spam Assassin... Hey! Spammers! Want a safe haven? Sign up for accounts at ISPs that use this software! They'll probably never see the complaints! Ahhh... I love irony, especially when it's fresh. Talks about opting in: Ah, what the hell. No publisher ever uses that phrase, right? And online business publications that espouse proper marketing practices never admonish you to stick to opt-in vs spam, do they? Or explain how to do it right? Starting to see the problem here? Talks about social security numbers: Lovely. So newsletters like ScamBusters, which discuss things like identity theft and online fraud get tagged. Way to go, Mr Programmer. Doh! The phrase "mail was sent to you because", or The expression "/this (?:|e?-?mail|message )(?:is|was) (?:not|never) (?:spam|(?:sent |)unsolicited)/i", or The expression "/we do not (?:spam|send unsolicited)/i": I see an awful lot of legitimate publishers using these phrases. But of course, in typical anti-spammer style, they assume that anyone who says they're innocent is showing signs of guilt, simply by having made the claim. I've always been fascinated by the way people who must be able to deal with rigorous logical structures (programming) can be so totally illogical when their glands get in an uproar. Offers a free consultation: Hmm. I've seen this in an awful lot of sig files. A WHOLE LINE OF YELLING DETECTED: Hey.. All you AOLiens and others who forget to turn off the caps lock key... How much of your email doesn't get delivered? How do you feel about being called a spammer for that? How do you feel about email from inexperienced family members and friends being dropped on the floor because they make a common newbie mistake? Or how about people who use all caps because they have poor vision and find that it makes things easier for them to read? (This was pointed out to me as a reason for the caps-lock thing by several readers of the first version of this piece. I'd never thought of that. I wonder if the good folk who bring us spam filters have?) Or, how about publishers who capitalise their newsletter names in the masthead? Tells you to click on a URL: Oh yeah... No one but a spammer ever says "Click the link" or "Click here for info." And you NEVER see that in signature files! Includes a link to send a mail with a subject: This is just dumb. Yet another commonly used convenience being turned into evidence of some sort of "guilt." What next? Includes a link for AOL users to click: Ah. I should have known this would be next. Hey, all you publishers who think about the convenience of your AOL subscribers... How do you feel about this? All you AOL users... How do you like the idea that someone making things easy for you can get their email dropped at other services? (Of course, if AOL's software wasn't so badly out of step with the rest of the world, that wouldn't be an issue. But that's another rant entirely.) And the piece de resistance: If the subject line is in all caps, or contains a question mark and/or exclamation point, it's a sign of spam. Don't get excited, folks. And, God help us all, don't even think to ask questions! Is this stuff for real, or what?
Seems like an awful lot of baby going out with that bathwater, huh? You ain't seen nothin' yet, bay-bay. Among the other phrases this software considers a sign of spam are:
Some of these appear to be the bases for pattern matches, which means they'll not only show as spam signs if used the way they're shown here, but also if the words are too close together in a paragraph. MORE ways to get your mail dropped, bounced, or tagged as spam. Are you getting PO'd yet? If not, you need to go back and actually read that list.
Yep. Canyabeleevit? A lot more. Spam Assassin has a lot of those little phrases and triggers just waiting to brand you a spammer. This is especially likely if your email has anything to do with business. It's not the only thing out there that will do this. It's just the worst of the lot. And, to show just how aggressive this thing is, it also enables the use of the various ORBS-type databases for bouncing mail. One of the problems is that these filtering systems are built by technical types. Of the four main personality types, techies tend to fall into the Thinker category. As a rule, they're not very tolerant of what they call "marketing hype." (They call it that when they're being polite.) This bias will inevitably show through in their choice of filter phrases. Marketers must deal with all four types, and thus exceed the milder sensibilities of the serene and cerebral Thinker. Therein lies much of the rub. The net is governed largely by tech types, by default. And, of course, Microsloth has their own little end user "solution." The "spam filters" in MS email products aren't as bad as Spam Assassin, but they're bad enough. Add the "bulk email folders" that Yahoo and Hotmail have for their users, badly misconfigured anti-relay systems, local blacklists and content filters and you end up with a whole lot of email getting tossed. Yeah. You HAD mail.
It only takes 5 points to get an email tagged as spam in the default configuration of Spam Assassin. Unsubscribe instructions, based on their wording, count for anywhere from .5 to 4.5 points. Most business emails are going to score fairly high on the spam scale this software uses. Virtually all business newsletters will. And an amazing big lot of personal email does, from the stories I'm hearing. Do the authors of this alleged spam filtering software care that YOU WANT THAT EMAIL? Maybe they do care. The maintainer says the group tries hard to avoid "false positives." Given the tone of his email to me, I have no reason to believe otherwise. But it doesn't really matter. In the end, if the mail gets lost, their intentions are moot. Do you want to let other people make those kinds of decisions for you? I don't. Especially people that, even "jokingly," say things like "Profit is dirty."
If they screwed up business dealings for me due to the lost email, I'd look closely into the possibility of a civil suit. In the case of Spam Assassin, being tagged as spam can result in one of several things happening, depending on how the service denier in question has the system configured:
Of course, the programmers of this type of software suggest that the software be used in "conservative" ways. This is somewhat akin to saying that you should shoot people gently. As a rule, I find that programmers underestimate the faith that end users have in their abilities, and overestimate those same abilities. To think that "genetic algorithms" will be able to do even a decent job of learning spam signs faster than spammers can adjust is hubris in the extreme. The attempt is almost certain to end up in even more legitimate emails being tagged as spam. Failing to take human nature into account is a much more common and serious mistake. Putting email into a different folder, with a perceived probability that it's all spam, is going to result in the inevitable false positives being ignored. Tagging it in the subject line is going to lull the users into believing that the stuff is all spam and deleting it en masse. Yes, that's bad judgment on the end user's part. It's also how things work in the real world of the technically inexperienced. Make it easy for ISPs to dump mail or block what they think will be all spam (or enough to satisfy their tolerance for collateral damage) and no amount of warnings will keep some of them from "extending" the system. It's a safe bet that an ISP's idea of "acceptable losses" is going to be a lot different than yours. As expensive as spam is, (and it's VERY expensive when you figure in all the related costs), it's nothing next to the cost of losing even small amounts of business email. Or the damage to your reputation if the wrong piece is lost, or your unsubscribes don't get through to be processed. Programmers of these sorts of systems will say, and often do, that this stuff is the fault of the end user, or the service denier for not explaining things clearly. I don't frankly care whose fault it is. I'm concerned with the end result. You HAD mail. So, who decides what content you get to receive?
First, ask your ISP and/or web host about their use of spam filtering. Don't settle for "We only use very careful filtering. You won't lose any email that isn't spam." They probably don't even believe that themselves. Ask to see their filter criteria. Look at them carefully. If you don't like the filters, ask how you get them off your mailbox. If they don't give you a way out of their blindware, get another ISP or web host. Fast. You know better than they do what should be okay for you to read. Second, keep an eye out for sudden, unexplained drops in mail volume or increases in emails that you send which aren't received. If that happens, start asking questions. Same as above. Third, put your ISP and web hosts on notice that they are not to put content filters of any kind on your mailboxes without your prior permission. Be proactive. Don't wait for your email to start disappearing before you do something. If you're an ISP or web host and don't actively notify your users of changes in your mail filtering system, before installing them, you'd better consult with your lawyers. Soon. I am not a lawyer, nor do I play one on the Internet, but I'm betting there are a number of bases for legal action that your "We can do whatever we want" clauses won't protect you from if you unduly interfere with a business, or suddenly stop providing a service you are getting paid for. (IE, the delivery of email...)
See the note above. That exemption doesn't apply in all states, and failure to notify the users may affect your liability in others. Enough, people. You're paying good money for services. Don't let the "providers" of those services use careless "spam prevention" as an excuse to start denying them. You decide. Take control of your own email. You've GOT mail. Keep it!
SpamCop, for one. Used properly, SpamCop is a useful tool in combatting spam. Unfortunately, it's waaaay to easy to misuse. For one thing, a lot of clueless newbies and Jr SpamFighter wannabes think the way to deal with it is to complain to everyone they can find. Gong! Sorry, folks. Bad mojo. Most of the people those sorts of complaints go to have NO involvement in the process. You're wasting time they could be using catching spammers on their own systems. I do find it kind of amusing that these overeager beavers frequently report themselves to their own ISPs. As quick as ISPs are getting to shut down accounts without reading or investigating complaints, pretty soon someone will end up getting their own acount closed for being stupid. I'm in favor of that, by the way.
Any abuse desk that accepts anonymous complaints as anything more significant than a sneeze needs to be slapped. Repeatedly. Julian Haight, the creator of SpamCop, is a bright and generally pleasant fellow. He has one very serious flaw: He seems totally unconcerned with justice. He operates from several flawed operating assumptions which lead to this appearance. First, the concept that "Spam is whatever the user says it is." Sorry. You can't run a network on that kind of nonsense. That's mindless drivel, and anyone that propagates such silly concepts needs to be isolated from any form of power or influence over others. Words have meanings, folks. The second conceptual problem is the presumption of guilt. Someone complained, therefore you must have done something wrong. Of course, in tandem with the anonymous nature of many SpamCop complaints, this is a truly unjust combination. Someone complained, so we assume you're guilty. We're not going to allow you the opportunity to prove you're not, either. Shut him down, Officer Postmaster! Why? "We want to force him to do things our way." That is not an exaggeration. One of Julian's stated goals is to FORCE list owners to use only confirmed subscription models. Ask him. The fact that anonymous complaints don't allow you to defend yourself even if you ARE running a confirmed subscription system seems to be something he can't/won't grasp. Or, and I find this more likely, something he considers an acceptable form of collateral damage in his "Fight for Right," as he defines it. He has a lot of lovely sounding points. Most of them are quite logical, if you accept his underlying assumptions. I don't. It's up to you to make that decision for yourself. While you're considering it, decide how much damage you're willing to knowingly inflict on innocent people's businesses based on your personal preferences. Apparently, Julian is willing to inflict rather a lot of it.
Your email message, with the subject of "[ListName] Subject line" is currently being held pending verification because your email address isn't recognized. For those who may not have seen this before, here's what just happened: The recipient uses a "spam trapping system" that requires people to confirm their addresses in order to send him mail. He used this address to subscribe to a newsletter. This moron expects that every publisher is going to manually confirm their email address for every person who subscribes to their lists?!? He asks for email, and then thinks the person he asked for it from has an obligation to jump through hoops to deliver on his request?!? Not bloody likely. Those are yet another category of service from which I will refuse subscriptions. No explanation given. Just *PLOP*. Into the bit bucket. That's even more stupid than using an autoresponder address to subscribe to lists.
Too many true extremists on both sides. People who are willing to steal from others in order to advance their own cause are not people with whom I wish to be associated, no matter the "cause." So, what label to use in such a hostile debate, where the turf is so hotly contested, and labels seem a requirement to be taken seriously? Hmmm... I know. Good enough label for me.
And don't defend true spammers, or fall for the "Free speech" BS. Speech ain't free if an unwilling recipient is forced to pay for it by a sender who knows they didn't ask for it.
If you aren't willing to put your name behind your opinions, don't expect me to. Well? What are you waiting for? Email your ISP! Until next issue... Paul
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