In message <p04320403b56e18dcc19e@[209.239.169.197]>,
Chuq Von Rospach <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>Now while I support the RBL in theory, in practice, I have issues
>with it (because, among other things, I know of too many cases,
>including one I was indirectly involved in, where they tend to shoot
>first and ask questions when the lawyers call), and I don't run it on
>my machines. I now find it's irrelevant whether or not I run it;
>worse, if someone decides they want to "get" me, or any other
>downstream customer of above.net, they can attack us via the RBL.
>
>In fact, today I had to remote access into work to access a web site
>of a company to unsubscribe from a mailing list I was subscribed to
>at home, because the mailing list was on an RBLed site, and I
>couldn't access them via any protocol from home. I know that company
>pretty well, and it doesn't spam, except under very tight-@ss
>definitions of spam, but to put it bluntly, one or two tight-@ss can
>get you loaded into the RBL...
Whatsa matter Chuq? Did some of your pals who are just as obstinate
as you about refusing to secure their mailing lists run up against this?
http://www.mail-abuse.org/rbl/candidacy.html#OriginationNow
>... The opt-out approach violates our fundamental principle:
>all communications must be consensual.
>
>This fundamental principle is sometimes violated by mailing
>lists with inadequate confirmation or verification steps.
>Mailing lists lacking a subscription confirmation step can
>be used to send unsolicited mass e-mail to unwilling recipients.
>A mailing list should include only those who have explicitly
>indicated an interest in receiving messages from the list.
>
>Prudent mailing list management mandates verification of all
>subscription requests before mailings commence. Many well-
>meaning list managers have found themselves in the spamming
>business when they don't confirm subscriptions. Please review
>Basic Mailing List Management Principles for Preventing Abuse
>for additional expectations and best current practices regarding
>proper mailing list management.
When are you going to get it through your thick skull that if Company XYZ
spams me and then says ``Oh gosh! We're sorry! Somebody ELSE must have
signed you up maliciously via our web site.'' there is quite simply NO WAY
for me or anyone else... other that the company itself... to determine
reliably if this statement/excuse, offered by the company, is a lie or not?
REAL spammers say this exact thing ALL OF THE TIME.
But when YOU say it, I and the other people you've spammed are just
supposed to blindly believe it, right?
What you don't understand, and what you apparently will NEVER understand,
is that from THIS side of the wire, what the REAL spammers have told me,
repeatedly, (i.e. "not our fault") and what you, and Apple have told me
when YOU and Apple spammed me are EXACTLY identical, AND that I have no
more reason to believe it when Apple says it than I do when any ordinary
garden variety sleezbag selling XXX porno or swamp land in Florida says it.
Give me one good reason why I should believe that when Apple spammed me
recently it WASN'T just an intentional, premeditated, and concious spamming
of my mailbox on the part of Apple. Just one.
You can't do it. All you can say is ``Oh Apple is a Big and Reputable
company, and we would never do THAT!''
But how do *I* know you would never do that? How can I possibly know to
a 100% certainty that some new-hire clown in Apple's marketing department
wouldn't think to himself one day ``Hey! I can use the Internet and just
blast out this message to EVERYBODY!''
The answer is clear. I certainly DO NOT have any way of knowing for sure
if your lame excuses that ``Oh gee! Some malicious person must have forged
your e-mail address onto our web site signup form!'' are really truthful
or not. Apple certainly WOULD NOT be the first large or well-known
company to try dipping their big toe into the spamming cesspool.
You just object to the fact that on the Internet now, because of spamming
and other such shenanigans, people and companies are now being held
*accountable* for what they do and how they do it, AND it is clear that
you aren't happy that that you, Apple, IBM, Intel, General Motors,
Proctor & Gamble, and the rest of the Fortune 500 are ALL being held
to the SAME single standard as we now hold the real out-and-out low-life
slug spammers to... i.e. no mail without PERMISSION.
And why does this make you unhappy? Because you think that you're
better than everybody else. You're the worst sort of elitist snob.
You think that you, and Apple, and your other greedy and self-serving
pals at other sites who, like you, are also running mailing lists with-
out any confirmation on them, should be exempt from the general rules
now being applied to everybody else. Why? Because you're "special".
Get over yourself. You're not that special. In fact, as far as MY mailbox
is concerned, you and Apple are just as bad as any other spammers.
You place YOUR short term revenue well above MY privacy in your list
of priorities, and thus, you run your mailing lists wide open, thus
denying any objective independent outside observer any clear basis
on which to determine if you/Apple are just plain spamming or not.
You don't want the rest of the world to be able to clearly detemine
if you/Apple are spamming or not. OK. Fine. Given that, I, and other
people that you have sent unsolicited commercial mail to have every
right to just throw up our hands and say that any commercial mail that
Apple sends, without being requested, is, by default, "spam", and that
we can reach no other conclusion that this because YOU have made it
impossible to reach any other conclusion.
If you had up-front confirmation on your lists, and if then, Apple just
started sending me jizz out of the blue... as you did recently... then
I would know to a 100% certainty that somebody at Apple was spamming.
And conversely, if you could produce an associated confirmation that I
sent in, explicitly ASKING to be on your list, then I would know that
Apple WASN'T spamming. But because of your intentional LACK of con-
firmation on your mailing lists, all I have is a strong and reasonable
_suspicion_ that Apple has engaged in spamming... a suspicion which
NOBDOY can either prove or dispove to a 100% certainty.
YOU intentionally setup this situation in which Apple's spamming can
neither be 100% proven nor 100% disproven (via your mailing list admin
policies), and given that, you should expect people to take note of
your deliberate obfsucation of the facts and to conclude that Apple
really doesn't want anybody to know for sure if Apple is spamming or
not. And if Apple wants that, it can only be because Apple *is* spamming.
In short, YOU are responsible for it if people logically conclude that
Apple *is* spamming.
In short, you made your bed. Now lie in it.
>... and then you're in deep. Especially if
>you're downstream of above.net, and can't get to the RBL sites to
>find out what's going on or work on resolving it... Sites on the
>wrong side of this can literally be made to disappear without access
>to fix it.
Apparently you haven't heard yet, so let me be the first to tell you.
There's this fellow named "Bell". He's invented this wonderful new
gaget that allows you to speak into a box and actually have someone
at some remote and perhaps distant location HEAR your voice, which is
transmitted via electrical signals over copper wire.
Look into it.
(You might also want to investigate this new-fangled thing called a
WHOIS server that allows you to find the contact phone numbers for
other Internet sites. DUH!)
>I'm not thrilled at this. I think blocking ALL traffic based on RBL
>data is excessive (I'd be unhappy if they blocked SMTP, but I can
>live with that), especially since the RBL is sometimes unreliable,
Objection. Heresay evidence. Please confine your comments to the facts.
>and their definition of bad-stuff isn't universally accepted...
That's 100% true. An awful lot of people, myself included, feel that
the MAPS people are far far too lenient in the way they often let
Fortune 1000 companies off without any disiplinary action, even when
they (the companies) are doing stuff that many netizens consider to
be "bad stuff".
>I'm bringing it up here because I ran into it when subscribed members
>of my lists started having mail back up for no reason...
"Subscribed members" like me for example??
What exactly do you want... a signed affidavit saying that I *never*
asked to be on any of the several Apple mailing lists that you allowed
me to be added to without my request or consent?
-- rfg
