I don't have a "this is spam" button

Here at Word to the Wise we have some unique requirements for mail. For instance, I need to be able to receive examples of emails that are being blocked elsewhere in order to do my job. This means not only do we not outsource mail to someone else, we also run limited spam filtering on the server side. It does mean I have to wade through a bit more spam than others do, but that’s generally not a problem. My client side filters do a decent job at keeping most of the crud out of my mailboxes.
My work account gets very little spam in the folder I use as my inbox. I’m not even sure exactly why this is, but it’s true. One of the exceptions is a psychic (no, really) who has a copy of one of my work email addresses and she regularly spams me offering her spiritual guidance and the opportunity to buy her stuff in order to make peace within my world.  I’ve received these before, usually I just delete them and move on.
Occasionally, though, I long for the ease of a “this is spam” button. Just to be able to hit a single button, no work, no effort and know that I have registered my frustration with a spammer. Today was one of those days. I really don’t want this psychic spam in my mailbox. It seems reasonably professionally done, though, so I check the headers to see if it’s being send from any ESP I know and if it’s worth my time to send in a “hey, didn’t sign up for this, and no, I didn’t forget, either” email.
I visited the website belonging to the domain sending the mail.

This is OnLetterhead
This domain points to OnLetterhead, a branded email and e-newsletter solution. You may have received an email which pointed you to this page. If you prefer not to receieve anymore emails from the sender, you may submit a request via email to our abuse department: support@onletterhead.com.
We apologize for any inconvenience.

That tells me all I need to know about sending in a notice. At best they’ll unsubscribe me. But I suspect  they’ll screw that up and I will still get their mail. At worst they’ll end up arguing with me that I did sign up and I should not be complaining about the mail because I opted in.
I love my mailsystem and the control it gives me, but today I’d really like that ‘this is spam’ button. In one simple click I could set a filter to bulk any future mail from this sender, send a notice to the sender that their mail was viewed as spam by one recipient, and give a small negative to that sender’s reputation. Maybe that would stop them from spamming me.

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TWSD: Privacy protection for commercial domains

One of my major pet peeves is supposedly legitimate companies hiding behind privacy protection in their whois records. There is absolutely no reason for a legitimate company to do this. There are lots of reasons a non-legitimate company might want to hide behind privacy services, but I have never heard a good reason for legitimate companies to hide.
Look, a company sending any commercial email is required by law to provide a physical postal address in every email they send. What point is there, then, to hiding addresses in whois records? The only thing it does is make a sender look like a spammer. If a sender is a business, then they need to have a real business address anyway, and that address should be available in their domain registration.
It may seem like a trivial point, it may seem minor, but spammers use domain privacy services to hide the various tendrils of their businesses. They don’t want anyone to be able to tell that domain A is related to domain B is related to domain C. Proxy services let them trivially hide their identities. This is the major business use of privacy protection. Real companies don’t need to hide behind privacy services.
Using domain privacy services make senders look like spammers. One trivial thing that ISPs can do is stop providing FBLs or whitelistings to domains behind privacy services. This will weed out spammers without doing harm to real senders. Certification services can refuse to certify companies that hide their identity. My small contribution to the cause is to refuse to represent any company to an ISP if their domain is behind a privacy service.
Just to be clear, I have no problem with personal, non-business domains using privacy services. There are valid reasons individuals may want to hide their physical location. But businesses? Step up and quit hiding.
On the subject of privacy services, Mickey recently reviewed a court ruling that commented on the legality of using privacy services. The court says:

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TWSD: breaking the law

I tell my clients that they should comply with CAN SPAM (physical postal address and unsubscribe option) even if the mail they are sending is technically exempt. The bar for legality is so low, there is no reason not to.
Sure, there is a lot of spam out there that does not comply with CAN SPAM. Everything you see from botnets and proxies is in violation, although many of those mails do actually meet the postal address and unsubscribe requirements.
One of my spams recently caught my eye today with their disclaimer on the bottom: “This email message is CAN SPAM ACT of 2003 Compliant.” The really funny bit is that it does not actually comply with the law. Even better, the address it was sent to is not published anywhere, so the company could also be nailed for a dictionary attack and face enhanced penalties.
It reminds me of the old spams that claimed they complied with S.1618.

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Suppressing email addresses: it's good for everyone

Every sender, big or small, should have the ability to suppress sending to any particular email address. They must, absolutely, be able to stop sending mail to anyone for any reason. Not only is this a legal requirement in every jursidiction that has laws about email marketing, it’s just good business sense.
What happens when marketers fail to be able to suppress email addresses? At some point they’re going to mail someone who gets annoyed enough with them to make it public that they are too incompetent to run an email program.
This happened to the folks over at spamfighter.com recently. They have been spamming Neil Schwartzman (spamfighter, Executive director of CAUCE North America, Director of Standards and Certification at ReturnPath) since somewhere in 2007. Yes, really, 2007. Neil has asked them politely to stop spamming him. He’s explained he’s not actually using their software. They appear to be incapable of running a suppression list, despite telling him 3 times that they have removed his address.
Showing much more restraint than I would have with a sender who couldn’t stop sending me email, Neil gave them years to fix their process before blogging about his experiences. Instead of fixing their broken process they instead responded to his blog post insisting their mail wasn’t spam because they weren’t sending Viagra mail or 3rd party offers.
We can argue about the definition of opt-in, we can argue about whether registration is permission, we can argue about a lot of things, but when the recipients says “stop sending me email” and a sender says “we’ll stop sending you email” and then fails to actually stop sending email I think the recipient is fully justified in calling the email spam. Sorry spamfighter.com, your process is broken and your inability to fix it 2 years after the brokenness was brought to your attention does not give anyone a good impression.
Every email sender should have the ability to stop sending mail to recipients. If that’s not currently possible with your technology, it should be a very high development priority.

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