Re: Spam strategy

I'll chime in here and add my 2cents; I agree with Bob and Judy about
this. Last summer after an article I wrote was published in Lenswork, I
got about 50 very nice letters from people about the article, and tried
to answer each of them. That was the first time I'd run into this kind
of filter that gives you a rude e-mail saying you have to jump through
all these hoops to send a letter back to someone; there were five or six
of these in the lot.

Seems to me that such a routine should at least have a feature that
allows the program to automatically register any address that the person
subscribing to the service writes to. So that if someone writes to me,
my address should be recognized in their spam filter.

At any rate, when I clicked on the URL for one of these, I was asked to
fill out a form with my name, address, I don't know what all, and to
write a little essay specifying why I thought my mail was important
enough to be delivered to its destination. I started wondering what
would be a good enough answer.... would "he wrote to me and I wrote
back" be an acceptable answer? I decided it was all too much trouble; I
didn't complete the form and at that point I decided to adopt a general
policy to not bother to write to people who subscribe to these kinds of
services.

Yes, good to "hear your voice" again, Judy.
Katharine Thayer

Judy Seigel wrote:
>
> On Wed, 11 May 2005, Bob Maxey wrote:
> > I am not a list cop and I do not control anything. Just a comment from yet
> > another person that will not care to read your messages if we are forced
> > into jumping through hoops. It is not the way to prevent spam. Simply deal
> > with spam using the "del" key and please do not force us to visit the web to
> > gain approval.
>
> Absolutely, I agree 200%. What's especially irritating (to me) is getting
> a complicated e-mail of inquiry about Post-Factory, spending 20 minutes of
> my remaining time on earth crafting a custom reply, then having the thing
> bounce back with an "invitation" to go to a longlonglong URL to ask
> *permission* to address the delicate soul who has inquired -- as happened
> again this week.
>
> I figure if someone sends an inquiry without thinking to "register" the
> relevant address, they may not, after all, be Ideal Reader. Plus, for me
> at least, going to said URL is not just a matter of click click ... I do
> normal e-mail on a terminal emulator & log on in seconds. But an
> "internet" URL (also attachments, and photographs!!!) requires a Remote
> Access connection via dial up -- a relatively extreme production, which I
> avoid so far as possible.
>
> Subsequent list comments on Maxey's statement above imply that it's
> "either/or," that is, get buried in Spam or put up this kind of filter.
> It is not. There are VERY effective Spam filters, for instance Spam
> Assassin on the Post-Factory server, and another, name forgotten, on the
> Panix server. Both of these are supplied by the ISP with no cost or
> trouble to me. Both are available as a folder that you can sort through at
> your leisure, that is, run down the directory in case there's a name you
> recognize, or forgot to register. I have one of each -- and in the
> Post-Factory server, which I check every 3 or 4 days (usually finding 100
> or so spams) I have NEVER YET, in over a year, found one that was NOT
> spam.
>
> Why aol can't manage something similar is another mystery of the spheres.
>
> True, the stray spam does slip through into my regular mail, but so what?
> I used to get 25 to 50 a day. Today when I logged on to Panix (after 3
> days offline) there were 7 spams in my mail queue. I, for one, can deal
> with that.
>
> Judy
Received on Thu May 12 14:45:37 2005