Spam ignorance from NPR
Wednesday, December 4th, 2002NPR’s John Ydstie did this interview with a spammer, allowing her to trot out the same tired lies that all the spammers tell. Here’s my irate response to NPR:
John Ydstie’s piece on spam was woefully inadequate. Apparently he only talked to spammers in researching the piece. Unfortunately spammers are, as a rule, notorious liars.“Permission-based marketing” is a misnomer. You can’t buy an opt-in list. If you bought the list, by definition, nobody opted in to your list. You took a FORMERLY opt-in list and used it for a purpose not agreed to by anyone on the list.
The spammer trots out the standard lie that “anyone can unsubscribe.” It can be demonstrated, and had been demonstrated over and over, that spammers use their so-called “unsubscribe” address not to DELETE email addresses, but rather to CONFIRM email addresses. Try this simple experiment: create an email account that nobody knows about. Don’t tell anyone about it and don’t email anyone from it. Then attempt to unsubscribe that “virgin” address from any spammer’s list. Watch the spam start rolling in to your new, “unsubscribed” account.
Betterly claims, as all spammers to, that they don’t send out sex-related or illegal emails. SOMEbody keeps sending me bestiality porn ads and penis enlargement schemes, daily, but none of the prominent spammers will admit to it. Hmm.
SpamCop, in particular, is chastised for not letting spammers “confront” complainers. Spammers really want to know who the complainers are. Sometimes they want to retaliate against complainers, by forging the complainer’s address on the From line of their spams, provoking thousands of angry complaints (a tactic known as a “Joe Job”). Mostly they want to “listwash,” that is, remove complainers from the list. That way the spammer can continue to spam, usually in violation of the Acceptable Use Policy of her Internet service provider, while squelching complaints. But the idea of complaining isn’t to edit the mailing list, it’s to get service providers to enforce their AUP and stop the spamming from their networks.
Questions John Ydstie should have asked Betterly:
- Why is spamming grounds for cancellation of service at every reputable Internet service provider?
- Why do spammers always forge the From header in their emails?
- Why do ISPs who shelter spammers go bankrupt so often?
- Why do so many spammers have serious criminal records?
Some basic reading for any journalist who wants to do a feature on spam:
I also recommend a counter-interview with Steve Linford, a prominent anti-spammer.
