MAPS and Experian Settle Lawsuit

dbrower writes: "Experian is trumpeting a settlement with MAPS here, where MAPS agreed not to blackhole them without a court order, and agreed that Experian didn't need to do opt-in. Looks like a loss to me."

Comments

winners or loosers?

[Rev.LoveJoy]

I have a hard time looking at MAPS vs. the spammers as us agsinst them anymore. For me this has turned into one of those moral dilemas wherein the actions taken by maps are nearly as deplorable as those they are attempting to defeat.

Do not misunderstand, I am no sympathizer of the spammers. I do not think what they do warrants first ammendmend protection. However, I do not think that MAPS arbitrarily black holing companies who it cannot strong arm with threats really deserves our respect anymore.

A good idea gone awry.

Cheers,
- RLJ

access.db

[jmd!]

Well, experian.com just made it in to my access.db, along with everyone else who's sued maps in the past. Do they have any mail servers outside that domain, anyone know?

Here's a list of some other companies not understanding what MAPS is and trying to stop them with bogus lawsuits. I hope they don't accidently wind up in your access.db (or whatever your MTA uses).

yesmail.com
harrisinteractive.com
blackice.com
media3.com
247media.com
experian.com
exactis.com
liveprayer.com <--- accused MAPS of being an agent of Satan

To block these in sendmail, use the 550 5.7.1 error code in your access.db file, like so:

yesmail.com <tab> 550 5.7.1 Spammer suing MAPS.

Other filter lists...

[gavcam]

If a spammer gets taken out of one filter list then you can always rely on it still being in the other lists.

I use

• relays.ordb.org
• or.orbl.org
• inputs.orbz.org
• outputs.orbz.org
• spews.relays.osirusoft.com

to keep my inbox clean.

Winning one battle doesn't win the war!

maybe a blacklist would work on a web page

[mj6798]

Currently, to many lawyers and judges, MAPS probably looks like an obscure, deeply technical means by which some group of people is "preventing" another group of people from getting mail.

But these people understand the concept of a "web page". If, instead, something like MAPS were based on a list of domain names found on web pages, I think people would have a much harder time "shutting it down". After all, it would be human readable speech, and if people mine that data for their E-mail programs, well, so be it.

Re:MAPS settled

[Rick the Red]

As a victim of MAPS, I know quite a bit about it. I'm not a spammer, I just noticed one day that my brother wasn't getting any of my email. Turns out his ISP was using MAPS's "service" and my ISP got on MAPS's shit list. When I contacted MAPS about it to find out what happened and how to fix it, the bottom line was this: MAPS lied to me about what they did and how it worked. They left me with one choice: find a new ISP. I refused; my brother found a new ISP, one that would allow him to receive my mail. My ISP does not use MAPS and guess what? I am not flooded with spam. Not one bit. You do not need MAPS to avoid spam.

P.S. I did not get "flamebaited," I got modded down. Go ahead, mod this down, too. I'm not a karma whore.

Dynamic DNS Services get blackholed too!

[mtgstuber]

Don't get me wrong, I'm no fan of SPAM, but given that MAPS and services like it, automatically blackhole email from dynamically served DNS entries, I am quite happy to see them sued, sued into oblivion even. MAPS decreases freedom on the net. I have a DSL connection through a local carrier who shall remain nameless. I run a web server on my connection, largely for family and friends. If I get a business connection where I can get a properly registered DNS entry, I have to pay twice as much for half the bandwidth. So I use dynamic DNS services. Thanks to MAPS its about impossible for me to send email directly from my server. Instead I am forced to use the email account of my service provider. (Ironically, I can send email from SPAM ridden web mail services any time I want.) I resent MAPS's heavy handed self righteous policing of the net, even more than I resent the bandwidth wasting spammers. I would rather delete some extra #$%^ and have freedom, than have somebody tell me what I can and can't do.

Re:Double opt-in? What the hell?

[Jay Carlson]

That's fine if you're the one who actually signed up. Me, nop@nop.com, and my friend ben@ben.com, get truly fascinating spam by way of people who are enticed to give some email address in return for something; somewhat believably, people will use fake email addresses under duress.

In addition to all the random female-depicting porn you're familiar with, I get aluminum market newsletters, British SMS-music-info-service announcements, and some very tasteful Swedish news mailings. Oh, and for a while nop@nop.com was listed as the contact address for a gay personals service ad in Portugal. The letters I got were very sweet, but my wife still thought it was funny...

My favorite is when people buy unlock codes for commercial software, giving my email address. I've got a whole folder full of registration codes that I didn't pay for and will never use....

Oh right, back to opt-in. So here's what's going on.

• When spammers say "opt-in" they mean that at least somebody typed an email address into a web page somewhere.
• When spammers say "double opt-in" they mean the horrible, onerous, business-destroying requirement to confirm that the person receiving mail at an email address wants to receive their mail. Anti-spammers prefer to call this "verified opt-in", and I like that term better, but it doesn't matter what you call it.

So when somebody types nop@nop.com into the signup for Goatmail (intentionally goating me or not), a verified opt-in system sends nop@nop.com a message saying "hi! hit reply to this message to confirm and enter the wonderful world of goats!" With non-opt-in systems, I'm in Goatland without any further delay. Sort of like when my "friends" sent all the "I'm interested!" postal reply cards to the Navy recruiters AND the dental post-doc programs with my address on them. Took years to get rid of them.

But I digress again. Here's the summary:

• Unverified opt-in means someone wishes for an email address to receive spam.
• Verified opt-in means the recipient of mail sent to an address wants spam.

That clear things up?