[WEB4LIB] Re: FW: RE: Preferred public email accounts

[Thomas Dowling]

>>-----Original Message-----
>>From: Thomas Dowling [mailto:tdowling at ohiolink.edu]
>>Sent: Friday, October 04, 2002 1:21 PM
>>
>>...The general rule of thumb is never to use those "Click
>>here to unsubscribe" links.  Most spam services actually use those
>>responses to verify that your address is valid and put it onto higher
>>priority spam lists.


I was asked off-list:
>Thomas, do you have real evidence of this? As far as I can tell the 'click
>to unsubscribe' has worked in the few instances I have bothered to do so.
>I'd like to know if what you say is true.

Not being a spammer, I can only go by industry news reports.  A Ziff-Davis 
Tech Update from September 16 included an interview with a mass mailer, who 
starts by harvesting addresses from web pages:  "...To Brooks, Web sites 
are open invitations. 'I'm just responding to their request to have people 
contact them'...As a result of this open invitation, your employees could 
spend valuable work time sending requests to be removed from such lists. 
Brooks says he honors all removal requests, but acknowledges that many 
others don't, and that spammers of the worst ilk just consider such 
requests proof that there's someone at the other 
end." 
<http://techupdate.zdnet.com/techupdate/stories/main/0,14179,2880792,00.html>

That's in line with everything else I've read about coping with spam.  Some 
small number of mass mailers respect the unsub request, but the others 
simply use it to move your address from a "possibly live address" list to a 
"definitely live address" list.



Thomas Dowling
Ohio Library and Information Network
tdowling at ohiolink.edu