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It's been years since they were relevant, and they last updated in January 2008. However, they've been featured on Slashdot before and that January 2008 update his close to the mark on this one.

Clueless Mailers is the group that mapped the flow of spam, tracking email addresses as they were sold from one company to another to another until they mapped who fed what.

That "recent" article covers the current problem of (supposedly) reputable companies buying mailing lists from clueless clowns, and the troubles that ensued.

If it's a company you've heard before, and you can verify that the "opt out" will actually go to them, then opt out that way. If you don't see why you got on their list, tell them so, and they may twig onto the fact that their list wasn't all that hot.

If it's a company you've never heard of or there's something in it that smells hinky, just delete it, let it slide, and let them think that the message sailed off into the æther, never to be heard from again.

That third case? If it looks like a reputable company but the opt-out goes someplace apparently unrelated, do not simply opt out. Send a copy of the message to the people at the real company complaining of the deception. And that one's the one to hope for. Because if you can point out to the home office either (a) that someone is using their name poorly or (b) if they are authorized agents, they're getting bogus email addresses from somewhere, then they'll stop buying those discount lists of bulk email addresses and start doing their own damn work.

How to manage mailing lists is a good start. I suggest you use some mailing list software like Sympa or Listserv that is already set up to handle all the subscription/unsubscription confirmations automatically in a universally-accepted manner. Don't try to reinvent the wheel, and have your customers subscribe themselves.

Doesn't look like Clueless Mailers, the originators of that map, have updated that site for quite a while (Feb 2003).

According to some of their lists, credit companies and other massive databases of individuals are part of the whole web of unsolicited mail. Will anybody go after them?

I once followed an alumni finder service (that royally screwed up my name and current address) up through about five parent companies to a giant person database that supplies data to the FBI and also partners Equifax, who purchased marketers Naviant, etc...

It is truly amazing when you look at the scale of things. It goes way beyond some creep in Toledo.

No, dipshit, I'm not making this up. Here's a mental experiment, since you're obviously in denial. If you run a web site, and you accept sign-ups for a mailing list, then anyone can enter any email address. If you do not confirm that that person is in control of that email address and wants to receive your mailings, then you are sending UNSOLICITED BULK EMAIL to that person, which by anyone's definition is spam. If I enter your email address and the website doesn't confirm it, then they are spamming you. That is by definition, there is no wiggle room. If you did not ask for it, it's spam. And the question is not "Could this happen?" but "When will this happen?" If you do not practise confirmed-opt-in then you WILL have email addresses on your lists that did not want your mailings which means by definition you are a spammer.

Your complaint about "having to sign up multiple times" is complete bullshit. There is nothing about the process that would require you to sign up more than once. You enter your email, the site sends a confirmation email, you hit reply, and you are on the list. ANYTHING ELSE MAKES THAT SITE A SPAMMER.

http://www.pan-am.ca/spammyths/rants/27jul2002.htm l
http://www.cluelessmailers.org/glossary.html
http://www.spamfaq.net/spam-evils.shtml#opt_in
http://www.monkeys.com/spam-defined/
http://www.euro.cauce.org/en/optinvsoptout.html#do uble
http://www.spamresource.com/nadine/default.htm

"The beneficiaries aren't necessarily the pasty faced, high school drop out industrial spammers we have gotten to know, but well known companies."

Been well known for quite a while now. Check out the famous spamdemic map. Real marketing takes work to make it successful, but mainsleaze bozos like Ameriquest slack off with these "shortcuts".

"Most of the ISPs are good to their word and are fighting it very, very hard," he said. "But as you get into the larger ISPs, especially those that are in any form of financial difficulty, the engineers, abuse staff and technicians all want the spammers off the network, but you have the sales staff looking at the money. ... The engineers will be fighting internally with the sales managers, but of course the sales managers always win."

Which is why these ISPs should not complain when I use some choice blackhole lists like SPEWS, Spamhaus, or SpamCop to protect my inboxes from these sleazoids. Anyone remember when Aegis thought they were invincible when they allowed spammers to run amuck on their system? And where are they now? :-)

[I am not a covert ops agent of the Lumber Cartel (tinlc).]

*blink*

Your marketing department needs a dictionary :-) The term "opt-out" typically means "We add anything with an @ sign in it to the mailing list, and we spam the bejeezus it until it begs to be removed, and we might continue to spam it later." As such, saying you're opt-out-by-default raises a lot of hackles, even if it's not what you mean.

What - precisely - do you mean when you say "we will assume you wanted to opt-out before we send you a lick of e-mail"? Taking that assumption at face value, I wonder WTF you plan to do with these email addresses, since you're never gonna send mail to 'em? :-)

If you mean that you get an email address from, say, a web form, and verify that the submitter of that email address does indeed want the mailing, you're doing closed-loop confirmed opt-in (that is, if you're doing this, and that's great.

If you mean anything less than opt-in with closed-loop confirmation, (say, something along the lines of "$FORD is cool! This is a one-time mailing to people who like cars! Honest! If you don't wanna hear from us again, you don't have to unsubscribe, we've already opted you out, you'll never get another mailing for $FORD from us again, at least until next week when $DAIMLERCHRYSLER pays us to run their ad!"), then, well... FOAD.

In a perfect world, I'd be able to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you're doing the right thing. Sadly, it is an imperfect world. What you wrote was sufficiently ambiguous that while I'm willing to believe you might be doing the right thing, I'm just as willing to believe you're spamming, and using some sort of weasel wording to assuage your conscience, deceive your customers (the people on whose behalf you send the mail), or both.

And just how, pray tell, am I supposed to tell who's "good" and who's "not good"?

> I just think that people with legit businesses can be hurt by a simple accusation in this world of "anything I don't like is spam" or "anything commercial is spam". Would you say the same if you had actually given them your email address at the store and they sent you an email?

If I gave them the email address with the understanding that it be used for solicitations, no, that's not spam.

Problem is, damn near every spam I get has a disclaimer telling me that I opted in (really? when?), and that I can opt out or unsubscribe by (clicking on the link, replying, whatever), and that the company sending it to me isn't a spammer, but is a permission-based marketer, or an high-profile legitimate marketing organization, or that they always respect remove requests.

> So even if they provide a means to get out of this then they are spammers?

YES.

Here you state that they provide a mechanism to get out of the list because obviously they made a mistake

Oh yeah, you reminded me of the one I forgot. "If we've added your address to our list by mistake..."

If you're not a spammer, you don't need these excuses, because you use a closed-loop confirmed opt-in list management process.

Incidentally, if that phrase sounds convoluted, it's because what you're describing was called opt-out, and the URL above described "opt-in".

After a few months, all the spam disclaimers started saying "this is an opt-in mailing", or "you opted in". So the phrase became "confirmed opt-in", implying that a confirmation phase was necessary.

(The PHB in Marketing knew that "opt-in" was the "good" buzzword, so Joe Spammer says he doesn't do opt-out, but opt-in, and the naive PHB signs the contract.)

A year or so after that, spam disclaimers started using language like "This is a confirmed opt-in list. To confirm your subscription, you need do nothing", so the term "closed-loop" had to be added to describe what was meant by "confirmation".

(The same thing had happened - the PHB had learned that "opt-in" was also spam, but that confirmation was good... so the spammers rebranded themselves and started selling "confirmed addresses" -- meaning "well, we've confirmed the address doesn't bounce when we spam it!", not "the owner of the address has affirmatively replied to a confirmation request containing an unguessable token".)

I'm sure that within a year or two, spammers will attempt to redefine the terms of the debate again.

> but yet they should be flogged? Stoned to death? I mean what sentence would you recommend?

For the record, when /. had this as a poll, I clicked "Go all Vlad The Impaler On Them In Front of Level3's offices To Set An Example" :-)

> SHOW ME where someone tried to contact digital impact to get removed from a list

Too late. Too many spammers have used "remove links" or "global remove lists" (this goes back to 1997) as sources of harvesting and/or verifying the existence of email addresses.

Even the FTC is aware that asking to be removed is ineffective.

> $100 says I get modded down because spam is bad and I am "defending it" ergo I am bad or a troll. I have my own opinion and it does not coincide with the group so I must be punished! But i dont care I got karma to burn

The reason I accused (and still suspect) you of trolling is because these arguments have been hashed out over five years ago.

The system you describe - the sending of commercial email on an opt-out basis - is spam.

It doesn't matter if the company doing it honors remove links. It doesn't matter if the product is goat pr0n or E10000 servers with a terabyte of RAID-5. Spam is about consent, not content.

Ok, the 9/11 terrorist attack was a terrible thing. I remember vaguely Bush giving out speeches stating that one must not give up to terrorists, one must not give up freedom etc. Sorry my dear americans, you've lost. You've lost your freedom and you keep loosing it every day as your government introduces new ways to kick Joe Normal to the head. But that's not enough, USA wants to expand their orwellian system to other countries. USA wants to dictate how others should run their system! As one poster said: Why don't US customs/emmigration/whatever official ask the information from the traveller instead of forcing other countries to automatically transfer all kinds of data to US? Why not require visa from everyone? And while we are at it, it's easy to deny visas from any arabic origin person, after all they all come from al-quide and are terrorists.. Zeesh..

The article still makes me wonder certain things.. It states:

European Commission agreed on an interim arrangement that would require European airlines to provide passenger data to U.S. authorities starting March 5.

No wonder USA's reputation is constantly sinking here in Europe..

wonder if this was my first troll/flamebait..

It's called the Spamdemic map, but they had to pull the plug due to bandwidth cost issues

Under "Upstreams", for Freeze.com (listed as a backturner, listpooler, stonewaller):

Rackspace.com > swbell.net

"Rackspace auto-replies to abuse reports, then forwards the complaints to the mailer without taking action. Freeze is a long-time network marketing mailer. Tried to educate them, but they failed to get a clue, even after many emails exchanged, even with top management. So, they go straight to the Bit Bucket. Partner in spam: optinglobal.com (see their listing on this site).."

Rackspace.. Rackspace..

Where have I heard that name before?

OH! I know!

They advertise right here on /.

Gee. I thought they were really cool-geek kinda people.

Now it turns out they're whoring for spammers.

Kinda makes ya wonder, don't it...

t_t_b

It seems to me, that you comment is really extra lame.

It seems to me, that you comment is really extra lame.