Guilty By Association

Yesterday I posted an announcement in the newsletter because I thought that it didn’t go out.

I was WRONG!

The mailing went out but I didn’t get it and neither did anyone else who uses the same ISP as I do for my personal email.

I am really upset by this and I’ll tell you why.

One of the autoresponder services I use to send out the newsletter mailings is DemandMail.com. I have used them for a couple of years and have been very happy with their inexpensive service because they allow me set up an unlimited number of autoresponder accounts for one low monthly fee AND they have fantastic tech support.

When I didn’t think my mailings were going out because I wasn’t getting them or the “mailing complete” messages I wrote tech support. I expected to wait about 24 hours to hear a response but got one in just a couple of hours.

According to them, I wasn’t getting my messages they were sending because my ISP was using Spam Cop. They had sent a message from their service, discovered the problem and had to use a different email account to respond to my trouble request.

I immediately wrote my ISP about the matter and requested they remove Spam Cop from my account. It took them about 4 hours to respond with the following – your trouble ticket has been closed and please send the error message you received so we can forward it to Spam Cop to correct the problem.

How can the trouble ticket be closed when I still have the problem?

What error message?

I, the intended receiver didn’t get an error message. I didn’t get any indication that I wasn’t getting some of my email? I checked my email account to see if they had placed my blocked messages in some special folder but found nothing.

Well, to make this long story longer:

1. I have re-opened the ticket and told them to keep it that way until I find out if there was any error message to my autoresponder service.
2. I have requested the error message from my autoresponder service.
3. I checked into Spam Cop and found that I had to go through Alexa to find their contact information.
4. I have sent Spam Cop an email reporting the problem.
5. I also found out that Spam Cop doesn’t block individual email accounts or filter on words. They block messages according to the IP of the sender. In other words, if you are using an autoresponder or hosting account to send out your mail, your mail may not be getting through if they have your services IP on their blacklist.
6. I also know that Spam Cop doesn’t send the email address of the person reporting spam to the service sending the email. Thus, the autoresponder or hosting service can not request proof of opt-in and can not request that you remove the person from your list. As a result, your account may be canceled even if you could have provided proof that the person had opted-in.
7. I also know that some of the “big” places that offer free email accounts and where we all get a lot of spam – like Yahoo and MSN are not blocked.
8. I know that if you aren’t getting all your email you may not know it. And if you do and try to find those that were blocked, you can’t find it.

There are only 8 people on my list who use the same ISP mailbox that I use. So I know those people won’t get my mailings.

But what about all the others? I have no idea which ISPs use Spam Cop so I have no idea how much of my list is not getting my mail.

Am I upset? YES!!!

I have been found guilty of sending spam to myself and others by someone I don’t know and who doesn’t give me the opportunity to defend myself. I have been blacklisted because of some report by a nameless person who may not even know they complained.

I am guilty by association with a service that provides contact information on every page and has a strict anti-spam policy. I am guilty by association because someone, somewhere reported spam sent by someone using that same service.

Was that person guilty of sending spam? I don’t know.

Was that person allowed to offer proof that they weren’t sending spam? No.

Is that person still using the same service? Probably not and here’s why:
“We get some complaints from SPAM Cop without the complainers email or name so we have no way to remove them from anyone's' list. We have had to delete several accounts from our system because of the heavy handed tactics of SPAM Cop.”

May your day be better than mine,
Susan