Had this sitting around in my drafts folder for over a year now. It still applies, so I’m publishing it now.
It irks me that people sign up for legitimate mailing lists/newsletters, and then when they get a message from that list they perceive to be ‘spam’ – instead of unsubscribing themselves from the list, they click the “OMG ITS SPAM” button in their mail reader.
This kind of practice has made it so that even legitimate double-optin mailing lists don’t work any more.
Maybe the legitimate mailers of the world need to unite and start keeping lists of names and email addresses that have complained about receiving spam from them, but the person complaining really *did* sign up to receive that mail in the first place.
Or, better yet, we should just do away with email altogether.
Real Spam will never, ever go away. Why? Because people are inherently dumb. That is the only reason all the v14gr4, c14|1s, luxury watches, penis enlargement, and other True Spam still exist. Because people respond to it. They click on a link and buy a product advertised in a spam message.
We never read the ‘disclaimers’ or the Terms of Service, or the notice in tiny print at the bottom of the page that says “By signing up for such-and-such mailing list, you AGREE to receive messages from our partners and other third-parties.”
Meaning, as soon as they have your email address, they’re gonna sell it to someone else. So, basically, you should expect to be spammed.
There is far too much of a gray area when it comes to what is, and isn’t, spam. For example, in a ‘reported spam’ message, I found this in the headers:
X-Nonspam: Whitelist
Meaning that, possibly, the person reporting the spam had added the sender’s email address, or their domain, to their whitelist. So they could receive messages from them and they wouldn’t be blocked by their spam filters.
ORLY?