[LINK] Fwd: Please confirm your message

Ivan Trundle ivan at itrundle.com
Mon Dec 4 15:39:08 AEDT 2006


On 04/12/2006, at 3:17 PM, Steve Jenkin wrote:

> On Mon, Dec 04, 2006 at 03:01:13PM +1100, Ivan Trundle wrote:
>> Linkers
>>
>> Does anyone else find this kind of behaviour tiresome, frustrating,
>> and pointless?
>
> No - it isn't very widespread yet. If it was universal, would not be a
> question...
> As yet, is a reasonable SPAM blocker approach. Not perfect.

I disagree. This is not blocking spam, this is blocking a reply to an  
e-mail sent to my mailbox via Link.

>> There are better, simpler, and less time and bandwidth-wasteful
>> methods of performing the simple task of sending an e-mail response.
>
> Such as? I'd like to hear what the alternatives are

Virtually any other spam filter/blocker will better determine what is  
and what isn't spam without the requirement for the person replying  
to confirm the message's intent. I'm sure that I don't need to list  
them all here.

> - this approach
> makes it everyone elses' problem, not the recipient.  Not a
> very sociable solution :-)

Entirely my point. But it's not my loss - I refuse to confirm that I  
did indeed reply to the person involved. I've got better things to do  
with my time.

>
>> I don't particularly care that this activity is meant to reduce the
>> recipient's spam levels: I'm not at all interested in bouncing
>> messages back and forth.
>
> My guess is that this is some sort of phising or e-mail verification
> scam.

Well, of course it is, but it places the onus on someone who has made  
a genuine reply to an email to further confirm that the message was  
indeed not spam. I regard this as an annoyance that I can well do  
without, and thus I'll leave the intended respondent with one less e- 
mail in his inbox.

> Anyone using a 'whitelist' system would've subscribed with a
> specific list address, and hence not generated this. If you did a
> 'reply-all', not just the list, that could explain it.

And indeed it could, but this is not the point. I reiterate that  
there are better tools than this type of email verification/ 
authentication which do this job. Even my rather primitive DSPAM  
config does a better job of identifying whitelist respondents,  
without any requirement of follow-up by the sender.

The point of this rant is that communication is made MORE DIFFICULT  
by this unnecessary impost, and it effectively means that spammers  
have won in this instance.

And I reiterate that it's not my loss, since it was merely a reply to  
Adam Todd anyway.

iT






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