Are Spam Blockers Too Strict?

Myrte writes "Wired.com has a long piece on whether spam blockers are blocking wanted messages." From the article: "For years, e-mail users complained that torrents of unwanted messages clogged their inboxes and crimped their productivity. Now, e-mail users, marketers and mailing list operators are more worried that spam filters are blocking out too many wanted messages. AOL isn't the only company to face charges that it improperly blocks legitimate messages. But, as the world's largest ISP for years, it has long borne the brunt of complaints from mass e-mailers over the problem."

Comments

I'd like it if my spam filter could "mod up"...

[VMaN]

I'd like it if my spam filter could "mod up" non english email.

most of my email correspondance isn't in english, while most of my spam is in english... I've instructed my dad to delete ANY mail with an english subject if he doesn't know the sender before opening it, and that seems to work out fine, english is his 3rd/4th language and only has 2 contacts using it. If something is important enough, he'll get at call about it :) (this probably wouldn't fly at work, but for his personal email it's fine)

How is this a "gray area"

[TubeSteak]

A particularly troublesome gray area, Schneider said, involves affiliate marketers. These marketers often send e-mails to people who signed up on a website with whom the affiliate has a marketing agreement. The recipient of the e-mail, however, probably isn't aware of the arrangement and has no idea why they're receiving the message.

Translation: people are getting e-mails they neither want, nor expected.

It's like inviting someone to a party & you agree that they can bring their "affiliates" along. Your invitee shows up with 20 strangers & whoever you have working the door says "I don't know all these people, they aren't allowed in."

The solution isn't to cry about the "gray" area, it's to explicitly tell people who the fark these affiliates are & what they'll be sending.

Yes and no

[Bogtha]

If a user has signed up for a mailing list, and doesn't get what they asked for, then that's a false positive, no matter how commercial the mailing list. And this does happen. So in that respect, spam blockers are too strict.

But on the other hand, I fish out a few false positives from my spam dump every month and look to see why they were blocked. In most of the cases, it's because the mailing list operator is doing something dumb. For instance, the last false positive I received - for a legitimate, informative mailing list I deliberately signed up for - triggered my spam filter because of forged headers, two counts of malformed headers, and every other line was in all caps.

The reason why they were caught out was because they used what appears to be a mass mailer designed for sleazy purposes, and they didn't bother with any QA.

Anybody who is running a mailing list should follow a few simple rules:

1. If you outsource, outsource to a reputable company.
2. If you run the mailing list yourself, use reputable software.
3. Set up an email account for every popular spam blocker, and include those addresses in your mailing lists. Check those accounts every time you send out an email, to see if you are blocked by any of them.
4. Never buy email addresses. Ever.

That's what I consider to be common sense, but apparently common sense is hard to come by these days.