Blocklists, delisting and extortion

As I’m sure many of you have heard by now there is a new blocklist called ‘nszones.’ This blocklist is apparently stealing data from a number of other publicly accessible blocklists, combining the data and then charging folks for delisting.
This is a scam attempting to extort money from people. The blocklist has no way to actually remove IPs from the parent zones and I’m pretty sure they won’t even remove IPs from their own zones. In this case, the blocklist is clearly a scam, but there are other lists that are actually used by some mailservers that do charge for removal.
No legitimate blocklist will ever expect a listee to pay for delisting. Ever.
I feel very strongly about this. In fact, one of the major blocklists is run off a domain owned by Word to the Wise. Occasionally, I get contacted by folks looking for help with a listing on that list and I will not take them on as a client. I will provide general advice and make sure that they are correctly contacting the blocklist but nothing more.
This is, to my mind, the only ethical thing to do. I don’t even want a hint of impropriety surrounding either myself or the blocklist. Charging money for delisting only feeds the conspiracy theories.
Charging listees for removal (or listing listees so those charges can be a revenue source) is likely to lead to poor quality data and a blocklist that’s not terribly accurate nor effective. Furthermore, if a list operator is unethical or confrontational in their interactions with listees, they’re probably equally unprofessional in their interactions with potential list users. This results in few recipient domains actually using the list to block mail. Lists that charge are not widely used and being listed on them often does not affect email delivery in any appreciable manner.

Related Posts

ESPs leaking email addresses

Two of my tagged email addresses started getting identical pharma spam over the weekend. It is annoying me because I am now getting spam in a mailbox that was previously spam free. The spam is overwhelming the real traffic and I am having to make some decisions about what to do with the email addresses and their associated accounts with the companies I gave them to.
One thing I did notice, though, is that both companies use iContact as their ESP. A cursory check of my other mailboxes shows that none of my other tagged addresses are mailed through iContact. I don’t think it’s very likely that these two individual, unrelated companies made deals with the same spammers to sell address lists at the same time. It’s much more likely that there was a compromise somewhere and address lists were stolen.
Edit: Checked my other account and, likewise, I’m getting the same spam to a 3rd address serviced by iContact. I’ve sent mail to all 3 companies involved and we’ll see how they react.
And, as I was thinking about this, iContact just laid off a bunch of staff about the same time they announced their partnership with Goodmail. Based on past history with companies in this situation, it seems possible this is a disgruntled former employee. I’ve also seen reports from other people noticing spam to addresses given to iContact customers.

Read More

Are you still thinking of purchasing a mailing list?

Last week there was an article published by btobonline promoting the services of a company called Netprospex. Netprospex, as you can probably gather from their company name, is all about the buying and selling of mailing lists. They will sell anyone a list of prospects.
The overall theme of the article is that there is nothing wrong with spam and that if a sender follows a few simple rules spamming will drive business to new heights. Understandably, there are a few people who disagree with the article and the value of the Netprospex lists.
I’ve stayed out of the discussion, mostly because it’s pretty clear to me that article was published solely to promote the Netprospex business, and their point of view is that they make more money when they can convince people to purchase lists from them. Dog bites man isn’t a very compelling news story. Data selling company wants you to buy data from them isn’t either.
They are right, there is nothing illegal about spam. Any sender can purchase a list and then send mail to the addresses on that list and as long as that sender meets the rock bottom standards set out in CAN SPAM. As long as your mail has an opt-out link, a physical postal address and unforged headers that mail is legal. The only other obligation on the sender is to honor any unsubscribe requests within ten days. So, yes, it is legal to send spam.
But legal action isn’t the only consequence of spamming. Today I received the following in an email from a colleague.

Read More

Social network spam

I’ve been seeing more and more social network spam recently, mostly on twitter. In some ways it’s even more annoying than email spam. Here I am, happily having a conversation with a friend and then some spammer sticks their nose in and tweets “myproduct will solve your problem!”
It’s happened twice in the last week.
In most recent example, I was asking my twitter network for some advice on pasta making. I’ve made pasta a few times, but it’s never been exactly right. Not having an Italian grandmother to ask, I was looking for someone with experience in pasta making to answer a few questions. I was having an ongoing conversation with a friend who was helping me troubleshoot my problems. He gave me his recipe to try to see if that would work better.  I thanked him profusely and replied that I would give it a try but probably not tomorrow because it was accounting day and those tend to run late. Someone replied to that tweet suggesting I try some random accounting software to make my accounting easier.
Just… No.
Interjecting product ads in a conversation may be the “acceptable” and “best practice” way to market through social networking. But, I can promise that you’re no better the guy who interrupts conversations at parties so he can hand out business cards for his affiliate program selling herbal male enhancement drugs.
Don’t be That Guy.
Update: Today’s twitter spam was from one of the email accreditation services attempting to sell me their email delivery services.

Read More