| LED Digest 1743: Losing Business Email |
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================================================== The LED Digest Moderated Discussion List "Effective Online Advertising, Since 1997" pair Networks: The LED's Web Host Hosting and Domain Reg. from a Trusted Leader pair.com for Hosting | pairNIC.com for Domains ================================================== List Moderator: Published by: Adam Audette LED Digest adam,led-digest.com http://www.led-digest.com ................................................ February 6, 2004 Issue #1743 ................................................ .....IN THIS DIGEST..... ====== NEW ====================== --== Spammer Using our Domain, Help! ==-- ~ Brigitte Burchett "Some unscrupulous person has been using our email addresses to send tons of spam..." ==== CONTINUING ================= --== Losing Filtered Email ==-- ~ Joe Halbrook "The spammers use the same filtering software..." ~ Mark Whitman "This is the problem with *all* spam filtering..." --== Email Address Verification ==-- ~ Ivan J. Jimenez "...your efforts would be better spent on usability and navigation." ~ Steven Rothberg "Use an autoresponder. They're cheap and highly effective." ==== BILLBOARD =================== --== Floating Text Boxes ==-- ~ Tom Anson ======= NEW ===================================== From: Brigitte Burchett Subject: Spam spoofed Hello LEDers! Many times over the past few years information from this list has helped me out a lot. There are so many knowledgeable people here. Thanks bunches, truly, for any past help and any help you could give me with my current situation! I have a rather frustrating and serious problem right now, and I am hoping someone here can give me some advice on how to best handle the situation: Some unscrupulous person overseas has been using our email addresses to send tons and tons of spam all over the internet. I am getting the bounces by the dozens (sometimes hundreds). I have tried tracing the guy and sometimes manage to get tech email address, but he changes domains about every second day and hides things well. herbal-world.us, pureherbal.us are two of the domains. There are several others, most of them with .us or .info extensions. In desperation I have even re-routed his bounces back to his tech addresses, I have written emails asking him to stop immediately, etc... but have of course not had any success or any sort of answer. Any suggestions how to deal with this? I would truly appreciate any help, ideas, etc. Brigitte Burchett www.pondmarket.com ===== CONTINUING ================================= From: Joe Halbrook Subject: Losing email > But how do you know [your email filter] is not blocking > business mail? I just do not feel confident that filters > will let through the mail that I need to run my business. - Wanda Husick, LED 1741 Hi Wanda, In issue #1741, you bring up one the most frequent concerns that I hear from clients. But, the real issue is: Why would we trust a spam filtering solution to make the decisions as to what is, and is not, unwanted email in our mailboxes? The problem with many of today's spam filtering solutions, is that they use heuristic testing algorithms that base the probability that an email is spam (not necessarily unwanted) based on words that occur in either the subject line, or the body of the incoming email. And the kicker is this: The spammers use the same filtering software, learn how to beat them, and this forces the developers to constantly refine those algorithms. The result: No time-sensitive solution is ever really achieved. I always recommend a different approach. Instead of looking at all the "noise" in a mailbox (represented by, in your case, hundreds of unwanted junk emails), why not look for only the "signal among the noise" - the truly wanted email? You can easily do this if you use a whitelist-based solution (one that allows you to grant permission to approved Senders) coupled with a mechanism that pre-whitelists specific Senders - those who want to contact you to do business. My approach is to use a web site Contact form, where I can control the subject line of the emails that come from that Contact form to my mailbox. Then, I configure the filtering mechanism to automatically whitelist any Sender address that comes in with a specific subject line tag which originates from my Contact form. Viola! I'm guaranteed that all my business contacts are automatically whitelisted (since I do not offer mailto: links on my web site, and only provide that Contact form to initiate a dialogue). Of course, if you have your email address printed on business forms and cards, you can't force folks to contact you via a web site Contact form. But, I'm working on a solution, in that case. Joe Halbrook http://cleanmymailbox.com ------- new post - same topic ------- From: Mark Whitman Subject: Losing email > I just do not feel confident that filters will let > through the mail that I need to run my business. - Wanda Husick, LED 1741 This is the problem with *all* spam filtering, it filters out email you want. I think it's literally impossible to come up with an algorithm that doesn't filter out some email you want. When the filtering is done at the server level you're at the disadvantage of never knowing if any legitimate email was blocked. I can assure you however that the user of Brightmail (and every other spam filter at the server level) will find out, the hard way, that important mail has been blocked. This of course can have all sorts of negative repercussions. The situation is only moderately less problematic when the filtering is done on the end user's computer. I really don't even see any point to end user spam filtering because you still have to go through all mail that has been filtered to look for legitimate mail that was filtered as spam. If you have to look through all your spam anyway, how much time and aggravation did the filter actually save you? Probably something in the area of zero. Filtering is not the ideal solution to blocking spam, it's just all that's available. Since I'm a developer / programmer I set something up for my own use that takes a completely different approach and loses zero wanted mail while blocking 99.9% spam. I'll be offering it to ISPs when the patent papers are processed but in the mean time I would suggest that spam filters on servers by avoided, as important email will definitely be lost, permanently. Mark Whitman ------- new post - new topic ------- From: Ivan Jimenez Subject: E-mail Verification > Is there a method of verifying the email address on the fly...? - Andy Johnson, LED 1740 Andy, Does your program remember visitors? If not, that could be the reason for many of those phony values. WordTracker.com for example, offers a free trial of their services but you have to submit your name and e-mail address. I know a bunch of people that have used the free trial version at least five times and entered fake information to access the program. Is this morally correct? Who cares. It's a real issue costing real money. Let's save values and moral for another post. To address this problem, companies like WordTracker need to allow for multiple free trials (since people are doing this anyway) and remember visitors so you don't have to keep entering your information. Andy, it's much easier to type in: First Name: drhydf Last Name: sdghsth E-Mail Address: This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it than First Name: Ivan Last Name: Jimenez E-Mail Address: This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it I'm sure there's a verification software out there but your efforts would be better spent on usability and navigation. All the best, Ivan J. Jimenez http://cosmicbreath.com ------- new post - same topic ------- From: Steven Rothberg Subject: Email verification Perhaps the easiest way of verifying email addresses on the fly is to send the download information to your potential customer in an email rather than directing them to a web page. Use an autoresponder. They're cheap and highly effective. Many, such as those from AWeber, all you to follow-up with your prospects days, weeks or even months later. They can be personalized through a mail merge feature and your prospects will believe that the follow-ups are coming from you. We use them. It amazes me how many people will reply back weeks or even months later to both thank us for being so persistent and to place their order. Be sure to tell your prospects that the download information will immediately be sent to their email address. They'll understand that entering a bogus email address won't do them any good. Steven Rothberg CollegeRecruiter.com job board http://www.collegerecruiter.com ==== BILLBOARD ==================================== From: Tom Anson Subject: Floating Text Box Hi LED-ers, I'm hoping someone can help me with a question. I've recently learned that you can make an image "float", so that the text will wrap around it. It's really great, and has made building pages so much easier. I also tend to use text boxes for bits of information I want to stand out. I'm wondering if there is a way to define such a text box so that I can set it on the page and have the rest of the text wrap around it. I know something like this can be done if you use CSS for layout. But because of browser support issues for CSS, I'm using it in very limited ways for now. Anyone have any ideas on how this can be done? or am I stuck with tables for the time being? Thanks for your help. As always -- you are life-savers. Tom Anson Anson Aromatic Essentials http://www.therapeutic-grade.com ------------------------------------------------------- The LED Digest is sponsored by pair Networks: pair.com for Hosting | pairNIC.com for Domains Copyright 1995-2004 Adam Audette. All Rights Reserved. ----------------------------------------------------------------- "The hardest of all is learning to be a well of affection, and not a fountain; to show them we love them not when we feel like it, but when they do." - Nan Fairbrother |
