Bits & Bytes |
SpamCop: Barbarians At The Gate by Ms. Lin MacDoss |
As any regular reader of this column knows, Ms. MacDoss hates spam, those unasked-for and unwanted emails that promise to do everything from return your libido to bathe you in riches. Given this, can you imagine how livid I became when a recent column for ESP Magazine was returned undelivered because an organization, SpamCop, had determined that I was a spammer and had blacklisted my email accounts? The episode began innocently enough. I put the finishing touches on my column, copied and pasted it into an email addressed to Editor Ogi and hit the "send" button. The next time I checked my email, however, I found that my column had been returned by SpamCop because I was a known spammer.
Ms. Macdoss wasn't going to take this lying down, of course. I googled "SpamCop" and found their web site.
It turned out that SpamCop is a company hired by firms like ESP to help them keep spam out of their inboxes. However, there was scant information on on their site on how to get yourself off their list if they made a mistake. To be sure, if I was one of their paying clients, then I could log-in and maybe get the matter cleared-up, but since I wasn't, I was pretty much on my own.
Eventually I located an email list they had for support, intended for such clients. I went ahead and joined the list. After I jumped through all the hoops and was a member, I sent them an email to see if I could get to the bottom of this.
"I am not a spammer," I said politely, or words to that effect. "I have never spammed anyone in my life. However, you folks are blocking an important email, interfering with my livelihood. What can we do about this?"
The first reply was rather rude. The person said that my domain name (my email is connected with my web site) is associated with massive amounts of unsolicited emails for replacement ink cartridges. The person went on to say that from the contents of my web site, it was obvious that I was guilty of spam.
I was beginning to suspect that these folks took the "cop" part of their name way too seriously and that I would be guilty until proven innocent. This assumption was verified by the next email which said I must be a spammer because I was acting like one. Only a spammer, it seems, would have to audacity to claim that they'd been blacklisted erroneously.
At their request, I sent them a copy of the email that had been returned. After looking at it, they replied that I wasn't the spammer, but that they had blocked the server I use because my web host is a notorious home for spammers. Oddly, the name they gave for my hosting service was unknown to me. I replied that wasn't my host, and that the company I use has very stringent regulations about spam.
I immediately put in a help ticket to my hosting service, explaining the situation to them. They replied within minutes, requesting more information. They wanted to get to the bottom of this too, as evidently all of their clients were being blacklisted. Meanwhile, the SpamCop folks kept insisting that my hosting company was a dog and that the only way I could get off the blacklist was to move my site to a new hosting service.
Finally, after more than six hours and about forty emails, someone checked a little further and discovered that SpamCop had made a mistake. I had been blacklisted because of a complaint from a single one of their clients, but a mistake had been made and they had blacklisted the wrong domain. I was acquitted and taken off the blacklist.
After that, there were a few emails between SpamCop folks, congratulating themselves on what a good job they did getting to the bottom of this. They failed to consider, of course, that they had wasted more than six hours of Ms. MacDoss' valuable time.
None of this was necessary. Before blacklisting me, or my host, they could've sent an inquiring email, giving me x number of hours to reply. Remember, emails to spammers always bounce or get sucked into a black hole. When I replied, they could've then investigated before instigating the blacklist. That, however, would've given me the benefit of the doubt.
I would rather see my inbox overflow with spam than deal with these buffoons again.
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2003 by AlternativeApproaches.com
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