I Hate Spam .co.za - first F.U. Award to dealaday.co.za

[Vincent]

I hate spam just as much as the next guy, but I'd like to comment on two of the sites.

I have been to a Dynamic seminars presentation and found Brian Jude's quiet interesting. Maybe someone should contact him and explain to him what is happening, although I agree he shouldn't be spamming. I think he may be member of our chamber of Commerce, if he is I will speak to him. Previously he never used to spam, you had to register for a newsletter and then you'd get all the seminars he presented. He has more than enough people turning up to his seminars. (+/- 50 @R550/delegate) With regards to Afrihost, speak to Norri who is a member on this forum and I believe he knows the CEO of that company. He may help.

[daveob]

Hi Vincent

You're welcome to mention to those that you know about the site.

Fact is, that I made numerous attempts to contact all site owners before listing them on ihatespam.co.za

I hear that you're partially standing up for Brian Jude's character, but the fact is that if he contracts some marketing company to advertise for him, he should do sufficient homework on the source of their mailing list. As in law, ignorance is no excuse.

[Chatmaster]

I read Dr. Brain Jude's book on customer service about 6 years ago. He is by far one of the best business author's in SA. It is a pity that he must be associated with spam.

[eiledon]

Another one is Certech who are a newsletter company - they somehow got my address and seems like they sell my address in a batch that goes to all their new clients, and now and then Ill get a newsletter by one of their new clients I did not subscribe to (and would never ?!?!) advertising junk that is of no relevance to me... some of it is even offensive!
People in SA need to learn to respect peoples privacy and consider how people will react reading the junk they distribute, and the association that is made with the brand behind it.
Btw this is my first post!

[Seagyn Davis]

I have seen some websites change the email address to Ian at myco dot co dot za. This may work but won't this put off people from contacting you as they have to do more work?

It is very irritating on a customer side to have to correctly change the email address to the correct version, however this is the easiest way besides using javascript which a lot of the silly Spam Bots have figured out. I have a funny feeling that the bots now capture the (at)'s and 'dot's etc

Dynamic seminars are one of those that are also spamming me, but I am actually interested in what they offer

Unfortunately why spam will always exist. just had to!

I manage an international web server, actually 2 now, and we get bombarded with calls about spam every day. Not only does it get irritating, each and every filter we turn on puts strain on the server, so the ISP's and end consumers are effected.

We have a policy to terminate any domain that sends bulk unsolicited mails.

Also from my side, having to constantly better my newsletter designs to get through over zealous firewalls is the pain in the behind so I am totally against any form of SPAM and if I get any I add it to a few international black listing companies.

It will be a long battle which will only end when mail senders are now geographically placed. Which by the looks of things, may not be in the not so distant future.

Where the email has been harvested, I support your point - the first contact email should be an invitation to subscribe (opt-in markting) rather than require the person to unsubscribe (opt-out).

Thats a nice touch to anyone who wants to harvest email addresses.

[Dave A]

It will be a long battle which will only end when mail senders are now geographically placed.

Any chance you can expand on that because I see the potential for unintended consequences?

I'm already seeing that "demerits" are being placed by some spam scoring systems if the email originates from a foreign country. This creates a problem for perfectly legitimate domain server based email sending when the server is overseas.

[Seagyn Davis]

I don't mean that it is a current working solution. It will just be handy to trace the origination of the the sender. The only thing is if people send through proxy's but in my mind its the only way to get to the spammers, especially the viagra ones.

There are plenty of negative scores that are in some way a bit irritating for us. One way is that if you send off a dynamic IP then I think 2 points get added to your SPAM score. That along with using a large SMTP server like smtp.saix.net, html, links and images all effect how bad/high you spam score is.

[Dave A]

The only thing is if people send through proxy's but in my mind its the only way to get to the spammers, especially the viagra ones.

When it comes to spammers, it seems it is the non-transparent proxies that you can get into anonymously that are the problem. An IP trace takes you to the open proxy and no further.

I'm not so sure about being too heavy on dynamic IPs. Vodacom uses dynamic IP addressing, but ultimately they can still trace back to originating client if need be, particularly when it comes to emails.

[duncan drennan]

RSS is the "solution" to spam. It always gets through, and the person knows that they chose to receive it.

Think about using RSS instead of email when sending out newsletters etc. It will save you a lot of pain trying to make sure that they get to the right people.

[Dave A]

Le's look at thought for a moment as it relates to TFSA, Duncan.

There is an RSS feed, but it pumps threads. Would you suggest a seperate RSS feed just for newsletters on this site?

Then there is the issue of private notifications - PM notifications and the like. An RSS solution seems tricky there.