Hi, >> What if it's a "semi-legit" newsletter that user has not subscribed into? > > A newsletter that does unconfirmed subscriptions is not even *semi*-legit. > > Treat them as spam. Write a rule for any identifying headers, and report > them to URIBL.
I asked about this issue on the list some time ago, and there wasn't much feedback at the time. First, asking the users to look in the headers (or body) to find an unsubscribe link, and telling them to make sure it's "confirmed" just doesn't happen. They just want it blocked. I've recently thought of an idea where I'd like to collect a list of as many of the bulk emailers and combine them into a set of rules to just automatically raise their score. These bulk emailers may have been opt-in, but the newsletters proliferate like rats, and even the best bulk emailers send newsletters that are just marketing junk that no one wants, or intentionally would choose to receive. I'm training them with bayes, and it's working to an extent, and I don't want to just outright block constantcontact or verticalresponse, but there is an increasingly large amount of marketing junk my user's are complaining about, and I don't know what to do. One of the things I'm finding is things like newsletters marketed for Citrix products, for example, sent by some unknown marketer, yet contain legitimate unsubscribe links in the body for citrix.com. So far I have about twenty domains (vresp.com, ccmail.com, etc) but haven't done anything further yet. Does anyone think this is potentially a good idea? Perhaps there are some characteristics with these bulk messages that would be good to use in forming a few meta rules? Thanks, Alex
