compliance

Dear Colleagues at ESPs, We have a problem. More specifically, YOU have a problem. You have a spam problem. One that you’re not taking care of in any way, shape or form. There was a point where ESPs started caring about spam out of their networks. They got blocked enough they had to take action. Because they took action a lot of the big blocklists started being nice. Spamhaus, for instance, would do ‘informational’ listings so that ESPs could fix things rather than going to a direct block. This led management at ESPs to start to think they had this spam thing under control. They stopped worrying too much about spam and compliance. I mean, to management the whole point of having a compliance desk is to stop the blocks. No blocks mean no problems with spam out of the network, right? As someone who gets a lot of B2B

I don’t send a lot of spam complaints generally. Mostly I block and move on. There are some companies, though, that I offer the professional courtesy of sending a complaint or a report to their abuse@ address. Former clients, friends and colleagues generally get that courtesy. The number of ESPs that completely fail to take any action is disappointing. Too many of them can’t even manage the simple courtesy of removing addresses. A few don’t even process bounces correctly and continue to send mail even when getting a spam block or 550 user unknown. Sometimes I’ll reach out to folks who I know work at particular ESPs, although that’s less common these days as everyone seems to be moving companies and I can’t keep track. Often I get an invite to “always send me complaints directly.” That … is not a solution, people. Expecting people who are reporting spam to…