To reply, request remove, or just bin them

[Matth]

It started with an email from / about duplicatorguide.com (spamcopped, with a comment that I'd never heard of them and believed they were abusing a list or forum registration details). I am a member of cdfreaks forum, but have no interest in bulk duplication.

http://www.spamcop.net/sc?id=z1124819759ze...b7b0a0231644e9z

Hello Dear Friend,

We sent this email to about 170 emails which have been registered in our website last 60 days, where our website is in operation.

We never spam or send email to people we don't know.

However, from now on we will ask a confirmation email by anyone registers in our newsletter mailing list to avoid such situations.

Thank you and we are sorry for the inconvenience

Kenny Hall

Duplicator Guide.com

First forward via spamcop, I repeat, I have not, did not and would not sign up at a website about duplicators.

Now:

Dear Sirs,

We would like to know the email address of the user that reported our message as a spam.

This is because we are going to send more messages to our members that are subscribed to our mailing list in the future, and we would like to exclude the specific email from our databases.

If we don't receive the email address hence we don't have the ability to remove the specific email address from our database, and because all email addresses we send the newsletters, are subscribed to our database by the particular form on our main page, we keep the right to act against the specific user in case he report us in the future as spammers and we consider it as an intrigue against our company.

Best Regards

Kenneth Hall

Attorney at law

I suppose using their unsubscribe (though I generally consider unsubscribes to be totally untrustworthy) wouldn't lose anything, as they have the address anyway and appear to be co-operating, but I'd still be interested to know what list they filched it from.

Not "intrigue against our company", but it certainly looks like they loaded or inherited their initial list without due care, and I'm not happy about it. I consider them 100% guilty of list abuse, and after the tone of that second post, I believe they are challenging my integrity.

Now maybe I'm biased, but the initial source (an ADSL address in .gr) does not inspire confidence, neither does the appearance of panadvert.com - just looked at that site, and they appear to advocate forum spamming.

http://panadvert.com/

Have you got a forum account with more than 2000 posts? Feel free to contact us and to get money from our clients promotion programs.

Does your opinion effects the members of your forum?

You will earn lots of money from panadvert's clients

Forum Marketing

Our forum guru partners are ready to make noise around your product in

several forums

You know, I was prepared to give them the benefit of the doubt, but the panadvert connection looks like the ultimate in abusive ad placement.

[Telarin]

After the near cartooney they sent, I personally would under no circumstances give them the opportunity to listwash me. I would keep reporting them and keep them on the SCBL until they take up better list management practices. Their behaviour is inexcusable.

[Miss Betsy]

I am a little bit confused about the second email quoted. Was it in reply to a spamcop report?

If it was, then I am an advocate of replying to those answers. It is a PITA because you have to be careful not to give them your real address, but a civil reply pointing them to proper list management and without replying to any of their idioticity is the polite thing to do.

It looks to me as a blatant attempt at listwashing because their form is not properly done or because they are buying lists. However, they did promise to send a confirmation email in the future. The problem is that only confirmation emails are not reportable, not promises or offers to listwash. If you want to point out that improperly configured forms, not sending confirmation emails or buying lists has cost them some money and time because they didn't do it properly in the first place, that would be pertinent also. And that if they continue to send email to people who do not respond requesting to be confirmed, that they will be reported, not just by you, but other reporters and possibly spam traps (depending on how they obtained their list).

However, in the light of the tone of the second example and that it looks suspiciously like they are promoting spamming forums, you could just ignore it. No sense in throwing pearls before swine.

Miss Betsy