QUOTE(ncbergs @ Jan 29 2004, 04:57 AM)
QUOTE(turetzsr @ Jan 28 2004, 11:42 PM)
[Hi!
Not sure this is what you want to hear, either, but: I think you may need to find a better way to avoid receiving spam than to use a provider that sends unsolicited and underserved challenge e-mails (with advertising, I gather) to people (and, I gather, to spamtraps), preferably one that uses blocklists (BLs). SpamCop e-mail service is one such option, although I read that there are others.
Good luck!
..Regards,
...Steve
After this lovely experience, I will *never* be a customer of Spam Cop. I am also contacting all my friends who use it to tell them about this wonderful evening I have spent with Spam Cop.
Mailblocks uses a challenge with no advertising. A spammer sends me some hated spam. His computer gets a challenge from Mailblocks. If he can prove that he is a human sending email (which of course he cannot), he merely clicks on a an html tag that proves he read the mail (which he didn't since he has already dumped that email address). The challenges are not solicited. They are in response to an email sent to a person like me who hates 25 emails from Uganda a day. (Does anyone really give them a bank account?) I have a right to challenge any unsolicited email.
You can also block entire domain names, etc.
Obviously you like your spam service. I like mine too. It doesn't require spending all night on the computer.
It would also make sense for Spam Cop to allow replies to current messages. I merely wanted to contact someone at my own church. It is not like I was trying to sell something. But that is another question for another day.
Regards to you,
Mary
IMHO [In my humble opinion], your ire is misdirected. If MailBlocks only did what you have explained, it is unlikely to be on the SpamCop.Net blocklist.
Other people have posted (in the NNTP version of this forum, which used to be the appropriate place for these discussions) that they have received challenges from MailBlocks although they have never sent an e-mail to a MailBlocks user, but because someone else has
forged their e-mail address. There are also claims that [a] server[s] registered to the MailBlocks domain (based on IP address) has sent e-mail to Spam Traps. There was a claim by someone that a MailBlocks challenge message included advertising of some sort. This evidence suggests that, while it may be serving a useful purpose to you, it causes what many of us outside its realm see as spam.
Yes, you have a right to challenge unsolicited mail. And other ISPs and other e-mail users have the right to not accept e-mail from IP addresses that have been reported as sending spam (and, by the way, just one report from one user is not enough to cause an IP address to make its way onto SpamCop's blocklist).
SpamCop does not block spam (except spam directed to a SpamCop e-mail user). It does not block any domain names, only IP addresses through which spam has been reported being sent.
SpamCop, by the way, is not my spam service. I only use SpamCop to report spam that I have received.
SpamCop does not block or allow replies to current messages. SpamCop can not keep you from contacting someone at your church. That someone's e-mail service provider may, however, use SpamCop's publicly-available blocklist to stop messages that come from IP addresses that have been reported as being sources of spam. SpamCop isn't attempting to block you because you are "trying to sell something" -- other e-mail service providers are blocking you because you are using a service that has been reported as sending spam.
