Are You A Trusted E-Sender - The Next Requirement?

[John Glube]

Hi all,

Use e-mail to communicate with your customers after they bought from you? Wondering what's going on over at hotmail and msn? Concerned about getting caught up in the cross hairs of the spam wars? Then listen up folks.

Ok most of us know of Site Sell. SiteSell markets a fairly powerful consumer product known as Site Build It.

Recently, it came to the attention of Site Sell that buyers of Site Build It, who had msn or hotmail accounts were not receiving the initial follow up e-mail with their account details. This was apparently the case even when the buyer had "white listed" or in hotmail's terms, "safelisted" Site Sell's e-mail address.

Microsoft happens to offer a similar product called BCentral, a direct competitor to Site Build It. The people at Site Sell contacted Microsoft and were ultimately told, yes your e-mails are not getting through.

Site Sell was told it's e-mail was being blocked by an MSN filter to stop spam. Yep!

Microsoft informed Site Sell it was evaluating a program offered by Bonded Sender and if Site Sell wanted a better shot at it's e-mails getting through it should sign up for the Bonded Sender program.

(This program operates on the concept an e-mail sender pays an annual fee, agrees to a set of e-mail marketing standards, posts a bond to ensure performance and the sender's e-mail gets past all the filters with participating internet access providers.)

Interesting.

Now life gets fascinating. Bonded Sender is powered and owned by Iron Port systems, which also recently bought Spamcop.

Spamcop are the people who, based on anonymous complaints from recipients, may black list the internet provider addresses of the sender. And with Spamcop it is guilty until proven innocent, even if the recipient has given you "affirmative consent."

And it so happens, one of the directors and two of the key senior managers at Iron Port have past affiliations with Microsoft.

Now, should we as consumers be concerned?

Like hey, if I ask to receive e-mail from someone through my email account and have even safelisted their e-mail address, does this give the Internet access provider (in this case Microsoft) the power to block these e-mails?

And once the Internet access provider is informed of the problem and continues to block the e-mails, perhaps it's time to change horses?

And how has Site Sell responded to all of this? By putting together a thank you page for Site Build It customers with msn and hotmail addresses setting outall the details (http://buildit.sitesell.com/success-page-MSN-hotmail.html).

(The thank you page includes copies of the e-mail correspondence with Microsoft, links to the relevant pages at IronPort and so forth.)

So, folks you decide. Do we raise the banner of free enterprise? Do we march with our feet to other suppliers of e-mail services, while telling the supplier (in this case Microsoft) why?

Or do we just say, geez, all's fair in love and war.

Now what about us e-marketers. If we want to send affirmative consent commercial e-mail, or transactional or relationship e-mail (these are defined terms in the Can Spam Act (http://www.learnsteps4profit.com/antispamus.html)) should we be participating in a trusted email sender program?

Is this the way to deal with spam, presuming all the internet access providers are accepting trusted sender programs from a variety of parties and there is no price fixing, allowing for open and fair competition in the market place? Besides, you can write off the expense as a cost of doing business.

The downside? Potentially the micro business community will get squeezed out and we are going to see a "balkanized" Internet, with gated communities to protect email users from the vandals.

Kind regards,

John Glube
Toronto, Canada

[carju1]

Fair No, Right No, BUT if you are using a FREE hotmail account given to you by Microsoft then they have the right to do what they want with your account.

It maynot be nice but thats they way they play the game and if you are getting something for free off them then thats the price you pay. The answer have your own E-mail addy on your own server and control your own e-mails.

Carju1

[matauri]

Personally I have no problem with MSN/Hotmail's filters. I route a lot of my mail thru there b4 coming to my servers, and I think the drop in spam mail has been fantastic.

The canspam act (and other countries acts) have been a fizzogg, it hasnt worked at all, in fact I have seen many people have an increase in spam because the spammers are now using other methods in which to spam. (i.e spoofing addies, and getting past filters with graphic images).

Someone is always going to get caught in the cross fire in this war against spammers. For the legit businesses it is unfortunate.

But one thing, if the people actually 'wanted to' recieve such emails, they wouldnt have used Hotmail to begin with when lodging their email addy, they would have put their server side addy. The fact that a user has given their hotmail addy seems like an indication that they didnt want to recieve bulk correspondance associated with it either.


Cindy

[John Glube]

Cindy,

You wrote:

"The canspam act (and other countries acts) have been a fizzogg, it hasnt worked at all ..."

A couple of comments:

If we expected the passage of a law to make any immediate dent in the problem, we were dreaming.

The Can Spam Act is not even 3 months old. The FTC has not yet written the local rules and on the international arena, the EU and Americans are only starting the process of putting in place the required understandings for even closer ties on information sharing and common remedy provisions.

(Some of this already exists. For example the United States, Canada and Australia are part of the Sentinel project. Also, there is an organization established to faciliate the sharing of information between the various consumer protection agencies of the OECD nations.)

As to the EU, in the UK for example - given the level of business complaints - it seems the UK regulations may be amended to include all subscriber email addys within the regime.

At the same time, as recently acknowledged by the EU Information Commissioner, the EU as a whole clearly needs to toughen up its enforcement powers.

However, the underlying problem is even if all nations passed a law which said thou shall not:

* send unsolicited commercial email;

* use false or misleading header information or deceptive subject lines;

* send commercial email without a working opt-out mechanism and thou must honor all opt-out requests;

would not solve the problem. Even if the punishment was "do not pass go, do not collect $200, go directly to jail."

Why? In part the difficulty lies with the Internet plumbing, which needs fixing.

Besides, abusive behavior will continue no matter what law you write.

(We have had laws banning murder since Moses came down from Mt. Sinai with the 10 Commandments, but murder has not stopped.)

At best all the law can do is set up a framework for a solution, while giving the authorities the needed powers to go after the abusers and all we can plan for is a reduction in the level of abuse.

You go on to write:

"Someone is always going to get caught in the cross fire in this war against spammers. For the legit businesses it is unfortunate."

Okay, poor, poor Site Sell. There, there ...

However, the questions remain:

* Does the Trusted Email Open Standard offer a solution to the problem of legitimate businesses getting caught in the cross fire?

* Should we as consumers of Internet access services be calling up our providers to adapt this approach?

(I find it interesting that while Gates along with CAUCE came out in support of TEOS, the network administration group at MSN is essentially saying - you can sign up for Bonded Sender - but no guarantees of deliverability - which tends to defeat the purpose, unless this is language written by the lawyers to avoid liability issues.)

As an aside, if the reader is not familiar with TEOS, SPF, the Turn Tide Router and the various Internet plumbing issues, you can read this article (http://www.learnsteps4profit.com/spf.html) to help elucidate the fuzification.

You go on to write:

"But one thing, if the people actually 'wanted to' recieve such emails, they wouldnt have used Hotmail to begin with when lodging their email addy, they would have put their server side addy."

Experienced users tend to give out a secondary email address when signing up for something and they don't know and aren't sure if they can trust the recipient.

At the same time, I would not go so far as to write:

"The fact that a user has given their hotmail addy seems like an indication that they didnt want to recieve bulk correspondance associated with it either."

Rather it may be simply matter of being cautious or the person prefers to use his or her hotmail or msn.com addy for business communication and their isp address for personal communication.

Carju1

You write:

"Fair No, Right No, BUT if you are using a FREE hotmail account given to you by Microsoft then they have the right to do what they want with your account."

From a commercial perspective I understand the point, but even when someone provides you with a free service there are limits.

At the same, as you suggest:

"The answer have your own E-mail addy on your own server and control your own e-mails."

Kind regards,

John Glube
Toronto, Canada