The Poop Patrol

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If you live in a closed ...
such as a condo or ... you know what the term "Poop Patrol" means.
These areyour self ... ...
who are ... on the alertfor any If you live in a closed community, such as a condo or residentialcommunity, you know what the term "Poop Patrol" means.
These areyour self appointed protectors, who are constantly on the alertfor any infraction of the rules of their community. Hang a towelon your railing - bang - you're busted.
If you own a pet, youcan be sure that the "Poop Patrol" is watching you.Well, the Internet has its' own version of the "Poop Patrol", andanyone who actively sends email over the Internet, has probablyrun into them at least once. This is a fact of life.
I had myservice canceled for an infraction I didn't even commit. AnotherNewsletter had published my "Internet Tip of the Week" column,and a "Patroller" sent a barrage of emails to every ISP he couldfind in the Newsletter - my email address was at the end of thearticle, and he sent numerous complaints to my ISP.
I wascancelled, and although the account was ultimately reinstated, I learned a big lesson.There are some people whose "holy grail" is reporting people asspammers, and I guess the only kick they get out of life, is toget the service of one of their "targets" discontinued. Theyseem to get pleasure out of hurting other people.
I call thesepeople the "Poop Patrol" of the Internet.Face it - professional spammers do not use their local ISP. Theyrent a virtual server for about a hundred bucks a month, forgethe return address, and spam to their hearts content.
Only rankamateurs spam using their ISP. You know them - they are theones who send you an email and show you the address of everyonethey sent it to.So how do you protect yourself if you do send out bulk email suchas a Newsletter? While there is no magic formula, there aresteps you can take to protect yourself.First - never, ever (and that is a very long time) send out bulkemail from your primary ISP, especially if you have web pages ontheir server.
If they cancel your service, you will also loseall your web pages.Second - provide a way to easily allow people to removethemselves from your mailing list. This is where a List Servercomes in very handy.
If you notify the people who are on yourlist how to unsubscribe, this more or less takes you off thehook.My adds and drops go to a specific return address. If someonedoesn't read the instructions to find out how to be removed fromthe list, and sends me a note, I will try to manually removethem.
But, if the address they are writing from, is not the onethey are subscribed with, and they don't tell you what theaddress is, it is impossible to remove them.Don't figure that if they were smart enough to subscribe to yourlist, they are smart enough to remove themselves from it. Youmust understand that there are people who won't read theinstructions, and will simply fire off a nasty note.
If they arenot immediately removed, they may also fire off complaints toyour ISP. If there are remove instructions given, you will mostlikely be on safe ground if they didn't follow them.I use several ISP's when sending out my Newsletters.
I use oneaddress to handle "bounces" (email addresses which are not valid)and remove requests, and a different one for email to me. Thisallows for an automatic processing of the "bounces" and removerequests, and if a person wishes to write me, they can.
Ifsomeone writes me and asks to be removed, I will take thenecessary steps to try to accommodate them, but it may not alwaysbe possible if they don't provide the proper address.If you do get a notification from your ISP that a complaint wasmade, do not ignore it. Tell them how people can subscribe andunsubscribe from your list.
Keep records of unsubscribe requeststhat were made that you could not remove. If it was someone thatdid ask to be removed with an address that was not subscribed,send your ISP a copy of the note you sent them.
It is also agood idea to send your ISP a copy of the mailing they complainedabout.As I said at the beginning of this article, "there is no magicformula", but if you exercise reasonable procedures, you shouldnot run into too many problems from the "Poop Patrol". Article Tags: Poop Patrol Source: Free Articles from ArticlesFactory.com .