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War on spam messages from MailPush
Some thoughts and notes about this subject:
A. Opt-out vs. Opt-in:
Sources of bulk Internet E-mail messages can be classified
as follows:
1. Strong opt-in - mailing lists, to which you must subscribe.
The mailserver further sends you an E-mail message asking
you to confirm that you indeed requested to be subscribed
to them (to guard against people who subscribe you without
your knowledge or consent).
It is also easy to unsubscribe from those mailing lists.
Those mailing lists and services are the best cyberspace
citizens - they provide service (useful, frivolous, commercial
or whatever) to people who really want it, yet don't bother
people who didn't ask for it.
2. Opt-in - mailing lists and other services, to which you must
subscribe. But they don't validate the E-mail address of the
requester nor ask for confirmation.
However it is easy to unsubscribe from those mailing lists and
services.
They are good cyberspace citizens, but not as safe as the
above, because they are not safe against the actions of
crackers who subscribe people to third-party mailing lists
without their knowledge or consent.
3. Opt-out - mailing lists and other services (including some
spammers) who add you to their mailing lists without your
prior request or approval. They however provide you with
an easy and reliable way to unsubscribe yourself from
their mailing lists.
This conduct is not acceptable because every new service,
which springs up, forces you to take some action to block
them and with the sheer size of the Internet, this could become
100 actions/day in few years.
4. No way to opt out - mailing lists, spammers, M@ilPush
and other services, which provide you with no reliable or
convenient way to stop receiving E-mail from them.
They are the least desirable cyberspace citizens, and everyone
suffers from the cyber-pollution ("spams") which they subject
us to.
The problem with M@ilPush is that they fall under 4th category.
The win-win solution to the problem is to have M@ilPush modify
their system so that they move to 1st category. This can be
accomplished by the following design:
When someone (stupidly) signs up for M@ilPush, he receives
a form letter to be sent to his friends. The M@ilPush customer
will then send the form to those of his friends who want to know
when he (the customer) is notified about his friends' E-mail
messages.
Those friends who are interested in receiving M@ilPush confirmation
messages will send the above form letter to M@ilPush. Furthermore,
they shall receive confirmations only about messages, which they
sent to that particular customer.
This way, for person X to receive a M@ilPush acknowledgement
message about his E-mail message to his friend Y, both the
following conditions must be met:
1. Y signed up for M@ilPush service.
2. X signed up, and confirmed that he wants to receive acknowledgements
concerning his E-mail messages to his friend Y.
B. A possible reason why M@ilPush didn't already implement the
strong opt-in method
I guess that in the past they invested some money in designing
and implementing the system (Web site, scripts, POPmail query
application, etc.). And now that it is in place, it is a tidy small
cash cow.
It probably provides them with modest but steady cash flow
(something like 20,000NIS/month or so) with practically no ongoing
maintenance required.
It is probable that the original design team has been laid off when
the system development has been completed, so that there is
no one to improve it.
To modify the system so that it'll not inconvenience third parties,
as suggested above, will require the owners of M@ilPush to
invest some money, hire some programmers, and give up the nice
and steady cash flow for few months. They won't directly benefit
from doing so. So they have no reason to invest in cyber-pollution
prevention measures.
That is, unless we fight them and demonstrate to them the
consequences of their ignoring the annoyances they are foisting
upon us.
C. How to fight M@ilPush
In addition to legal threats, the following approaches may work:
1. Some subscribers receive notification messages by voice
phone. If you get an unsolicited confirmation message about
this phone notification, then forward it back to the subscriber
with Subject line which reads something like:
- YOU ARE SPAMMER! UNSUBSCRIBE IMMEDIATELY FROM MAILPUSH!
- Ani Doresh Shtitnatek Miad me-Mailpush!
- curse words
Of course, in the body of the E-mail message, you must explain
the situation that you can't block those annoying M@ilPush
acknowledgements on your own. And don't forget to include
the contents of the actual acknowledgement message which
you received.
2. Every time you receive an unsolicited M@ilPush,
acknowledgement, send a spam complaint message to the
subscriber, to his ISP, and to postmaster@mailpush.com
(abuse@mailpush.com does not work). When and if you
receive again acknowledgement, forward it to the subscriber
and to postmaster@mailpush.com (don't bother further the
abuse complaints department of his ISP). In effect, you'll
be mailbombing the subscriber until he at least turns off
the acknowledgements mis-feature. Hopefully, the subscriber
will be so sick of M@ilPush that he'll unsubscribe altogether
from it.
3. Urge the various ISPs in Israel to warn their new customers
against subscribing to M@ilPush services (anyone found to be
subscribed to M@ilPush without turning off the mis-feature of
acknowledgements to all senders of E-mail - is to have his E-mail
privileges revoked).
--- Omer
WARNING: by sending me unsolicited commercial/religious/political/M@ilPush
E-mail (known also as "spam") you irrevocably agree to pay me US$500.-
(plus any legal fees incurred by my trying to collect the above amount) per
unsolicited commercial/religious/political/M@ilPush E-mail message sent
to me - for the service of receiving it.