CAUCE

Confirmed Opt-In is not Dead After All

by Neil Schwartzman

For some time now I have contended that Confirmed Opt-in, 'COI' is dead, or at the very least on life support. It certainly is not a major factor in the continued relation between sender and receiver; that relies far more heavily on the ongoing and historical reputation of the mailer and the mail stream. Proof of permission doesn't scale; end-users complain all the time, but it is rare if not impossible for a receiving site to request proof when an end-user complains, then the receiver complains to the sender, and the sender says that permission was actually in place. Much more commonly, the sender unsubscribes the address and moves on, permission or not, since the subscriber doesn't want the mail any more.

But then, I recently had two eye-opening experiencee as to exactly why Confirmed Opt-in is critical to the email whole equation.

As you probably know, CAUCE recently had some major news, we announced it here on our website and we also did a mailing to our membership lists. One email resulted in someone challenging us on their subscription — the subscriber instisted he had never signed up to our lists and was pretty upset.

We pulled out his Confirmed, "Double" Opt-in record, showed him the date and time he asked to be subscribed, and the time and date he clicked through on the confirmation mail.

I bought/rented a list of Opt-in names, but now I'm being accused of spamming. Why? What should I do different?

If somebody offers to sell you a bulk list of 'opt-in' email addresses, you're almost certainly getting a spam list. What you're going to receive from them is a list of addresses belonging to people who have not agreed to receive messages, or a list that's been mailed to so often that it is no longer useful to other mailers. To put it another way, whatever they might have opted into, it wasn't mail from you.

As a sender, it is your job to confirm that your list is truly opt-in. Where do you begin? Doing your homework saves headaches later - headaches driven by poor results, spam complaints, blacklisting, wasted time and money, and bad PR. In other words this is not a responsibility you can shirk by saying 'I have no way of knowing how accurate or authentic these names are' or 'They guy from the list rental organization says it's opt-in'. It's your responsibility to know about the names your communicating with. Sending unsolicited commercial email will bring a number of problems to your email program, to mention a few; Major DNSBL listings and ISP blocking, recipient complaints, and a negative sender reputation

Why does my government allow spam?

Governments are catching up with spam laws, but sadly many have not legislated this yet. Canada has no spam laws, even though the "Federal Anti-Spam Task Force" recommended this in 2004. Country specific laws can be found at Spamlaws.com

The United States has legislated email with CAN-SPAM (Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing Act) in 2003. This law require several elements of a commercial email message conform to a minimum set of standards. Here is a rundown of the law's main provisions:

• It bans false or misleading header information
• It prohibits deceptive subject lines
• It requires that your email give recipients an opt-out method, which must be processed within 10 days of receiving by the sender
• It requires that commercial email be identified as an advertisement and include the sender's valid physical postal address

Unsolicited bulk e-mail that complies with these rules is legal under CAN SPAM, even though such UBE is widely considered to be spam.

The Internet community is also working on several global initiatives to help stem the tide of unsolicited commercial email, CAUCE recently endorsed the Senders BCP published by MAAWG, written mostly by Email Service Providers with input from ISPs, Corporations and RBL providers.

Why does my ESP/ISP allow spam?

Most ESPs and ISPs have policies in place that prevent their users from sending spam, however not all of these policies are correctly enforced. Many times spam activity continues because there are no complaints being sent to an ESPs or ISP, or these complaints are being ignored by the abuse desk staff.

If your ESP or ISP is supporting spam by playing ignorant, you may begin to have issues with your own email. Moving to a new provider that has a strong anti-spam policy is your best option.

Is there any way to make them stop?

There are several initiatives in progress to help with this growing problem, these include;

• Email authentication and reputation services
• ISP filtering of inbound and outbound email, port 25 (mail transport service) blocking
• The Messaging Anti-Abuse Working Group (MAAWG) has ISPs, anti-spam solutions and Large Commercial email marketers working together to build best practices and share information on spam issues.

Why do they keep sending me this garbage?

Spammers continually send email with different subjects and offers in order to entice users to buy their products. Many of these products are; fakes and knock-offs or potentially dangerous to the purchaser. Due to the low cost of sending spam, even with the extremely low response rate, spammers can make a significant profit fairly easily. The more emails a spammer can send, the greater his profit while the cost remains nearly zero.

Spammers rarely honor opt-out requests. It's work for them to process opt-outs, sending less spam doesn't cost them any less, and who knows, you might be one of the suckers who responds next time.

Where does spam come from? Why?

Unlike direct mail or telemarketing, email spam has very low per-message cost. In many cases spammers have almost no cost because they are sending email through other people's computers that are infected with a worm or virus, which causes others to bear the cost of their messaging. As a result, despite extremely low response rates, spammers can make a profit fairly easily. The more emails a spammer can send, the greater his profit while the cost remains nearly constant.

According to the information gathered by the Spamhaus Project, most of the systems used for sending spam are located in the United States. See the top 10 list here.

Welcome to CAUCE North America

CAUCE North America Debuts - New anti-spam advocacy group combines CAUCE Canada and CAUCE US

Montreal and Los Angeles, June 06, 2007 -- Neil Schwartzman, chair of CAUCE Canada, and Scott Hazen Mueller, chair of CAUCE U.S., today announced the formation and launch of CAUCE North America to build upon the work of their previously separate organizations.

CAUCE North America is now the premiere anti-spam advocacy group, representing the interests of the millions of Internet users in North America. The combined group will work towards equitable solutions for the original threat posed by spam since the 20th century, and Spam 2.0, the 21st-century blended threat posed by the merging of spam, viruses, phishing and malware.

"When we launched the original CAUCE, back in 1997," said Scott Hazen Mueller, founder of CAUCE U.S. and now President of CAUCE North America, "spam was an isolated problem and it was seen by many as unimportant. Now, spam is part of a multi-pronged assault by various criminal organizations attacking the very basis of trust on the Internet. If this threat is not met soon, users will continue to migrate away from the Internet for their commercial needs."

press contact: press@cauce.org

Tel . +1 303 800 6345

Spam has changed, and so must CAUCE

We were shocked, not so very many years ago, when AOL reported that spam was 30% of their incoming mail. Now, some of the world's largest ISPs report that it's well beyond 80% -- in some cases higher -- and increasing.

Back then we knew who the spammers were, they stayed in one place and thought of themselves as "high volume" email marketers -- but now, the leaders of the email marketing industry know they must respect permission, and can't engage in the spammy behavior of their predecessors. We predicted that a private right of action in civil court would be sufficient to keep those same marketers in line, and now we know that's correct -- but today, much of the spam volume is sent by career criminals and malicious hackers who won't stop until they're all rounded up and put in jail.

CAUCE Accepting New Members

CAUCE North America wishes to announce the launch of a new support program, now featuring many levels of individual and organizational membership for those wishing to actively assist with our important work and goals.

CAUCE actively advocates on behalf of consumers to governments, legislators, law enforcement agencies and industry associations about matters related to the blended threat of spam, viruses and spyware.

Whether you are an individual or an organization of any sort, please consider a CAUCE membership.