Eric, I know exactly how you felt.

I have autoresponder on my system that sends people culture sheets. The
send an email to a specific address and the auto responder sends a specific
culture sheet. These have outlived their usefulness since recently and the
addresses have gotten onto spam lists and occasionally a fake or real return
address is spoofed into a spam message and sent to the autoresponder. So I
get the spam and a culture sheet gets sent to somebody who doesn't know why
they are getting it. I plan to take them down soon. I really do and I
already knew they were becoming a problem.

Anyway, about mid December a real person sent an email to the Phal
autoresponder and the next morning I got one of those challenge-response
summons from this guy's spam protection service called SpamCop. I kind of
felt the way you describe, Eric, "He asked for this email so why can't he
tell his spam service to give him the culture sheet he asked for. Amway,
while I was pouting around about this and refusing to comply, SpamCop put my
entire domain on one of those real time blacklists.

Hawaii.net, and some other large area service providers draw their blacklist
from SpamCop or maybe SpamCop can influence these blacklist providers, I
don't know... I do know my communications with vendors and customers
started coming back as undeliverable with a message that told me my domain
was a known source of Spam.

The blacklist website had some odd wording about how everybody claims they
are not spammers and they would be the final judge of who they blacklisted
and I about popped right out of my skin on reading that.

I also read that incorrectly configured mail servers and autoresponders were
frequently implicated in spam issues. And a light went on.

When I realized the connection to the spamcop summons for this guy's Phal
culture sheet I went to the email summons from SpamCop and clicked on the
link which took me to the SpamCop website and asked me to copy the letters
in the box that only a "real" human can read. Lo and behold, my domain got
removed from the blacklist within minutes. It was so fast and efficiently
reversed that I thought surely computers must be handling it.

And then Spamcop sent me a message telling me I that my email to this guy
would be delivered and future emails to him would not require any action on
my part. I have not written him and I don't want to and I hope the culture
sheet was helpful.

AND then SpamCop sent a message that offered to help ME keep spam out of my
email box if I gave them money. ARGHH!

Granted it was simple challenge-response system and it would have been so
easy to just respond....but the way they went about forcing compliance with
their rules when it was one of their customers who initiated the email
communication in the first place caused me to get so mad that my antenna got
sucked all the way down into my head and then got impacted and one of the
little opening got infected.... jeese...just for a culture sheet! Ahhhhh!
When is that mothership coming? Didn't somebody mention a mothership?

Spam is killing email. ...but I have ten thousand Phals in bud.


"Eric Hunt" wrote in message
...
Just to add my 2c to the discussion....

The problem I am having is the STUPID real-time spam blacklists. I swear I
hope someone figures out a way to sue them for the shirt off their backs.
They allow ANYONE to claim that a message is spam and they DO NOT verify
before adding entire ISPs to the "spam" lists.

Then the spam lists are distributed to thousands of other ISPs.

Every few weeks my ISP is added to the blacklists and all of my outgoing
mail to people starts bouncing. It usually takes 2-3 days for my ISP to
convince the blacklist people that we're not spammers, but damn it's
annoying, and IMHO they are as bad as the spam they are trying to prevent.

And I refuse to reply to the challenge-response spam systems some people
subscribe to. You mean you're sending ME an email and then I have to jump
through hoops before my reply is even delivered to you? Nope, sorry, homey
don' play that game.

Ahhh, that felt good, getting the spam related venting done. =)

-Eric in SF
www.orchidphotos.org