Re: What's the law on sending unsolicited email

Mike wrote: 
* Mike Scott <usenet.9@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>:

sharky wrote:
...

In your case a simple pro-active package like ACT would cut spam to nothing (incoming email is quarantined, a email sender to sender saying 'did you send this', and mail released to you when they say yes.
Sender is then whitelisted. Spammers never answer the challenge.

Nor would this genuine sender bother if met with such a challenge request. I'd just treat any such challenge as I would 'spam'....... 


I operate some small Web sites that contain technical articles.  As
a consequence of this, I often receive unsolicited email asking for
technical advice.  That's fine, but I received a request last week and
spent quite some time writing a useful response.  My reply was then
bounced by a challenge-response system, asking me to confirm that I
was a real person.  Did I bother?  Of course not.

If someone asks me to help them and then doesn't do me the courtesy
of accepting my reply without making me jummp through hoops, it's
a waste of his time and mine.  And it makes me less inclined to reply
to such requests in the future.

So, do you want to annoy everyone you write to?  Do you want to ask
people for help and never receive any replies?  Well, use this
"simple pro-active package like ACT" and cut your incoming email to
zero"!

Mike.

I see your point, but it means HIS challenge system was borked.
If you send someone new a mail, then your outgoing mail is(should be!) tagged with your code, a reply to you (containing this code) is automatically whitelisted and let thru to you.
So unless he requested help thru a webforum, or you wrote a clean email to him rather than reply directly, you should NOT have been challenged as you had been contacted by him first.

I don't use this system anymore, there are better ways of spam prevention, but I didn't seem to get many people not answering the challenge, perhaps only 1 or two out of hundreds.
I suppose it depends how badly people want to speak to you, if they really need you, they will answer the challenge.













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