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!

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?