The War against Spam goes on

Turns out the biggest problem in fighting the war against
spam has
been the giant battle lines drawn between all the
participants. For the most part, marketers,
email broadcast firms, ISPs, and filter program firms
rarely speak to each other. We all heard
that people on the "other side" thought of us as bad guys,
and we focused on how to get around
them.

In trying to stop the barrage of viagra ads and porno ad
has unfortunately interfered with legitimate
e-zine publishers, because we're caught in the anti-spam
crossfire. If you
publish any type of e-mail publication, there's a likely
chance that your
e-zine is NOT reaching a portion of your readers. Why?
Their Internet
service provider (ISP) or e-mail program uses a spam filter.

These software programs search for words and phrases that
are typical
of spam and assign each incoming e-mail a "score." If your
e-mail
has too many of these words and phrases, you receive a high
score,
and you may be blocked.

This of course is hurting my business as I publish several
ezines
but I think perhaps there is another issue here. The freedom
to choose
who I get email from. My isp is deciding not only who I can
send to
but who I get email from by some spam score system. I feel
this
violates my rights as an individual. I have a right to
receive my
mail. I am just as irritated as the next guy with the vigara
ads and
the porno ads, but in trying to filter these out we have
given our
rights as business owners and individuals to the isp's.

I for one do not want to have to check every email I send
and
see if for instance I have unsubscribe as a word in it.
Especially
when the anti-spam laws say I must give opt-in subscribers a
way
to un*subscribe. I also do not want to put in my address
book the
people I want mail from and then have someones spam filter
look in my
address book this is more an invasion of privacy than the
spammers.

I think more communication between the isp's, ezine
publishers, internet
marketers is need. Call your isp tell them how much or how
little you
want to have filtered. My experience when I did this is they
told me
they have filters in place but they are not blocking me
sending directly
to the domain or are they blocking my incoming mail. One
email box I have
takes my spam and puts it in my trash folder that way I can
go through it
sort by spam scores and get the emails I want this is at
least a acceptable
scompromise between spam and me deciding who I want to hear
from. Call your
isp object to the filters, call your congressman or email
him and object
to isp's having the power to decide who you email and who
you receive mail from.