NYCPHP Meetup

[Steve Manes]

At 07:52 PM 5/1/2003 -0400, Jeff wrote:
>The point is that my client is panicking. He's worried he'll be put out
>of business now that AOL, MSN, et al., are talking about ways to deal
>with spam.
>
>I'm interested to hear what others may think about this particular
>situation.

He has every right to panic because they're not just talking.  In the case 
of AOL, they're already doing.  I've forgotten the formula I saw a couple 
of weeks ago but if you send X emails to non-existent/expired AOL accounts 
in X days, you're automatically blackholed.  Worse, your mail will just 
disappear into the bit bucket without a bounce.

I know what the "official" definition is, but I don't think spam is 
unsolicited commercial email.  It's unsolicited, unwanted bulk email.  It's 
a lot like pornography: you know it when you see it.  If I was out of work, 
living on ramen and water, and I landed a job because I was on that 
headhunter's list, I'd have a very different opinion of those mailings than 
someone who was happily employed at 3x the salary offered.

I've gotten lots of spam that wasn't commercial, like chain letters 
demanding that I send a bunch of copies to my annoyed friends, political 
demands that I Bitch To Bush and the "prayer for the day" crap I used to 
get a couple of years ago.  Virus email is probably the most evil form of 
spam even though there's rarely a commercial purpose to it.  By the same 
token, the service advisories that Watchguard sends its customers and which 
I never opted into are both bulk and commercial, yet they contain 
information that I want.

Your friend is probably going to have to make some adjustments.  Sending a 
single job description out to 10,000 people is excessive.  I think he might 
want to trickle out some "re-opt" emails to his subscribers and in the 
future send email only to those who respond affirmatively.