Last year I bought a phone for Abhijit, who prefers something small and simple and couldn't find it. I could, at €17, so I ordered one and sent it to him, and have been spammed ever since. Not a problem, I can reject mail faster than the spammers can photoshop boobs for their pictures.

But today I received a friendly message pointing out that they've been unable to send me important mail, and would I please take corrective action. Reading, it became clear that they use VERP, and therefore don't know anything about the rejection. Their VERP software is told about, and ignores —

1. the rejection's machine-readable reason code (5.7.1 in this case — The sender is not authorized to send to the destination),
2. the rejecter's identity (the addressee in my case),
3. the rejecter's human-readable message (Bitte kein Spam) and
4. everything else except my email address.

VERP is supposed to be the state of the art? How can anyone possibly think so?

Blue Hornet delivers innovative email marketing solutions that combine powerful data management tools with proven lifecycle messaging techniques. Let me see. (more…)

Canter & Siegel posted a few thousand spams (the famous green card spams), probably helped by someone with imagination and technical skill. Long and tiresome threads discussing the legality, morality and all other aspects of this resulted. Canter & Siegel then tried again on a different subject, this time without able help.

On the same evening, my friend Chris Owen posted a 300-line diatribe, rebutting something or other point by point. I clicked. I just couldn't bear to read it, and decided: It's time to stop discussing this and do something. (more…)