PSE-L(_at_)mail(_dot_)professional(_dot_)org (Professional Software
Engineering) went on and on:
At 09:44 2002-02-26 -0500, peter(_at_)compclass(_dot_)com did say:
I understand from other responses that this puts the responsibility
on the sender but I don't have time to keep aggresively updating my
filters.
Then make use of one of the spam filter packages out there such as
SpamAssassin or similar. Just update it every so often. That's *FAR*
better than requiring other people to justify themselves to you.
People just don't like the idea of justifying themselves, do they?
I autoreply to Bccs and to people who send to a particular address I use
for posting where I fully expect the bottom feeders to pick it up. All they
have to do is *not* BCC me for cryin' out loud in case 1, or in case 2
responsd with the keyword from the autoresponse on the subject line.
People don't like the idea of justifying themselves. I don't care. If I
want mail, I say so. If I don't you can still reach me.
People want to send me their pictures of their dog and their funny jokes.
What if I am using a public terminal, or a PDA, or have to pay for
bandwidth? Ho ho, so funny. I think they can take the time to type my
address on the To: or CC: line, thank you very much. My real friends are
capable of that level of consideration. But people don't want to justify
themselves; they don't even want to let the recipient know who else they
sent this trash to.
I have to be a little more careful about mailing lists, obviously. I'm
careful about subscribing to them, and open a hole in the wall before I do.
You know what bugs me about mailing lists? Nonstandard headers. Oh, maybe
there are some standards, maybe not; but "in the field" you won't see much
consistency. People who run mailing lists (including this one) don't even
provide a sample of the headers on the web page where you subscribe. If
there were some standards, presumably the gentleman who puts out qmail
would enforce them, causing enough pain and confusion that people would at
least attempt to follow them (sendmail of course would do its level best to
deliver anyhow).
Who gets the bounces? 98% of them are bounced again by daemons (because the
addresses are invalid). That means that, along with the highlighting of
probable spam that I do I see spam,bounce,spam,bounce... in my inbox; makes
it really easy to deal with. When something's flagged as a possible spam
and doesn't have a bounce right after it, I may take a look at it; it's
usually spam.
Once in a blue moon, I get a loop. That's because somebody's autoresponder
doesn't preserve my X-Loop header. As often as not they petulantly declare
that X-Loop isn't in the RFCs. I say, who cares? Obviously they don't
because they didn't take any measures to prevent the loop on their end. In
the last decade this has happened with two prospects; I decided on the spot
that I didn't want their business.
Once in a while somebody who works for an existing client decides to BCC
me. They get the bounce, and that's usually the end of it. Sometimes they
ask me how they can send me BCCs, and I ask them what they need to BCC me
for; if it's a legitimate purpose, I poke a hole for them like I would for
a mailing list. I've never lost an existing customer because of this
policy; as often as not, sending this stuff is against the policy of the
company they work for. But I don't report them, and they don't send me any
more stuff. If you've got customers who insist on sending you this stuff, I
pity you; I'd like to suggest that perhaps you should find some new
customers, but perhaps that's not possible.
Having said that "it works for me", I'd be opposed to somebody doing it on
my behalf; and if I had to administer a mail system I'd be very reticent to
assume the responsibility for doing so. Seems to me that that would be more
of a burden than simply flagging the stuff and putting it in a different
mailbox or whatever, and maintaining an appropriate spam filter. People
have to assume some of this responsibility themselves; unfortunately,
that's the way it is. As an administrator of any system, one of the things
you have to do is set appropriate expectations for service; if you fail to
do that, the users will have you chasing your tail from when you wake up to
when you drop from exhaustion. I do not want unsolicited personal spam from
anyone, clients and prospects included, who hasn't established themselves
as a personal friend first; that's an expectation I set. It's an
expectation which has allowed me to keep the same e-mail address for lo
these many years, rather than abandoning it when it gets spammed out (where
does that fit into your perfect world?).
(Yes, there is a special "greenlist", too. That's usually based on who the
sender is, but I've greenlisted keywords on occasion too.)
Those who can, do; those who can't use the delete key a lot... and
erroneously delete important messages once in a while, or spend a lot of
time reading spam.
--
Fred Morris
m3047(_at_)inwa(_dot_)net
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