Don't get labeled a spammer

Filed in archive Spam on January 31, 2007

In this brave new world there really are companies who cherish their reputation, and more importantly for us, care enough to get their newsletters, offers and other subscribe adverts out into your inbox the right way.

I don't know if you ever tried to get your newsletter out to more thousand subscribers at once, but believe me, it's not an easy chore, especially if you want it done by the book, and never, not even in an instant, be considered a spammer.

Dark Reading Kelly Jackson Higgins has written a great piece, more of a handbook or a checklist for all those admins, small-business owners and big company IT personnel who need to get their word out. The article is called Seven Ways to Be Mistaken for a Spammer and I feel that everyone who sends out any legit mass emailing needs to read it. The article covers basics, which we tend to miss if not paying perfect attention.

Anyhows, I was really surprised that some companies seem to misplace their computers, even leave them on for years without even knowing they exist:

"Andrew Lee, chief research officer for ESET, says he recently conducted an audit for a client and found an infected machine sitting under some tables in the janitor's broom closet. It was pumping out thousands of IP scans per minute. "No one had any idea it was there, or why it was there, and by the age of the hardware, it had been there a very long time," he says. "It's very hard to get free of the taint of being a spammer, or being associated with an IP that is on a lot of block lists. And it can be really hard to clean that up"

Now it would be easy for me to say that things like this could never happen to me, but I will nonetheless go check our old computers in the basement after I finish this. Although all of those have been boxed and there is no electricity in the basement, it's better to be safe than sorry :)