September 25, 2002
Blog Entry

GotMarketing opt-in list tests won't stop spammers

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GotMarketing announced last week that they will be running all uploaded lists through a variety of tests to determine whether the list might not be an opt-in list.



Since this is being done with software (and software follows rules), there are a few ways that come immediately to mind:



  • Compare uploaded list to CD of "email marketing addresses," which someone at GotMarketing purchased from... hmmmmm

  • Look for what might be a dictionary attack, where email addresses that have a high probability of being valid (john@aol.com, john1@aol.com, john2@aol.com, etc) are all on the list

  • Authenticate all the email addresses as they are uploaded, and if too many are invalid, then there's a good possibility that this is an old or bad list

  • Look for too many webmaster@, info@, and support@ addresses on the list, indicating it was harvested by a spider




Clearly, this is a good thing for GotMarketing clients if it catches any potential spammers or even anyone trying to mail to an old list. If recipients of the mailing complain because they don't remember opting in ages ago, then GotMarketing's sending IP address could be blacklisted.



Will this really do any good?



No.



Spammers don't use commercial services at pennies a message when they can buy software to do this from home for $40.


The kind of spam that's still going to get through is mail from a sales rep who types in the email addresses of everyone he met at a trade show or mail from a company that appends their existing customer file and adds all those names to its list without the consent of the customers.

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