Most people in the industry have been following Blue Security’s (http://www.bluesecurity.com) recent initiative to inflict ‘Active Deterrence’ against spammers.  The other day while reviewing spam sent to LashBack’s unsubscribe probes, I found out that the spammers are not taking Blue Security’s initiatives lightly.  It seems our crafty spammer friends are now sending spam purporting to be from Blue Security, in an effort to make Blue Security look bad.  Here’s an example of spam LashBack actually received:

—————————-

http://bluesecurity.com

anti-spam system, Join now!!

Prevent spam, by participying is a DDOS attacks against spam sites!!

Automaticly send 1000s of complaints for each spam you recieve!!

Simply install our software on your PC, and you will
be 100% saved from spam!! as well as helping us ddos there sites!

Regards
Eran Reshef
bluesecurity.com

———————————–

See Blue Security’s response to these attempts: http://www.bluesecurity.com/spam.asp

I think this retaliation by spammers proves that they are a crafty and nasty bunch.  Unfortunately, Blue Security may have opened  Pandora’s box and I would not be surprised to see other nasty acts against them in the future.

Utilizing the world’s largest unsubscribe intelligence database, LashBack’s new Unsubscribe Blacklist (UBL) empowers your organization to identify and block the very worst unsubscribe abusers; those that send email to addresses which have been harvested from suppression lists.

Details: www.LashBack.com/ubl.htm

LashBack has been monitoring sender unsubscribe compliance since 2003. During this period, LashBack has compiled sender unsubscribe compliance failure in four primary categories:

1. Which senders fail to provide a working unsubscribe mechanism
2. Which senders do not honor unsubscribe requests within 10 business days
3. Which senders allow consumers unsubscribe request to be abused (i.e., shared with other parties to send more spam)
4. Which senders are taking suppression lists from other organizations and sending email to these lists

LashBack’s UBL only lists the IP addresses of senders who are using email addresses harvested from suppression lists (point 4).  If you would like additional “premium” reputation data contact a LashBack representative directly. 

This free service is intended to provide all receivers and reputation providers a baseline of data to help block the sender’s with the worst reputations.  All IP addresses listed on in our service are being continually monitored and the list is updated hourly.

UBL Statistics:
Number of IP’s:  22,000
New IP’s per day: 350

UBL Comparisons:
Percent also on SpamHaus:  34%
Percent also on SpamCop:  10%
Percent also on Sorbs:  8%
UNIQUE IP’s on UBL:  61%

*as of 18 August 2005

Details: www.LashBack.com/ubl.htm

Start blocking suppression list abusers today!

In a recent study performed by the FTC, 89% of the top 100 retailers fully complied with the 10 day opt out period required by the CAN SPAM Act (http://www.dmnews.com/cgi-bin/artprevbot.cgi?article_id=33639).

First, I applaud the FTC for undertaking such a study.  It shows me that they are at least thinking about the importance of unsubscribe.  But I’ve got to admit, this study and its results really confuse me.

For one, if you are going to undertake such a study, why limit it to the best-of-breed marketers who are working the hardest to comply?  In addition, these retailers combined probably contribute far less than 1% of all commercial email, which is hardly a true representation of the email ecosystem.  So what this study is supposed to prove is beyond me.

Also, I am confused on how the FTC and email marketers interpret the results of the study.  Is it a good thing that 89% of the top 100 retailers comply with the opt-out requirements of CAN SPAM two years after the law was passed?   I suspect that they see this compliance level as a positive for email marketing and it indicates a victory for the CAN SPAM Act.

Personally, I believe the results of this study reflect poorly on CAN SPAM.  If the best marketers in the world can’t get their act together and comply with a law that is almost 2 years old, it doesn’t not say a lot about the effectiveness of the law. 

In the end, I know the study is silly.  Based on the data we see at LashBack, compliance is still low and the results of this study do nothing to change the fact the FTC needs to spend more time on enforcement and less time on studies.