Re: You sound pretty bitter, Bill

No I'm not bitter at all, but I am taking some action against the people I refer to as the spam nazis.

> Seriously, idiots who forget about signing up and also confirming their
> subscriptions are a big problem. That's why you need to retain the
> confirmation proof for all subscriptions, and never buy lists of unknown
> pedigree.

No, the idiots aren't really the problem. The real problem are the zealots who opt in to get on all sorts of lists then file fraudulent complaints with ISP's.

> But I report dozens of spams a day where the sender has no such proof.
> Some spam is sent to addresses that never existed until I saw attempts in
> my logs that were being rejected. Since most spammers never look at their
> rejection logs, I activated those bogus addresses, and those are now pure
> spamtraps. ANYTHING sent to them is automatically spam, since that address
> could not have opt-ed in to ANYTHING!

> It's a cost of business made necessary by the spammers. Blame them, not
> me, and not the ISPs.

Why should it be a legitimate cost of doing business when the expense is created by people hoping only to cause trouble or hit the jackpot with a spam law suit?

> You'd be astonished to see the FORGED confirmation logs created out of
> whole cloth by spammers when they're desperately trying to save their
> domains. There is hardly any depth to which they won't sink when cornered.

> Terrible problem. Blame the spammers.

> ISPs are doing what their customers demand. The customers are perfectly
> free to find a less-aggressive ISP and vote with their feet and leave,
> then they'll get all the opt-in email they want, plus a butt-load of spam,
> and the process will start all over.

> The law is useless without vigorous enforcement. The law doesn't increase
> funding for any federal agency, and it TOOK AWAY the right of private
> action (i.e.: small claims court) that allows private citizens to act as
> private attorneys general to assist the government enforcing the law.
> Removing this over-ride of state laws would be a great first step, but it
> was vigorously and expensively lobbied for by the DMA (Direct Marketing
> Association) - the snail-mail lobbying arm.

> Nonsense. Never happen. The free speech rights of spam victims would be
> suppressed. Anybody can file a spam complaint. If the ISP wishes to ignore
> complaints from bozos who file frivolous ones, that's their right.

> You've had 100 bogus spam complaints! I'm shocked. Where did you get the
> list that generated this level of complaints? Did you have the opt-in and
> confirmation proof for all 100?

Actually I've had just over 125, but almost $10,000 in fees to investigators revealed that 81 of those complaints came from 3 individuals all part of an anti spam organization which has made over 10,000 complaints that have so far been identified. Am I correct in calling them spam nazis.... Well, I would call them something else but I won't. It will continue to cost more money to get more information, but I feel it is money well spent to get to the bottom of this thing.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying everyone who reports spam is a crook, but I know for a fact that some are!