I wasn't surprised to see Net-philistine Jim Anderton lavishing praise on the DMA's new code but I was extremely disappointed to read that the Consumers' Institute also came out with a glowing endorsement. So disappointed in fact that I fired an email off to the Consumers Institute's Chief Executive, outlining the shortcomings in single-opt-in lists and just how they can be abused. I included links to several references and one to a site offering mailbomb software that can be readily downloaded and used to exploit such lists to flood people's e-mailboxes with unwanted spam.

Unfortunately, even though I sent my message almost a week ago and requested a response -- none has been forthcoming. So much for protecting the rights of consumers eh David?

We are expected to believe that the DMA's members won't engage in spamming -- even though their code of practice does nothing to prevent it -- relying instead on the useless opt-out facility that spammers so often use to validate those stupid enough to respond before placing them on a "premium" spam list.

Remember -- if your receive a commercial email that you never asked for then it's spam. Even if it has an opt-out facility how do you know that the opt-out isn't actually an opt-in to a whole lot more spam. Remember -- smart people "never believe a spammer." Despite what the DMA, Consumers Institute and Jim Anderton might mistakenly believe, opt-out is NOT an ethical solution to spam because spammers lie -- today's column is proof of that -- read on...

Spammers Lie -- The Proof
Yesterday I received a press release from blink.co.nz (albeit not from the company directly but from another source). This is yet another permission-based direct-email marketing company which claims to be anti-spam.

In fact -- they go to great lengths to associate themselves with the company from which they have obtained their software -- FloNetwork.

On the Blink.co.nz site they proudly proclaim: "Our ASP (application service provider) is FloNetwork. They are a member of the DMA in the USA, CAUCE (Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial email)..."

Readers Say (updated hourly) NZ Post... - NZ Post Spam... - D Marshall Have Your Say

I think Blink.co.nz has just learnt their first lesson about direct email marketing -- never believe a spammer!

A quick check of the CAUCE site shows no sign of FloNetwork in the list of organisational members.

Another check on Google's newsgroup search shows that FloNetwork is spam-friendly and has been the subject of numerous complaints to and from email administrators. In fact, I'm told that their CAUCE membership was revoked because of the growing number of complaints.

When I contacted blink.co.nz's general manager Johanna Boerema yesterday, she told me that the website was correct -- FloNetwork was a member of Cauce and that they were very anti-spam. When I challenged those claims and provided the evidence, she claimed to be totally unaware of FloNetwork's spamming reputation or their banishment from the ranks of CAUCE membership. I took a timely opportunity to remind her: "never believe a spammer."

Unfortunately, Blink do not have a mandatory double-opt-in policy for customers and, according to Johanna, their method of preventing spam is to send out a mailing of 10% of a customer's list and wait to see how many complaints there are before sending the rest. Satisfactory? I don't think IHUG, their upstream provider, will think so.

I was again gobsmacked when Johanna asked me to explain how a double-opt-in mailing list was operated and that she was unaware of how single-opt-in lists could be exploited to launch mailbomb attacks. Is it any wonder that we've seen such a high failure rate in online businesses when those running them appear not to have done their homework properly?

So is Blink a willing accomplice of FloNetworks or have they just another company naive enough to believe what a spammer tells them?

I guess we'll know for sure if/when Blink decide to implement a mandatory double-opt-in policy for all its customers and mailouts -- right?

This case just lends more weight to the case for the DMA to revise their present spam-friendly code of malpractice and for the Consumer's Institute to start living up to its name and withdrawing its support for the EMSA's code of practice until such time as it mandates the use of double-opt-in lists only.

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