From: Rabid Wombat <wombat@mcfeely.bsfs.org>
Date: Wed, 18 Sep 1996 06:33:35 +0800
To: "Dr.Dimitri Vulis KOTM" <dlv@bwalk.dm.com>
Subject: Re: Spam blacklist project
In-Reply-To: <7aLDuD77w165w@bwalk.dm.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.BSF.3.91.960917124148.16319C-100000@mcfeely.bsfs.org>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain



> You haven't answered my question, Lues. If the list of e-mail addresses of
> people who DON'T want junk e-mail is made available for _free for FTP,
> together with a tool for spammers to scrub their mailing lists of these
> addresses, and an easy way for anyone to add his or her address to this
> list for _free, then how would Slaton _sell this list to anyone?
> 

Easily. What percentage of, er, mass internet advertisers would know that 
this site exists? I assume it would become a very large list, and would 
make a very atractive target for someone who wanted to provide email 
addresses to others for a fee.  

btw - my girlfriend just wandered by, and read this over my shoulder. 
She's the network operations center mgr. for a large ISP. She just got a 
complaint last night from a, er, Internet Direct Mail Marketer, who 
claimed that his outbound mail queue was filling up, and this was somehow 
the ISP's fault that he couldn't reach certain addresses on a list he had 
recently purchased. Sorta like calling the phone company and complaining 
that some numbers on a telemarketing list were disconnected, or that 
nobody answered :)

I'd say it's a safe bet that the unscrupulous could easily sell a large, 
up-to-date list of email addresses of people who DON'T want junk email to 
people who want to send such mail.

- r.w.