The Continuing Rise of E-Mail Marketing

Mark Cantrell writes: "Yahoo is running a story from Reuters Internet Report that says that companies like Doubleclick are becoming more popular with online businesses because of the low price they charge. $25 for 1000 people spammed is the example given. They do mention that there is a threat that spam may get out of hand, however. May get? Obviously they haven't seen my mailbox or Usenet lately. My favorite quote from the article: 'I think spam is becoming a problem,' Bluefly's Seiff said. 'Any time you get clutter in your mailboxes, it is not beneficial to e-mail marketers like us.'" The article touches on true spam, but mostly talks about the much more benign stuff lumped under "direct marketing," like reminder updates from stores you cleared to send it to you.

Comments

My no spam recipe

[LinuxGeek]

I got my own domain and run my own email server. I only use those email addresses for business communication and exchanges with trusted friends and family. In a year and a half, no spam. My roadrunner account? Yup, spam flows in and I used it the exact same way. Three other ISPs, same thing. Makes me think that bulk emailers have help gathering valid email lists.

Re:My no spam recipe

[vofka]

I also have my own domain, and run my own SMTP Server. As well as stopping Spam, I'm interested in tracking who gives my E-Mail addresses to whom, so each service I sign up for that is likely to send me Automatic E-Mails (which is most 'net services these days) get's an individual address, such as mdi0000000001@myverysecretdomain.co.uk.

At my Incoming Mail Server, I run procmail rules to check the incoming message address against 'permitted' senders. Any that don't match are Put into a Holding Account for checking, any that do are allowed through (I want my DNS Host to be able to mail me for example!).

The benefit of this is that I can tell Who has passed on my address (well, their address, but they don't know that!!). When I find that an address has been comprimised, I simply block it, and bounce all messages destined for it, as well as contacting the original 'owner' of the address to tell them what I think.

Now, it does take some work, and common sense, to run, it's not a 'set-it and forget-it' system by any means, but it lets me easily allow what I want in, in; and lets me block what I don't.

As for Doubleclick, they made their way onto my "reject all incoming mail from this sender" list (which I also maintain) a looooong time ago, along with several other 'direct marketing' companies (postmasterdirect springs instantly to mind!!)..

Re:My no spam recipe

[Quixote]

Well, you better hope that none of your friends and family who run a certain OS from Redmond will get infected by the KLEZ pain-in-the-ass. For, it might start sending out mail to all of his/her contacts with YOUR email address as the source. And then your email address will be out in the open, for everyone to grab.

Makes me wonder if the SPAMmers have anything to do with this KLEZ bastard. I hope they catch the guy who wrote it, and feed him just spam for 32 years in his jail cell.

One way to do it

[DoctorFrog]

Eventually we're likely to get some kind of legislation relating to spam. I believe in minimalist law, and this is one way it could be done while interfering as little as possible with free speech, nonabusive email marketing and other not so bad ideas that spammers tend to hide behind.

First, have a couple of universally available databases, one of email addresses which have expressed a wish not to receive any automated email, and another of sources which have been shown to violate this list.

If your email address is in the first database (and only you can put it there), your ISPs email system could be set to exclude any mail from the second list without affecting common carrier status.

The object is equivalent to blocking telemarketing numbers, but to be effective the consumer should be able to avoid having to block those spam sources one by one.

That's the basic idea. I'm sure the /. crowd can come up with a couple of dozen refinements in as many minutes.

Re:How to make spamming more expensive

[jukal]

As some people have started reloading the spammer-nailer page a lot, it seems, maybe I should clarify that the e-mail address is not unique as unique per pageload. Instead, it's an md5 sum created based on the details got from the client host, browser, time, and maybe something else. So, it's somewhat unique per spammer.