Slashdot Mirror
DMA to Control Spam by DMA Members
SiliconLawyer writes: "The Direct Marketing Association, the major U.S. tradegroup for companies using direct marketing techniques, will reportedly issue guidelines for how its members may and may not use e-mail as a marketing tool. Hopefully, this will influence other marketers toward more responsible use of e-mail. Details are on CNET here."
I have worked for 2 companies that were DMA members and they were quite careful about sending mail, etc. already. This will have no effect on spammers whatsoever, they have a tendency to not pay thousands of dollars in dues to trade organizations.
E for effort though.
Their "do not call" lists might be scams, but the state government Do Not Call Registry does work. I'm on the NY one and if a telemarketer calls we simply inform them that we're on the registry and they'll be fined $2,000 if they ever call back. Sure there are loopholes (anyplace you've ever done business with can call you), but it's better than nothing. You'd be surprised how quickly some telemarketers react when they hear "...on the Do Not Call Registry..." :-)
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
look on their site. "you can get on our do not call list. up to 16 weeks later you may notice a decrease in phone calls. its five dollars to sign up." is this thing legit? if i were to actually sign up, how do i know i didnt just activiate a "this phone number is valid, spam it" function? (at the isp i work at we always tell our customers not to reply to spam emails for the same type or reason). the five dollars thing is the biggest insult of all. "i'll stop beating your shoulder in every morning for your milk money". why should i believe anything they say? they seem like big giant weasels. ick. ick, ick.
slashdot: where everyone yells sarcastic metaphors to themselves to understand the issue
All that this will do is demonstrate to Congress that we don't need government regulation; that the private sector will take care of itself...
... the trouble is, in this case, the private solution will be pitifull; it is, after all, being proposed by a group which claims that their right to call me during dinner time to sell me a time share vacation EVERY NIGHT FOR ABOUT A MONTH is protected by the first ammendment...
Add the following to your sendmail.mc file:
/etc/mail/sendmail.mc > /etc/sendmail.cf
FEATURE(dnsbl,`bl.spamcop.net')dnl
then run
m4
Works for me...doesn't block it all, but it seems to help a great deal.
--It's Pimptastic!--
Third, what prevents me from grabbing the removal database and using as a verified sucker database?
It established practice of companies that provide snail-mail mailing lists to seed them with a few addresses that belong to the list provider. That way they can verify that the lists are being used according to the terms of the contract between the list provider and the user, based on what arrives at those seeded addresses.
Same would work for e-mail.
This system is not going to work. Here is the problem; most spam comes from corporations anyways. Think about it; when you want to get a spammer in trouble, what do you do? tell the system administrator who "rules" over the spammer. This is where the vast majority of the spam is from. what this is actually doing is targeting a small portion of spam. It is up to us users to get rid of all the rest of the spam.
>
> I hope you were at least considering putting some obvious, easily-recognized string in, say, subject, so that most people's existing filters would trash the SPAM immediately.
You mean like <HTML>? ;-)
Actually, I think I know what happened to the bimbo in question. Or a clone of her, by the name of Laura "Boy, am I ever gonna have to eat some" Crow. She works at Earthpink. I got a pile of spam from her this morning.
I know it's from Laura, because her spam has her name in the comments as the document's creator, and I know Laura's somewhat bimbo-like because the spam had a bunch of IMG SRC tags pointing to "D:\11 12 01 Laura Crow\New Emails\CidcoEmail_FINALJAN_020121_files\t(1).gif"
Way to go, Laura Crow! Ur 733t HTML h4x0ring sk1llz r so 733t, u h0t b@b3!
A little Googling has revealed that I'm not the only one getting Laura's spam.
1) Spammers lie.
2) If you think a spammer's telling the truth, see Rule #1.
3) Spammers are stupid.
Rule #3 in action again.
But if you want a glimpse at the future the DMA proposes for "opt-out", look for the opt-out link in Laura's spam:
It's a Mailto: tag to "mailto:opt-out@earthlink.net?subject=Opt-out_Cidc o012202"
It doesn't opt you out of all Earthpink-generated spam. Only Laura's Cidco spam. When Earthpink wants to spam you again for another company, or even when Earthpink wants to send the next Cidco spam (hopefully coded by someone who knows how to make web bugs work, unlike our dear Laura) it'll be a different list, and a different Subject: in the opt-out request.
Doesn't that make you feel all pink and squishy inside?
This might be of interest:
RFC-3098 How to Advertise Responsibly Using E-Mail and Newsgroup
echo '[q]sa[ln0=aln80~Psnlbx]16isb572CCB9AE9DB03273snlbxq' |dc