Not really. I get spam complaints all the time for mail from lists
that I know perfectly well that they signed up for and confirmed.
"Oh, I don't want that any more." For the ones that aren't totally
redacted, my setup turns them into unsubs so they don't get any more
mail for that particular list, but I don't think it's fair to count
mail as spam if it depends on reading the recipient's mind in
real-time.
Isn't that perilously close to saying that if they decided something
in the past, they're not allowed to change their mind?
Of course not. You can change your mind all you want, but you can't
expect me to know that you have done so until you tell me. So if the
user unsubs and the mail keeps coming, then it's spam, but if he asked
for it and hasn't asked for it to stop, it's legit.
Testing spam filters is a really, really hard problem, for all the
reasons that people have mentioned, basically that you can't test
without perturbing the system you're testing, and you can't capture
enough state to rerun the same test more than once. So you have to
estimate based on complaint rates from bounces and the like.
Sure is, or nobody would make a big deal about it. I don't agree that
perturbing the system is necessary, however.
Then I have to say that you're not thinking very clearly about the way
that spam filters work. As soon as you do or don't deliver a message,
or delay it by greylisting, or query a DNSBL, or any of a zillion
other things that filters do, you've perturbed the system.
In the end, testing is about making the most of the information
that's actually available.
Well, sure, but it's also about knowing whether your synthetic tests
have any relevance to the real system you're trying to model.
R's,
John
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