you have listed us as spammers

[alex mac]

We recently sent out a single email to a list of email addresses retrieved from a dead hard drive that had been our own web server which had contained all the subscribers to our hosted mailing lists.

I have received a complaint from someone on your spam service saying that we sent out spam - Our host recently lost our hard drive and had failed to make a back up. we spent a lot of money trying to retrieve all the subscribers to our and our clients mailing lists - we found all the addresses on the drive but the file structure was erased so there was no way of telling who was from which list.

We then sent out an email to all those people whose email addresses were on our lists asking them to resubscribe if they hadn't recently received any news from the lists to which they were subscribed.

I can't see any other way we could have gone about doing this and still fulfilled our obligations to the clients we are working for.

We still have one client (not included on the last email we sent out) who has lost thousands of subscribers and we need to contact them - what other options do we have?

Now we find after all this hard work and expense that you have listed us as spammers - what can we do to put this right?

Alex Maclean, Director, Airside

[Wazoo]

Forum FAQ - read before posting

"Why am I Blocked?" entry would define that there is no one at this point "calling you a spammer" ... I don't even know you ... You posted in the Blocking List Forum, so one might guess that you have an IP address associated with an e-mail server that found its way onto the SpamCopDNSBL ... however, you fail to identify the IP in question, the e-mail server in question, who is in control of what, etc., etc., etc.

I have received a complaint from someone on your spam service saying that we sent out spam

You don't say how you received the complaint. Taking a stab from your posting IP, one would find that any 'reports' would gave been directed to abuse <at> nildram.net ... apparently they forwarded the report to you?

One complaint is not sufficient to place an IP address on the SpamCopDNSBL, but again, pulling answers out of thin air is not my forte. There would have to be much more to the story .. but research will have to wait until the IP in question is identified.

- Our host recently lost our hard drive and had failed to make a back up.

You blame your host for not protecting "your" data, then go on to talk of several "clients" that apparently depended on "you" to handle some of their affairs ... sounds like on heck of an oversight somewhere of a few people ...

we spent a lot of  money trying to retrieve all the subscribers to our and our clients mailing lists - we found all the addresses on the drive but the file structure was erased so there was no way of telling who was from which list.

We then sent out an email to all those people whose email addresses were on our lists asking them to resubscribe if they hadn't recently received any news from the lists to which they were subscribed.

I can't see any other way we could have gone about doing this and still fulfilled our obligations to the clients we are working for.

We still have one client (not included on the last email we sent out) who has lost thousands of subscribers and we need to contact them - what other options do we have?

Forum FAQ has a number of links dealing with mailing list management. Although you may have some issues with your clients, your main situation seems to be based on the outgoing e-mail to some folks that don't happen to agree with something .. the contents of the e-mail, perhaps that they had already opted-out of communications with you, that the addresses recovered now don't belong to the same people that once subscribed ... just a few of the many possibilities ..... Bottom line seems to be that the list you are playing with now isn't clean ...

Now we find after all this hard work and expense that you have listed us as spammers - what can we do to put this right?

There is no such list .... the only thing found at spamcop.net is a listing of IP addresses that have had spam spew reported as being seen as the source ... one of these could belong to one of your systems, it might be a server that is shared by you and hundreds of other people, there may be yet another story .... and even then, the impact of having the IP address of your e-mail server on this BL would only be seen when you attempted to send e-mail to an ISP that used the SpamCopDNSBL as a blocking mechanism (not recommended in SpamCop.net's own documentation) ... it's on you at this point to provide some data that would allow someone to possibly do some research ...

[alex mac]

Here is what I was sent as a complaint.... I can't make any sense of it but it came from 'SpamCop' - I then checked to see if our server was listed and it was - www.airside.co.uk - where do we go from here?

[ SpamCop V1.446 ]

This message is brief for your comfort. Please use links below for details.

Email from 83.138.128.103 / 12 May 2005 23:47:10 -0000

http://www.spamcop.net/w3m?i=z1423555514z3...4b08cccc4de890z

Spamvertised web site: http://www.airside.co.uk/unsubscribe.php

http://www.spamcop.net/w3m?i=z1423555515zb...ccbad21739ed96z

[ Additional links on www.airside.co.uk: ]

http://www.airside.co.uk/redirect.php?mail...6archived%3dall

http://www.airside.co.uk/redirect.php?mail...w.lemonjelly.ky

http://www.airside.co.uk/unsubscribe.php

http://www.airside.co.uk/redirect.php?mail...fsubscribe.html

http://www.airside.co.uk/redirect.php?mail....co.uk%2fmag%2f

http://www.airside.co.uk/redirect.php?mail...w.airside.co.uk

http://www.airside.co.uk/redirect.php?mail...php%3fpage%3d12

http://www.airside.co.uk/redirect.php?mail...ovestitches.com

http://www.airside.co.uk/unsubscribe.php is 83.138.128.103; Fri, 13 May 2005 00:39:25 GMT

[ Offending message ]

Return-Path: <apache[at]mig.airside.co.uk>

Delivered-To: x

X-Envelope-To: x

Received: (qmail 79005 invoked from network); 12 May 2005 23:47:10 -0000

Received: from mig.airside.co.uk (83.138.128.103)

by dair.pair.com with SMTP; 12 May 2005 23:47:10 -0000

Received: from mig.airside.co.uk (localhost [127.0.0.1])

by mig.airside.co.uk (8.12.11/8.12.11) with ESMTP id j4CNkI2E000495

for

Delivered-To: x

X-Envelope-To: x

Received: (qmail 79005 invoked from network); 12 May 2005 23:47:10 -0000

Received: from mig.airside.co.uk (83.138.128.103)

by dair.pair.com with SMTP; 12 May 2005 23:47:10 -0000

Received: from mig.airside.co.uk (localhost [127.0.0.1])

by mig.airside.co.uk (8.12.11/8.12.11) with ESMTP id j4CNkI2E000495

for <x>; Fri, 13 May 2005 00:50:06 +0100

Received: (from apache[at]localhost)

by mig.airside.co.uk (8.12.11/8.12.11/Submit) id j4CNWXtn026623;

Fri, 13 May 2005 00:32:33 +0100

Date: Fri, 13 May 2005 00:32:33 +0100

From: Apache ; Fri, 13 May 2005 00:50:06 +0100

Received: (from apache[at]localhost)

by mig.airside.co.uk (8.12.11/8.12.11/Submit) id j4CNWXtn026623;

Fri, 13 May 2005 00:32:33 +0100

Date: Fri, 13 May 2005 00:32:33 +0100

From: Apache <apache[at]mig.airside.co.uk>

Message-Id:

Message-Id: <2005___________________6623[at]mig.airside.co.uk>

To: x

Subject: Lost subscribers to Airside and Lemon Jelly mailing lists

Content-type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1

X-RBL-Checked: 127.0.0.1 83.138.128.103

Dear all,

We are contacting you from Airside, a design company based in London. Due to the failure of a web server and the host company back up, some subscribers to our mailing lists were lost.

Since then, however, the email addresses that were on the lists have been recovered, but annoyingly we have no idea who was subscribing to which list.

So we would very much appreciate if you could re-subscribe yourself appropriately from the website mailing lists provided below. If you choose to not re-subscribe, no problem and thanks for your patience.

and the rest of my message.....

[Wazoo]

Here is what I was sent as a complaint.... I can't make any sense of it but it came from 'SpamCop' - I then checked to see if our server was listed and it was - www.airside.co.uk - where do we go from here?

You're going to have to explain the above ... "www.airside.co.uk" is "listed" where?

ns2.rackspace.com reports the following MX records:

Preference Host Name IP Address TTL

10 mail.airside.co.uk 81.6.244.68

81.6.244.68 not listed in bl.spamcop.net

From reading your respnse, seeing your question of "where do we go" ... I can only surmize that you didn't bother to check either link provided to "handle" the situation .... In my last, I was going with the normal complaint scenario that an e-mail server was listed on the SpamCopDNSBL ... the "report" you offer is a notification of a "spamvertised site" .... much different scenario ... following the links provided wouldn't take but a couple of seconds to 'handle' the issue (for the moment)

[Jeff G.]

In addition, "83.138.128.103 not listed in bl.spamcop.net" per SpamCop.net - checkblock.

[DavidT]

Alex,

Despite the four spam reports filed by SpamCop users as a result of your broadcast, your server is not listed in the SpamCop Blocking List. If you're done sending out those "please resubscribe" messages, then you shouldn't have any further problems.

DT

[alex mac]

thanks everybody - i think i get the picture now. however we still have one client who wants to reach their lost subscribers - i take it that your advice would be don't?

[Jank1887]

And your list backup harddrive crashed, too? good business practices... tsk, tsk, tsk.

My advice would be: be prepared to accept the consequences of any actions that you take.

You obviously(?) have a list that includes email addresses of people who don't want to receive your messages. Further contact with these people may get you reported again. Repeatedly being identified as spamming is a good way to get yourself listed on a lot of less-forgiving lists than the Spamcop one.

While you may not fall into the typical spammer sleaze category (I'm assuming you don't send viagra, et al, 'ads') which may limit the number of people who are upset at the messages, you're still in a bad spot. Did you have a separate 'don't email' list on your harddrive? may those addresses have been scraped along with the list addresses, and now be mixed in your list?

Emails asking people to resubscribe, especially if they asked to stop getting your email, can be deemed spam by a lot of people. (there are enough companies out there who would make claims of problems as a ploy to get more subscribers.)

My suggestion if you want to stay on the safe side of the spam issue: start rebuilding your list from scratch the same way you did before (assuming it was confirmed opt-in). If you have any other way of contacting your subscribers, (visited web page, etc.) try to make it very visible that they need to resubscribe.

Finally, talk to your legal reps to review any contractual issues relating to damages you or your host(?) may be responsible for with regard to lost business. good luck.