| LED Digest 1909: Cutting Off Copycats |
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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 ............................................... December 15, 2004 Issue #1909 ............................................... .....IN THIS DIGEST..... ==== CONTINUING ================= --== The Challenge-Response Approach ==-- ~ Joe Halbrook ~ Michael Linehan ~ Mark Whitman ~ Barb Radisavljevic --== The PayPal vs Merchant Accounts Debate ==-- ~ Dave Starr ==== BILLBOARD =================== --== Theft of Copywritten Material ==-- ~ Mark Frank --== Browser Wars ==-- ~ Mark Whitman ===== CONTINUING ================================= From: Joe Halbrook Subject: Challenge response > The only way to block spam 100% is to > use a challenge-response system - Scott Wang, LED 1906 > It's difficult enough to win a customer but to put an > extra layer of difficulty between them and me just > doesn't equate, at least not in my mind. - Kathryn Martyn, LED 1907 I couldn't agree more with Kathryn's response. I would never recommend using a challenge-response strategy with business email correspondences, unless your business correspondences come in only from a Contact page on your web site and you have the ability to bypass the challenge-response based on some criteria of the processing script used to format the emails from those Contact page submissions. The CGI script that processes requests from the Contact page allows you to control and pre-define the subject line in those incoming emails generated by your Contact page. With some solutions, depending on that subject line content, you might be able to prevent the challenge-response feature from happening. To take this a step further, a smart solution could even take advantage of the CGI-controlled subject line content, and use it to automatically whitelist the Sender's email address, so that any future email - even outside of the Contact page - will not be subjected to the challenge-response feature. > Terrific - now every time some spammer fakes my email address > as the FROM, Scott's challenge-response system spams me 200 > times per day asking me if I am a human. No spammer uses his > own email address as from or return. - John Barendrecht, LED 1907 I agree, an unfortunate side-effect of C/R. The simple fix is just to add a subject line blacklist filter entry, if possible. But then, why should you (the victim of a spammer) have to do anything? Good point, John. The best thing you can do to prevent this is to control the use of "catch-all" mailboxes, and utilize the Contact page CGI script. Joe Halbrook cleanmymailbox.com ------- new post - same topic ------- From: Michael Linehan Subject: Challenge response Two responses from me - as a consumer and as a marketing consultant. As a consumer, I've encountered this twice. Both times I immediately moved on to the next possible company. As a marketing consultant I say, "It's the job of a marketer, and of a company, to REMOVE every possible obstruction between the prospect and the sale." (Certainly not add another one!) Michael Linehan Marketing Alchemy www.marketing-alchemy.com ------- new post - same topic ------- From: Mark Whitman Subject: Challenge response Challenge-response is a very simple process that is in no way a burden on a sender. It's a routine opt-in process. A sender gets a message back from an autoresponder asking the sender to click on a link that confirms the sender's email address. How much hassle is that? It takes less than 5 seconds. I doubt it's going to make someone change their mind about contacting you. The bottom line is this, there is *always* going to be a tradeoff when dealing with spam, people have to make some changes regardless of which spam solution they choose. People who use filters have already changed how they check email, they now have to check a quarantined folder as well as an in box. Enjoy! Filters are a band aid not a cure. Authentication brings us much closer to curing the spam epidemic. Challenge-response is the most do-able, effective, authentication currently available. Yes there are other related issues I didn't address, particularly concerning business email, but they *can* be dealt with if the overall system is well thought out and fine tuned after testing. Challenge-response is not an entire anti-spam system unto itself, it's just the "front end" of a system. I developed an email handling system that has cured my spam problem, well about 99.9% anyway. My system begins with a challenge-response (for senders not in an address book) since I believe as Scott Wang does > The only way to block spam 100% is to > use a challenge-response system... - Scott Wang, LED 1906 My business hasn't suffered, I get all my email and don't have to continually scan a "quarantined" folder looking for false positives from a filter. Mark Whitman ------- new post - same topic ------- From: Barb Radisavljevic Subject: Challenge response > There is absolutely no way that I would put something > like this in place for my business email. - Dan Thies, LED 1908 I have to agree with Dan. I tend to get annoyed myself when I get one of these challenge messages from a customer whose inquiry I'm answering. It does take time to go to the web site and type in the letters and then hope the customer will finally accept your email. I do not want to subject my customers to this extra step that I myself resent a bit. When I did try Spam Arrest for a while a few months back I was always very careful to add my customer's name to my address book before sending him or her an email. But that was an extra step I needed to take each time I responded, and it just became too much trouble for me. So I uninstalled the program. I think anything which adds an obstacle to direct communication is not a good business practice. Barb Radisavljevic The best books for children and education www.barbsbooks.com ------- new post - new topic ------- From: Dave Starr Subject: PayPal vs other One other positive about a 'real' merchant account is the US Federal Government IMPAC program (International Merchant Purchase Authorization Card ). This is a Visa card issued to hundreds of thousands of individuals across the federal government and it is effectively an empowerment tool that allows each of these folks to be a contracting officer for their office or unit. Typical purchase limits are set at $2500, but in some cases an IMPAC holder may have a much higher limit. While many small business folks here in LED might not be aiming directly at the federal market, the government purchases hundreds of thousands of small business supplies and 'non-personal' services every day, a significant number off the web direct from web-based merchants... and if you accept Visa, you can be 'in the hunt'. PayPal, on-line checks, etc. won't work for this program. So factor this in when you are evaluating at what point it makes sense to acquire a merchant account. Best regards Dave Starr satviz.com ==== BILLBOARD =================================== From: Mark Frank Subject: Copy theft > I have discovered that a competitor has stolen > the logo and words from my websites... Any > suggestions? - Beth Vance, LED 1906 Beth, I have been the victim of copyright violations on several occasions. A letter to the site owner is usually sufficient, but if they don't respond, you have to go to the next level. I have found that sending the following email to the offender's hosting service is very effective. All hosting services have policies against copyright violations, and I have yet to find a host who will risk legal action over someone else's website. Just make sure that you really own the copyright and that you can prove the material in question is really yours... ------------------------- Subject: Notice of Copyright Violation Sirs, (Hosting Service Name) is hosting a website that contains copyright violations. Now that you are aware of the issue, you are jointly responsible for the copyright violation and for any legal action the may follow. The website in question is [offending site]. This site contains information taken from [your site] without authorization. Specifically, the text and images information found on page [example] were taken from [your site]. WebsiteDesignBiz.com has been online since 2003. The material on the site is copyrighted and is not available for unauthorized reproduction. If you visit archive.org (http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://websitedesignbiz.com) and page through their archives of WebsiteDesignBiz.com , you will find early versions of the material as it was written and developed. I can also provide additional data that will establish the authorship and date of creation of the material in question. According to the registration information, your offending site is registered as follows: (Insert registrant's name and contact information...) Domain servers: (Insert domain servers...) Please remove this copyrighted information from your server. ------------------------- I occassionally get a return email from the host asking for additional information or asking me to fill out an online form. Once I respond, the copyright violation (or the entire site) is normally gone within a day. Mark Frank, Author Start Your Own Home-Based Website Design Business http://www.websitedesignbiz.com ------- new post - new topic ------- From: Mark Whitman Subject: Browser wars > While it is great for the surfer to have the browser display > a page in spite of HTML errors, the existence of these browsers > tends to result in a lot of sloppily coded pages. - Tom Aman, LED 1908 A - so what, if the page does what it's supposed to do who cares if the page has sloppy "code"? B - as we've seen demonstrated here many times most people think HTML is too hard or time consuming to learn/use so they use HTML editors. > If all browsers were a bit stricter, surfers would > encounter fewer bad pages. - Tom Aman, LED 1908 Sure, stricter, looser, whatever - as long as they display pages the same. The main layout problem I experience has nothing to do with being W3C compliant, sloppy tagging etc, it has to do with high precision, high end page layouts. Even a 1 pixel difference caused by a slight variation in font size, line height, etc can result in a noticeable problem when cross checking browsers. CSS helps in most cases but not all, especially where Netscape's concerned. So this just takes me back to an earlier rant about developers choosing a layout standard (beyond being W3C compliant) in the form of whatever is the most widely used browser (currently IE by far). Develop sites for that browser and be done with it, that's been my practice for the last few years now. I develop sites for an ad agency and many small to mid-sized businesses and have not had a single complaint as a result of developing for IE only. Mark Whitman ------------------------------------------------------- The LED Digest is sponsored by pair Networks: pair.com for Hosting | pairNIC.com for Domains Copyright 1995-2004 Adam Audette. All Rights Reserved. ----------------------------------------------------------------- Happy Birthday Mom! (December 14th) |
