[Techtalk] Dealing with allegedly respectable company who send spam

[TraceyC]

On Mon, 2009-11-30 at 19:13 +0000, Jan wrote:


> Whilst I don't particularly want to do anything that will disrupt their 
> business I do want them realise that they are being annoying and would 
> appreciate any advice about how to proceed (ie can I get their marketing 
> domain on a spam blacklist and if so what steps to I need to take?)
> 


Putting them on a blacklist will disrupt their business when their mail
servers are blocked from sending e-mail, including the spam. This is
something I have done when I've found myself in this situation. When a
company fails to respond to polite requests to stop sending spam, as you
have made, then blacklisting is sometimes the only way to get them to
listen. If they are disrupting your e-mail by sending unwanted
commercial messages, and eating your bandwidth, you are not obligated to
feel pity for submitting their spam to blacklist services. They are
ignoring your polite requests and your boundaries, you have no
obligation to be extra polite to them.

The easiest way to submit spam to the blacklist services is through
Spamcop www.spamcop.net. You can sign up for a free account. Then, using
their website, submit the spam with full headers. The site will generate
polite reports with the necessary technical information and the correct
places to complain. If they receive a certain number of complaints about
a particular IP in a given timeframe, it goes on the blacklists.
(I do not work for Spamcop, I use their free service).

To avoid this in the future, I second the suggestion to use throwaway
e-mail addresses for businesses you aren't sure will spam you. You can
search the web, there are a few services which provide one time e-mail
addresses that will forward to your real e-mail account. Good luck :)

Tracey C