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

Al,

VERY interesting.

Read this page:

http://www.spamcop.net/fom-serve/cache/329.html

Scroll down to the Challenge/response spam filtering section.

-Eric in SF
www.orchidphotos.org

Just more proof that I may be slightly off kilter and that everything I say
is suspect.

I just looked back to December 4th when this all happened.

It was a company called SpamArrest.com which sent the challenge response
email.
It was SpamCop.net that had me on the blacklist.

This all happened in one day. By the time my service provider responded to
my plea for help all they could do was report that the mail server was no
longer on the blacklist. According to the email timestamps, this was about
45 minutes after I completed the challenger response doo doo.

It sure feels like there is a direct connection, and there has to be a
connection of some sort between the companies collecting spam and the
companies creating the blacklists, but I suppose I am wrong to have lumped
them into one company.

I looked up the two names online and they seem to be antagonistic; chatter
from Spamcop that reveals it believes Spamarrest appears to be resorting to
spam to promote its services.

"Eric Hunt" wrote in message
news
Al,

VERY interesting.

Read this page:

http://www.spamcop.net/fom-serve/cache/329.html

Scroll down to the Challenge/response spam filtering section.

-Eric in SF
www.orchidphotos.org

Al,

I figured it was SpamArrest that caused you the grief. They don't have a
good reputation.

*sigh*

-Eric
"Al" wrote in message
...
Just more proof that I may be slightly off kilter and that everything I
say is suspect.

I just sent out a message to our orchid society members, and got a bounce
with this reason:
- MAIL REFUSED - IP (205.152.59.69) is in RBL black list
spam.dnsbl.sorbs.net

Of course I don't have a fixed IP address with my DSL account, guess a
previous person using this IP was a spammer.

-danny

"Eric Hunt" wrote in message
...
Al,

I figured it was SpamArrest that caused you the grief. They don't have a
good reputation.

*sigh*

-Eric
"Al" wrote in message
...
Just more proof that I may be slightly off kilter and that everything I
say is suspect.

Not sure I'm entirely up with you guys, but I do try to respond to culture
questions -- a few are from actual customers, but most are from people
wanting free advice about orchids they bought at Home Depot or Target. I
nevertheless respond [politely!] to all of them, if I can get a message
through without too much hassle.

But when I get a reply back telling me that "in order to reduce [their]
spam" I have to go to some website and register to get an email through,
then unless I can tell for sure that it's a real customer, I quit.

As for incoming spam, I'm pretty happy with the Norton product. It catches
about 95% of the spam and very few legitimate emails.
Kenni

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

I've had a very public email address for 8 years or so. I had it on my
personal website long before the spam was an issue - and by the time it
became an issue, it was too late to take down - it wouldn't have helped,
so it stays.

I use Outlook and pay MONEY for probably one of the best spam filtering
programs out there - Cloudmark Spamnet.

It has NEVER flagged a personal email directed to me. It occassionally
flags a newsletter, but those are very rare - 3x a year max.

I use a Mac at work and the spam filtering built into the MacOS mail
program is pretty good. More spam gets through than at home, but it learns
and is slowly getting better.

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

Danny,

It's not your personal IP - it's your entire ISP being blocked!

Believe me, the mail administrators at your ISP are working on it. It will
go away in a day or two.

I always send my ISP's admins an email notifying them of a new blacklisting
and they've always been on top of it prior to my email. It couldn't hurt for
you to do the same.

-Eric in SF
www.orchidphotos.org

"danny" wrote in message
...
I just sent out a message to our orchid society members, and got a bounce
with this reason:
- MAIL REFUSED - IP (205.152.59.69) is in RBL black list
spam.dnsbl.sorbs.net

Just be glad you don't have Yahoo for an email client. They make you jump
through their PITA anti-spam hoops every time you send 3 or 4 emails in a
row. Next to the heavily censored newsgroups. It is the worst option that
came with my DSL provider. Thank goodness for Hotmail and Gmail

Grow well and bloom magnificently
dusty