Spare the human, despoil the spammer

This is directed at Jamie primarily, but it’s not purely Jamie’s fuck-up. A number of people have decided to deal with spam by setting up white-lists; the problem is, they just plain haven’t thought things through, and they’re in danger of jeapardising email as we know it. Given that email was, and still is, the killer app of the Internet, this appears to me to be misguided.

OK: here’s what happened. Jamie sent me email, and I replied to it. I don’t email Jamie regularly, and he appears to have revamped his email system recently, so I got an email from some random unconnected email address (practicaluseful {at} thom {dot} port995 {dot} com rather than the expected jamie {at} thom {dot} inuk {dot} com).

The gist being: prove to me that you’re not a spammer, by replying to this email, and then re-send the original email, and it will then get through.

Let’s ignore the simple proposition that Jamie should automatically add everyone he sends email to, to his white-list. Let’s ignore the only slightly more complex proposition that if such anti-spam measures become common, spammers will run scripts on these bounce messages and automatically approve sending emails to these known viable targets.

First of all, asking people to re-send the original email is just not on. Full stop. People can have sent email from a cyber-cafe, and not have a copy; they can have sent email via webmail, or otherwise not be in a position to retrieve the original message. They can not care that much about the original message to be bothered retrieving the original message (assuming they know how - this isn’t something people do often, after all.)

You’re making people do extra work because a) spammers abuse your systems, and b) you’re too lazy to store potentially good emails. That just sucks, and you should be ashamed of yourself. Good anti-spam solutions should be transparent to genuine users, and annoying to spammers. In this case, spammers don’t notice anything, and genuine correspondents get fucked over. This is disgraceful.

The person who wants to email you, but then can’t because they’re not on your white-list, could be someone offering you a job. Or they could be a long-lost friend you haven’t spoken to for ages. There are loads of unexpected, but valuable, reasons why someone should be emailing you when they haven’t emailed you before for quite some while. Now, chances are that they’re dodgy, and they’re a Nigerian scammer, but if they are genuine, and you’ve rejected their email because they look dodgy, well, who’s the biggest fool?

Let me say one thing about spammers not noticing. Jamie is a techie, and has decided that he doesn’t like spam, so he’s going to address the problem with technology. Guess what: spammers don’t care. Any spammers with a modicum of sense will want to avoid targeting people like Jamie anyway: these guys never respond, they cause annoyance, it’s not worth sending them emails.

The way the market works at the moment, if spammers receive “I don’t accept spam” emails, then if they have any sense they’ll remove you from their lists. Because you’ve clearly nailed your colours to the mast: you’re the sort of person who won’t buy anything via email.

And that’s just what the spammers want to know. You’ve improved their database, and you’ve made them more profitable. I hope you’re proud of yourself.