Why spam opt-out lists won’t work


I was reading about a technique to discourage spammers: let an organised mob fill in thousands of fake submissions so that there is no way telling how to distinguish them from real responses. They targeted a known spammer, Alex Polyakov, currently #8 in Spamhaus top 10 and he did feel the pain.

During the 13-minute call, Polyakov claims that his “interest is only to make honest dollars.” As a peace offering, Polyakov proposes to create a global opt-out list, “the anti list of all anti lists.” Polyakov says he has no interest in sending spam to people who don’t want to receive it, and he guarantees that he will persuade all his spam-business associates to clean their mailing lists.
from Spamkings blog via digg.com

Let’s consider such a global opt-out list:
DISTRIBUTED OPT-OUT LIST

EMAIL SERVICE PROVIDER

SELF-REGULATION
The American Direct Marketing Association (DMA) has the e-Mail Preference Service (e-MPS), the Belgian Direct Marketing Association has the Robinson-list. As I recall from my Direct Marketing days, the Robinson list was always used to clean up addresses.

But getting the emailers in the DMA to use a global opt-out list will only help very little. They’re not the real problem. The real problem are the Russian/American vilains on the Spamhaus top 10.

Conclusion
I would have to agree with Spamhaus:

  1. For-a-fee Address Remove Lists are operated by conmen.
  2. No legitimate marketing firm sends Unsolicited Bulk Email in the first place.
  3. Can you imagine spammers doing this?
  4. All spammers believe their junk is different from the junk other spammers send.
    from spamhaus.org

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