--- What is Spam?

[DecorDesignsAndMore]

www.spamhaus.org/consumer/definition/

The word "Spam" as applied to Email means "Unsolicited Bulk Email".

Unsolicited means that the Recipient has not granted verifiable permission for the message to be sent. Bulk means that the message is sent as part of a larger collection of messages, all having substantively identical content.

A message is Spam only if it is both Unsolicited and Bulk.

Unsolicited Email is normal email
(examples: first contact enquiries, job enquiries, sales enquiries)

Bulk Email is normal email
(examples: subscriber newsletters, customer communications, discussion lists)

Technical Definition of Spam

An electronic message is "spam" if (A) the recipient's personal identity and context are irrelevant because the message is equally applicable to many other potential recipients; AND (B) the recipient has not verifiably granted deliberate, explicit, and still-revocable permission for it to be sent.

Understanding the Spam Issue

Spam is an issue about consent, not content. Whether the Unsolicited Bulk Email ("UBE") message is an advert, a scam, porn, a begging letter or an offer of a free lunch, the content is irrelevant - if the message was sent unsolicited and in bulk then the message is spam.

Spam is not a sub-set of UBE, it is not "UBE that is also a scam or that doesn't contain an unsubscribe link". All email sent unsolicited and in bulk is Spam.

This distinction is important because legislators spend inordinate amounts of time attempting to regulate the content of spam messages, and in doing so come up against free speech issues, without realizing that the spam issue is solely about the delivery method.

Various jurisdictions have implemented legislation to control what they call "spam". One particular example is US S.877 (CAN-SPAM Act 2004). Each law addresses "spam" in different ways, and as a consequence, often has different definitions of what they cover, whether they call it "spam" or not. Spamhaus uses the industry standard definition "Unsolicited Bulk Email" which underlines that "it's not about content, it's about consent". As such, arguments as to whether Unsolicited Bulk Email messages are covered under CAN-SPAM or are compliant with CAN-SPAM, are entirely irrelevant.

Important facts about Unsolicited Bulk Email:

(1) The sending of Unsolicited Bulk Email ("UBE") is banned by all Internet service providers worldwide.

(2) Spamhaus's anti-spam blocklist, the SBL, used by more than 1 Billion Internet users, is based on the internationally-accepted definition of Spam as "Unsolicited Bulk Email". Therefore anyone sending UBE on the Internet, regardless of whether the content is commercial or not, illegal or not, is a sender of spam - and thus a spammer. All senders of UBE need to be fully aware that (A) they are breaking their ISP's Terms of Business contracts and they will lose their Internet accounts and access if they send UBE and (B) they will be placed on the Spamhaus Block List (SBL) if they send UBE.

[DecorDesignsAndMore]

https://www.spamhaus.org/consumer/removeisformugs/

Should You Send "Removes" back to Spammers?

Do you keep clicking "remove" links in spams, sending back "remove me" requests to spammers, yet your spam volume only seems to be increasing?

Here's why.

Most spammers send out anything from 1 million up to 100 million spams every day to address lists scraped from all over the Internet, harvested from sites and insecure mail servers, stolen from millions of computers using viruses to grab the contents of users' address books, bought from other spammers, from spam address list CDROMs, etc. Spammers do not know which of the millions of addresses on their lists are real, which are working or not, they're simply spraying adverts at every address they can find.

Then you send the spammer a "remove me" message. Now he knows your address is real. And that's not all he knows...

By sending back a 'remove me' opt-out request you are confirming to the spammer that your address is live, you are confirming that you actually open and read spams, and that you follow the spammer's instructions such as "click this to be removed". You are the perfect candidate for more spam.

A live address is a valuable address, spammers sell live addresses at a premium as "confirmed deliverable" addresses to yet more spammers. If you don't want your address to end up on endless spammers' lists, distributed on spam CDROMs to spammers worldwide, do not confirm to the spammer that your address is real and working.

Never Opt-out of lists that you
did not Opt-in to in the first place.

No ethical or responsible company will ever send you unsolicited bulk email.

Anyone sending you unsolicited bulk email, no matter how legitimate it may look, is a spammer. Anyone subscribing your email address to a mailing list without your explicit verifiable consent, sending you unsolicited bulk mailings telling you that you must "opt-out" or they'll keep sending, is in breach of all recognized Internet Service Provider policies and in breach of the law in countries where spamming is banned (Europe, Australia, etc.).

Never reply to spammers. Instead, help yourself and others by filing a spam complaint with the spammer's ISP.

(if you don't know how to trace the spammer's ISP, use the SpamCop reporting service to file spam complaints for you.)

https://www.spamcop.net/

REPORT SPAM

Report spam to help Internet providers cut spam off at the source.

REPORT SPAM

Report spam to help Internet providers cut spam off at the source.

REPORTED FOR SPAMMING?

Find out about SpamCop reports and spam blocking, email deliverability problems and what you can do to ensure that your mail will get through.

GET HELP

Get information from SpamCop's extensive FAQ and active user community.

https://www.spamcop.net/bl.shtml

https://www.spamcop.net/anonsignup.shtml

https://www.spamcop.net/spamstats.shtml