On Mon, 29 Apr 2013, Alex wrote:
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 apologize if I was unclear. What I meant by "confirmed" is that the
newsletter sends an email to the user's email address saying "A
subscription to this newsletter was requested, please reply/click this
link to confirm the subscription. If you do nothing, you will not receive
the newsletter" - what spammers call "double opt-in" in an attempt to make
this seem somehow an onerous burden rather than the minimum acceptable
behavior.
If a newsletter starts dropping into your mailbox without your explicitly
confirming they have permission to send it to you, your subscription has
*not* been confirmed and the newsletter should be treated as spam,
regardless of whether they give you a way to unsubscribe.
If the user *did* subscribe and confirm their subscription to the
newsletter, and later starts complaining that they are being spammed
rather than going through the unsubscribe process, *that's* the time to
get out the cluebat.
These bulk emailers may have been opt-in,
Beware using that term. What spammers (and many bulk emailers) mean by
"opt in" is that *somebody* requested a given email address be added to
the mailing list. Whether or not that somebody is actually the *owner* of
that email address matters little to them.
--
John Hardin KA7OHZ http://www.impsec.org/~jhardin/
jhar...@impsec.org FALaholic #11174 pgpk -a jhar...@impsec.org
key: 0xB8732E79 -- 2D8C 34F4 6411 F507 136C AF76 D822 E6E6 B873 2E79
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