Internet Defense Technology

It seems that whenever you buy something on the Internet this leads to more email spam in your mailbox.

However, a lot of legitimate companies are starting to recognize that selling your email address to someone or even spamming them themselves without your consent gets them in trouble.

However instead of being very overt and forthcoming about getting your consent they are being subtle and many people miss the opportunity to say no because it is so hidden.

Whenever you buy something on-line read the entirety of all the pages of the checkout process. Especially look for a little title checkbox that is you either have to check to not be on their mailing list or uncheck. Sometimes there is more than one:

I get asked often how someone can not be marked as spam when trying to market.

There are two main things you have to do:

1) Only email people who actually want your information. The best way is to get people to sign up for your list with a double opt-in (they have to check a box that says yes and then you send them an email they can respond to in order to be on the list).

Part of this is then DO NOT sell or give their email address to anyone or use it for anything else but what they signed up for.

2) Get these people to add your email address to their “whitelist”. You are going to have to walk most people through this step as many people won’t know how. But if you can get them to do this, they will get every email you send them.

Final note is if anyone ever asks to be off the list, IMMEDIATELY do so and don’t send them even one more email.

I was doing a search on Yahoo today and found the below:





In case you can’t read it, it says at the top:
“1 potentially harmful website is marked on this page”

Then under the link to the actual listing (and before the description text) it says:
“Warning: Unsolicited Emails”

I hate it when any system is abused by using our compassion for our fellow man to make a buck.

During times of disaster the spammers have been known to take advantage of our desire to help each other by phishing us and getting our information.

Because of the recent earthquakes in China, there are scams running to “donate” money to help these people and the only thing you will be doing is making someone else rich.

Please don’t get scammed, but please do whatever you can to help. If you can donate money, go straight to a site and donate.

More information here:
US-CERT (United States Computer Emergency Readiness Team) warning
Federal Trade Commission’s Charity Checklist

Seems there are some changes to the CAN-SPAM act recently, all approved by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC).

Below is the quote straight from the FTC website, but the most interesting part to me is #1. Effectively saying that all emails must allow you to unsubscribe in one of two ways:

a) Send a reply with remove request
b) One click to a single page to opt-out

This means you can’t send me on a wild goose chase through you site for the opt-out link. This means you can’t ask me for anymore information than my email address to “confirm” my opt-out.

Just wish the illegal guys could somehow be forced to do this. Unfortunately what I have seen as true for most laws, only law abiding people pay any attention.

Quote from FTC:

“The new rule provisions address four topics:
(1) an e-mail recipient cannot be required to pay a fee, provide information other than his or her e-mail address and opt-out preferences, or take any steps other than sending a reply e-mail message or visiting a single Internet Web page to opt out of receiving future e-mail from a sender;
(2) the definition of “sender” was modified to make it easier to determine which of multiple parties advertising in a single e-mail message is responsible for complying with the Act’s opt-out requirements;
(3) a “sender” of commercial e-mail can include an accurately-registered post office box or private mailbox established under United States Postal Service regulations to satisfy the Act’s requirement that a commercial e-mail display a “valid physical postal address”; and
(4) a definition of the term “person” was added to clarify that CAN-SPAM’s obligations are not limited to natural persons.”

FTC article on new CAN-SPAM rules

In case you missed it, Zango is sueing anti-spyware company Kaspersky Lab alleging that the company interfered with Zango’s business relationships with consumers by removing Zango adware from people’s computers.

Now people get Kaspersky product specifically for the purpose of removing adware and spyware, which serves consumers pop-up ads based on their Web-surfing activity.

If Zango were to win this suit (I don’t think they have a change, but I am not a lawyer) what does this mean for companies who specifically serve people by blocking content that is most likely harmful to them.

Being in the email spam business, I will tell you, there is no way to be 100% perfect at it, we can get pretty darn close, but not 100% perfect 100% of the time.

I am scared of the ramifications of this and hope the courts realize that it is the job of Zango to make a product that doesn’t alert the programs to possible bad behaviour.

While companies that detect and block spam, spyware, adware and more work hard to get it right (we will lose customers otherwise) both sides need to work together, not sue each other.

Original Article on Mediapost

I hate these types of services, I am a real person and find this annoying:

“This is an automatic confirmation request from <***@******.com>;.

“In an effort to fight spam, I have asked my email host, Big Giant Media, Inc., to install a spam filter on my mailbox. To prove that you are a real person and not an automated spammer, please visit the following URL and enter the code you see displayed on the Big Giant Media authentication page:

“http://******

“HINT: If you cannot reach the page by clicking on the link above, please copy and paste it directly into your browser’s address bar.

“You will only need to do this the first time you send an email to my address. Once you have confirmed your status, you will be added to a list of approved senders and will not be required to complete this step again.

“Thanks for helping me stamp out spam!”

Why not just get a system like Internet Defense Technology which can find the spam on it’s own instead of annoying your friends and people who try to email you?

Original article on IDT Blog about email spam

I have an old practice of using a hotmail address for all my on-line registration activities, keeps my main email address clean of spam (even before we started Internet Defense Technology it worked pretty well, but did start getting spam though I thought I had never used it, problem handled since we got started).

New thing being talked about now is “Disposable Email Addresses” or DEA.

Some are paid, some are free.

Some are set up where you just get one free email address, use it for your registration, get the registration information and then “dispose” of the email address.

Some have you tell them what your real address is, then sign up for several fake addresses which will be forwarded to your real address. You use each fake address once for a sign-up and can watch to see which one eventually gets spammed (and then you know who sold your address) and can dispose of that address.

While this has been around for a little bit, I just recently heard of it. Looks pretty good, only issues I can think of is if you need to be able get back in to a registration or profile information and have to have that email address and you already disposed of it, would have a problem.

However, I really like the idea.

Update: Just saw a good list of these which I thought I would just link to rather than trying to re-do: http://www.techsnack.net

Original article on IDT Blog about email spam

Gmail isn’t having the best time with spam right now.

Over the past month, anti-spam vendors have had to apply scrutiny to Gmail in a way they haven’t had to before (some actually outright blocking of Gmail).

It all began when Google’s bot-busting CAPTCHA for Gmail was defeated sometime in February. So spammers have started sending out their spam from Gmail accounts, causing problems for spam filtering services.

Then Google announced that they are removing the spam folder from Gmail all together per doobybrain.com (couldn’t find a mention of this on the Gmail page myself).

Then one of my friends on twitter complained that they are getting more spam than usual.

With the “spammers” constantly working on ways to “get around” the spam blockers, doesn’t seem to make sense to totally remove the spam folder. Plus, what about the occasional real item that ends up in spam.

While it is possible to get up to 99% accuracy on spam detection (as we have found) we have also found it is better to always allow the user some access to their emails for those every now and then mistakes.

Lets see what Gmail actually does here.

Original article on IDT Blog about email spam