Un-Due Process - Part 1

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"Automatic complaints are sent when a filter whose action isset to Kill after complaining is triggered.
For each filter, youcan configure who the complaint should be sent to. ...
Themessage body is al... "Automatic complaints are sent when a filter whose action isset to Kill after complaining is triggered.
For each filter, youcan configure who the complaint should be sent to. ...
Themessage body is also scanned for e-mail and websiteaddresses. If any addresses are found, they're added to thelists mentioned above."Source: http://www.spamkiller.com/Features.htmlSpamKiller is spam filtering software.
Its purpose is toscan incoming email for spam and take appropriate actionin response to those messages that are identified as spam,such as automatic deletion. Another handy function is thatthe software allows the user to generate automatic andmanual complaint emails which the user then sends to thewebmaster of the offending domain as well as any number ofother recipients such as spam-reporting "authorities" andthe webhost and/or ISP of the person sending the offendingmail.Good idea, you say? Fair enough, you say? Well ...
maybe.Note the quote above: "... The message body is also scannedfor e-mail and website addresses ...
[and] added to the listsmentioned above", i.e. the list of recipients of the complaint.Now, imagine this.
Let's say you're a paying advertiserin my ezine. Your ad contains your URL and emailaddress.
I spam mail my ezine or send it to someonewho forgets they subscribed and they think it's spam.Imagine further that the recipient of my so-called spam usesSpamKiller software (or some similar program). The softwarescans the message header and extracts the relevantinformation about the person who sent the email (me).
Fairenough. Assuming that it IS spam, of course.But the capability of the software doesn't stop there.
Asmentioned in the above quote, it also scans the messageBODY, which contains your ad, and adds your URL andemail address to the list of recipients of the complaint. Theever-diligent big-spam-hunter also makes sure that one ormore spam-reporting "authorities" is copied on thecomplaint.WeStopSpam.net*, diligent, professional organization thatit is, immediately and automatically forwards the complaintto [email protected] and your webhost, an equallydiligent, professional organization shuts your site downfor three days for spamming.You, of course, learn about all of this AFTER the event.Think it can't happen to you? Think again.
It happened tome. This week.
Except I wasn't a paying advertiser in theoffending ezine. The publisher of the ezine reprinted oneof my articles.
The article contained my resource box.The resource box contained my website URL. SpamKilleradded my URL to the list of recipients of the emailcomplaining of the "spam", copied WeStopSpam.net andWeStopSpam.net forwarded the email to [email protected] the result that my webhost, DumbHost*, shut down mysite for what was to be three days.The actual downtime was two hours.
By that time I hadthreatened to sue and they finally got around to actuallyREADING the offending email and realizing that I, in fact,was just an innocent bystander.There is so much that is wrong in this whole scenario thatit's hard to know where to begin.THE PERSON WHO GENERATED THE COMPLAINTLet's start with the individual who generated the complaintin the first place. This is the person using the SpamKillersoftware.
His email to me (which was auto-generated bySpamKiller) contained the following subject line:"UCE Complaint (So-and-So Newsletter*)"The body started out:"I have received the attached unsolicited e-mail fromsomeone at your domain. [He had not.]"I do not wish to receive such messages in the future, soplease take the appropriate measures to ensure that thisunsolicited e-mail is not repeated."--- This message was intercepted by SpamKiller(www.spamkiller.com) ---"The full text of the intercepted message followed.The header of the offending email clearly showed that thesender of the email was someone from so-and-so.com*.Unfortunately, the newsletter concerned contained virtuallynothing but my article interrupted by what I assume werepaid ads.I'm sure that the paid advertisers in this particular ezinealso received a complaint and that WeStopSpam.net receiveda copy and automatically forwarded it to the advertiser'sISP and/or webhost who may or may not have shut themdown, at least temporarily.
(Hopefully not all webhostsare of the calibre of DumbHost when it comes to this sort ofthing.)So, this individual, in his zealousness to rid the Internetof spam, blithely dragged the names and reputations of atleast half a dozen perfectly innocent bystanders through themud.The moral of the story? If you use spam-filtering softwareand the complaint-generating function that comes with it,have the common decency and responsibility to stop andthink about who you're adding to your hitlist. If you don't,and you get it wrong, don't be surprised to find a process-server on your doorstep.SPAM FILTERING SOFTWARETo give SpamKiller its due, it appears to be an excellentproduct.
There's a free 30 day download available athttp://www.spamkiller.com . I downloaded it myself tosee what, if any, cautions are given to users about theneed to make sure that the recipient of the complaint is,in fact, responsible for the email concerned.Well, there is such a caution but it took me a good 45minutes to find it.
The software comes with an excellent,comprehensive built-in help facility. Tucked away at theend of the page on "Sending manual complaints" is thecaution:"Note: SpamKiller does not check that the loadedaddresses are appropriate for the selected message.
Don'tuse a ... complaint unless you are certain that its recipientsare responsible for the spam that you are complainingabout."I would respectfully suggest that this warning be displayedin a more prominent position, coupled with warnings aboutwhat can happen to those who use the software in anirresponsible manner so as to ensnare innocent parties.WESTOPSPAM.NETNow, let's take a look at WeStopSpam.net's role in all ofthis.
In my case, "all" they did was forward a complaintthey had received from our friend in the previous sectionto my webhost. Here's what they sent:"From: [email protected]: [email protected]: oneSubject: [WeStopSpam (http://www.ahbbo.com) id:17846286]So-and-So NewsletterDate: Sun, 25 Feb 2001 23:14:50 -0700 (MST)X-Mailer: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 5.5; Windows 98)via http://westopspam.net/ v1.3.1- WeStopSpam V1.3.1 -This message is brief for your comfort.
...Spamvertised website: http://www.ahbbo.com > http://www.ahbbo.com is 63.249.189.106; Tue, 27 Feb 200102:56:58 GMTOffending message: ..."So, my website was reported for spamming because it was"spamvertised" - lovely butchering of the English language, Imust say. This appears to be a coined term for a website thatis advertised by means of spam.
This means that any payingadvertiser in the ezine itself is treated as a spammer, merelybecause spam was used to send the ezine.I checked out the website of the ezine concerned. It proclaimedthat its 85,000 subscribers were all "opt-in" i.e.
that thesubscribers each took some positive step to have their emailaddress added to the ezine's mailing list.Any reputable advertiser is going to be concerned that therecipients of the ezine are opt-in, so this would have been ofcomfort to the advertisers concerned in this instance.Mind you, when I sent an email to the address displayed atthe publisher's site, it bounced. Maybe this person IS aspammer.
I don't know. And that's the point.
How are yousupposed to know that if you're just the advertiser or articleauthor?But, as far as WeStopSpam.net is concerned, that doesn'tmatter. The mere fact that the advertiser's opportunity wasadvertised in the allegedly spam email is sufficient to makethe advertiser a legitimate target.
In my case, I didn't evenadvertise! The publisher of the ezine ran my article. Howmany of you out there make your articles freely available forreprint?WeStopSpam.net would presumably have you restrict thereprint rights to your articles to only those publishers who youknow for a FACT are sending to a 100% guaranteed opt-in list.How do you do that? Quite simply, you can't.
To expect anysuch thing is just unreal and smacks of an appalling lack ofunderstanding about how the online world works.A reasonable compromise would be if reprint rights weregranted to publishers who send their ezine to an opt-in list. Iwould have no objection to that.
Of course, that wouldn't helpyou with WeStopSpam.org because their policy is to shootfirst and ask questions later ... but wait, on second thought,they don't even ask questions later.
They just shoot.You don't get a "please explain" or anything else. You'reconvicted first and then it's up to you to prove that you'reinnocent.
Of course, by then, the damage is done. ButWeStopSpam.org doesn't care.
I'm sure they see it as just acasualty of war. Source: Free Articles from ArticlesFactory.com .