5 ms·

> Here they were, a third party with whom we had no agreement, yet they were interfering with our ability to do business (and profiting from it). Well... that'

> Here they were, a third party with whom we had no agreement, yet they were interfering with our ability to do business (and profiting from it). Well... that's an oversimplification. You don't have an agreement, sure, but your recipient has an agreement with them --- your recipient has decided that it's with paying the spam filtering supplier to filter their mail for them. I realise that this doesn't help you, and frankly they don't sound like they're doing their job very well, but it's important to remember that the recipient chose to use their service.

unclebucknasty 11y ago
No. Our recipients had no knowledge of the third party. Instead, their email providers contracted with the third party for filtering services. EDIT: Not sure why it would preclude their liability in any case though. Their customers would be paying to have spam blocked, not emails from legitimate companies with whom they've agreed to do business. If they were blocking these demonstrably legit businesses in error and refused to do anything about it, then their "service" is helping no one, but is damaging those businesses. It is simply a risk inherent to their business model and it is absolutely their responsibility to address it.
- david-given 11y ago
  Right... their email providers, which they are paying to provide email from them. The money chain is still at your recipient's end. Note that I'm not suggesting you did the wrong thing here --- I don't see anything else you could have done. I'm just saying that pinning the entirety of the blame on the third party provider is wrong. ... Having read the rest of the thread: I'm sorry to say but the reason why you're having so much difficulty, and the reason why you're getting hostile replies here, is that as an email advertiser people are going to automatically assume you're in the wrong. You are on the edge of an astonishingly dirty industry, and anyone who works in email has been so burnt by the Neptune-sized tidal wave of diarrhoea that is spam is likely to spit in your face before you have the chance to explain that you are not, in fact, a spammer. And chances are that they won't actually care. To a most people, email + advertising = spam. I really don't have anything to suggest. I have written antispam software, and I've read some of the forums of both sides, and frankly I don't know who's scarier.
  - unclebucknasty 11y ago
    >* pinning the entirety of the blame on the third party provider is wrong.* We disagree. It's certainly understandable that the third-party might raise false-positives. However, what is wrong is when a business can demonstrate that it is not engaged in such practices, yet the third-party provider still refuses to cease penalizing them. So, who else's fault would it be? Mine? The customer? The customer's e-mail provider who contracts with the third-party? Some unrelated spammer who makes the third-party's business really difficult to execute well? I don't think so. The third-party is in the business of profiting from the proper classification of senders. It's their risk and responsibility to fix these problems. >the reason why you're getting hostile replies here. Well, I didn't think the replies were particularly hostile. A little misguided maybe, but not hostile. Anyway, I think you're also jumping to a lot of conclusions and, frankly, not reading very carefully. Firstly, we're not an "email advertiser" in the sense you're implying. We're a member-based site with a newsletter, into which only members double opt-in out of their interest in our service. The ads I referenced are occasional sponsorships by businesses that are also highly-relevant to our service and members' interests. But, we don't just push ads and we follow all rules regarding proper email management. Secondly, our content was never the issue anyway. As I mentioned, the issue was that we were falsely claimed to have been sending to honeypot addresses and/or defunct addresses. I enumerated the reasons why we knew this to be in error. I hate spam as much as anyone. In fact, my reaction to it is probably borderline irrational. But, there are legitimate businesses with legitimate customers between whom e-mail is a mutually beneficial channel. There's nothing "scary" about that. And, my initial point was in response to an ancestor comment, wherein I agreed that certain "anti-spam" practices make it far too difficult for those who use the channel properly and respectfully.
    - Asbostos 11y ago
      How about let your members keep missing their emails. If they really want them, encourage them to sort out the problem with their email provider which is apparently failing to do its job? Since the recipients are the ones who choose to receive it, then they're also the ones to be upset when something goes wrong - especially since it's caused by their choice of an unreliable email provider. I use email for a slightly more spammy purpose (double opt in but mainly to promote sales to existing users) so I wouldn't be able to make this claim if it happened to me - my recipients won't notice if they don't get my email and many won't care. I have to deal with these problems too, usually by manually asking the blacklister to unblacklist me, which they seem to do.

unclebucknasty 11y ago

No. Our recipients had no knowledge of the third party. Instead, their email providers contracted with the third party for filtering services. EDIT: Not sure why it would preclude their liability in any case though. Their customers would be paying to have spam blocked, not emails from legitimate companies with whom they've agreed to do business. If they were blocking these demonstrably legit businesses in error and refused to do anything about it, then their "service" is helping no one, but is damaging those businesses. It is simply a risk inherent to their business model and it is absolutely their responsibility to address it.

david-given 11y ago
Right... their email providers, which they are paying to provide email from them. The money chain is still at your recipient's end. Note that I'm not suggesting you did the wrong thing here --- I don't see anything else you could have done. I'm just saying that pinning the entirety of the blame on the third party provider is wrong. ... Having read the rest of the thread: I'm sorry to say but the reason why you're having so much difficulty, and the reason why you're getting hostile replies here, is that as an email advertiser people are going to automatically assume you're in the wrong. You are on the edge of an astonishingly dirty industry, and anyone who works in email has been so burnt by the Neptune-sized tidal wave of diarrhoea that is spam is likely to spit in your face before you have the chance to explain that you are not, in fact, a spammer. And chances are that they won't actually care. To a most people, email + advertising = spam. I really don't have anything to suggest. I have written antispam software, and I've read some of the forums of both sides, and frankly I don't know who's scarier.
- unclebucknasty 11y ago
  >* pinning the entirety of the blame on the third party provider is wrong.* We disagree. It's certainly understandable that the third-party might raise false-positives. However, what is wrong is when a business can demonstrate that it is not engaged in such practices, yet the third-party provider still refuses to cease penalizing them. So, who else's fault would it be? Mine? The customer? The customer's e-mail provider who contracts with the third-party? Some unrelated spammer who makes the third-party's business really difficult to execute well? I don't think so. The third-party is in the business of profiting from the proper classification of senders. It's their risk and responsibility to fix these problems. >the reason why you're getting hostile replies here. Well, I didn't think the replies were particularly hostile. A little misguided maybe, but not hostile. Anyway, I think you're also jumping to a lot of conclusions and, frankly, not reading very carefully. Firstly, we're not an "email advertiser" in the sense you're implying. We're a member-based site with a newsletter, into which only members double opt-in out of their interest in our service. The ads I referenced are occasional sponsorships by businesses that are also highly-relevant to our service and members' interests. But, we don't just push ads and we follow all rules regarding proper email management. Secondly, our content was never the issue anyway. As I mentioned, the issue was that we were falsely claimed to have been sending to honeypot addresses and/or defunct addresses. I enumerated the reasons why we knew this to be in error. I hate spam as much as anyone. In fact, my reaction to it is probably borderline irrational. But, there are legitimate businesses with legitimate customers between whom e-mail is a mutually beneficial channel. There's nothing "scary" about that. And, my initial point was in response to an ancestor comment, wherein I agreed that certain "anti-spam" practices make it far too difficult for those who use the channel properly and respectfully.
  - Asbostos 11y ago
    How about let your members keep missing their emails. If they really want them, encourage them to sort out the problem with their email provider which is apparently failing to do its job? Since the recipients are the ones who choose to receive it, then they're also the ones to be upset when something goes wrong - especially since it's caused by their choice of an unreliable email provider. I use email for a slightly more spammy purpose (double opt in but mainly to promote sales to existing users) so I wouldn't be able to make this claim if it happened to me - my recipients won't notice if they don't get my email and many won't care. I have to deal with these problems too, usually by manually asking the blacklister to unblacklist me, which they seem to do.