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| for Blocking Lists and Admins | for Mailers & Marketers | for Email Users | Info for Blocking Lists and Administrators... At this time, it is recommended that you do not use information from this website as the basis for blocking a domain, IP address, IP range, organization or individual. We want all information on this site to be 100% factual and complete. If you are a mailer, marketer or other entity, and there is some information on the CM site that you think should be corrected or clarified, we urge you to get in touch with us via the contact form. Please note that the listing of a company, domain or individual on this website is not meant to disparage that entity; it is meant to enlighten all companies and individuals about the decades-old Internet standard prohibiting the sending of unsolicited commercial email, and to serve as a warning about the hazards of using unconfirmed addresses, or submitting your own address to any website or company. The information on this site is simply anecdotal information culled from the website owner's personal experience, and is meant to illustrate the growing problems caused by unauthorized information sharing and the use of unconfirmed email addresses for marketing. Most importantly, please remember that not all entities mentioned on this site have been involved in spamming. This is especially true for the Spamdemic Map. Please be sure to read all notations associated with any mentioned entity, including the Spamdemic Map color-code legend. At present, the information on this website is taken solely from the
personal experience of a single user: the owner of the Clueless Mailers
website. The Clueless Mailers Blacklist only deals with mailers, marketers
and advertisers with whom I've personally had (bad) experience, and the
Clueless Mailers Spamdemic Map only includes organizations and domains
that are in some way connected with those entities, either directly or
indirectly. It is possible that at some time in the future, this
site and its information will be served from a database, and the information
could possibly become a real-time block list... but for the moment, the
site's narrow scope and the depth of the documentation used do not support
the wholesale blocking of entities mentioned here. Thanks for your understanding. Info for Mailers & Marketers... About this site We want all information on this site to be 100% factual and complete. If you are a mailer, marketer or other entity, and there is some information on the CM site that you think should be corrected or clarified, we urge you to get in touch with us via the contact form. Please note that the listing of a company, domain or individual on this website is not meant to disparage that entity; it is meant to enlighten all companies and individuals about the decades-old Internet standard prohibiting the sending of unsolicited commercial email, and to serve as a warning about the hazards of using unconfirmed addresses, or submitting your own address to any website or company. The information on this site is simply anecdotal information culled from the website owner's personal experience, and is meant to illustrate the growing problems caused by unauthorized information sharing and the use of unconfirmed email addresses for marketing. Most importantly, please remember that not all entities mentioned on this site have been involved in spamming. This is especially true for the Spamdemic Map. Please be sure to read all notations associated with any mentioned entity, including the Spamdemic Map color-code legend. The purposes of this website are: 1) To raise awareness among mailers, marketers and individual email users
about these growing problems: 2) To enlighten mailers and marketers as to the decades-old standards of the Internet which remain unchanged by things like the commercialization of the Net's infrastructure, or downturns in the economy; namely the practically-based ethic that has always banned, and continues to ban the sending of unsolicited commercial email. And... 3) To provide information to mailers and marketers that will allow them to continue doing business, to continue sending email to those who ask for it, and to fulfill their obligations as members of the Internet community as they benefit from this powerful communication medium. Why companies are listed on this site Each of the entities listed on the Clueless Mailers Blacklist has met one or more of these criteria: 1) The entity markets directly to unconfirmed email addresses. Regardless of what a list broker may claim, the mere presence of an email address in a database or on a list proves nothing when it comes to permission. Only the presence of closed-loop opt-in confirmation data directly associated with each address can prove that the addressee truly asked to be placed on a mailing list. 2) The entity provides mailing services to clients whose lists contain unconfirmed email addresses. Mailing services that do not fully vet their clients' lists are allowing spam to be sent through their systems. As mentioned in 1) above, only a closed-loop confirmed opt-in audit trail provides proof of permission. 3) The entity refuses to terminate repeat spammers. Some large "legitimate" ISPs, hosts and mailing services have recently begun allowing spammers to operate from their systems. In many cases, this is likely due to the downturn in the economy, and in the Internet sector in particular. Most of these companies have not acknowledged that they now allow spamming... instead, they have simply stopped enforcing their abuse policies. A service that refuses to terminate spammers also often... 4) The entity provides "list-washing" services to spammers. Instead of terminating those who send unsolicited commercial email through their services, some ISPs, hosts and mailing services now demand that the spam victim surrender their email address in order to stop the abuse. Since the burden of proof of permission rests solely on the shoulders of the sender, and it is widely known that acknowledging your email address to a spammer can sometimes increase the amount of spam received at that address — or can even provide a target for a spammer's retaliatory attacks — the spam victim has absolutely no obligation to surrender their email address. Companies that would have immediately terminated these clients six months ago are now no longer enforcing their abuse policies, and are instead providing a service to the spammer by removing those who understand how to properly report the abuse. This means that educated recipients are removed from the mailings, while countless others who are new to the Internet and/or do not know how to report the abuse continue to be victimized. And last but not least, every blacklisted company or domain has been involved in spam that has been repeatedly sent to one or more of the email accounts belonging to the owner of this website. This includes companies that have commissioned the sending of the spam, have provided mailing lists or list management services to the spammer, have allowed spam to be sent via their service, or have provided some other direct support in the sending of or the gathering of responses to spam sent to my email accounts. Blacklisted entities may also include companies which take no apparent action against their "affiliates," "partners," "resellers," etc. who repeatedly spam and advertise the company's goods or services. These companies benefit directly from spamming, and refuse to terminate relationships with their spamming partners. After several attempts to enlighten a spam-involved company are ignored or are rebuffed with refusals to perform due diligence in the use of closed-loop opt-in subscription systems, and/or refusals to terminate spamming customers, these domains and companies are added to the blacklist as a last resort. All this means is that all email originating from or advertising these companies or domains is routed straight to /dev/null (oblivion) on the servers administered by the owner of this website. Each of the entities shown on the Clueless Mailers Spamdemic Map has met one or more of these criteria: 1) The entity has repeatedly sent unsolicited commercial email to one or more of my email accounts. Note that not every company on the Spamdemic Map has spammed the owner of this website. Read on for more about this. 2) The entity has done business with or does business with any company that is already on the Spamdemic Map This means that there are many entities on the Spamdemic Map that have never been involved in spam sent to the email accounts of this website's owner. Why is a company on the Map if they're not spamming? Because the purpose of the Map is simply to show the widespread interconnectivity of mailing services and marketing companies, to illustrate the potential for abuse. Due to the fact that many of these companies accept unconfirmed addresses into their databases, and the fact that so many companies have address-sharing "partnership" agreements with so many other companies, once an unauthorized submittor injects an email address into this macro-network of companies and their databases, it is fully possible that the address will never again be free of spam. The Spamdemic Map serves as a wake-up call for email users and list managers alike: know who you're doing business with, know their policies and practices, and remember that permission must be granted and documented, not just assumed. NOTE: The Spamdemic Map always provides a clear system to differentiate between companies that have been involved in spam sent to the owner of this site, and those which have not. If the current trends toward the widespread use of unconfirmed email addresses for marketing are not reversed, the average email account will become all but unusable, the costs to ISPs and their users will rise dramatically, and, inevitably, legislation will be enacted to stop the abuse. What can ISPs, Webhosts, Mailers and Marketers do to stop these growing problems? Info for Email Users... About the Clueless Mailers site: At present, the information on this website is taken solely from the personal experience of a single user: the owner of the Clueless Mailers website. The Clueless Mailers Blacklist only deals with mailers, marketers and advertisers with whom I've personally had (bad) experience, and the Clueless Mailers Spamdemic Map only includes organizations and domains that are in some way connected with those entities, either directly or indirectly. Note that not all of the organizations, domains or individuals mentioned on this site have committed any kind of spamming or privacy violation offense; please be careful to read all notations concerning any mentioned entity. Above all, it is not recommended that you use the information on this website as the only criterion for filtering, blocking or complaining about a given company or domain. The listing of a company, domain or individual on this website is not meant to disparage that entity; it is meant to enlighten all companies and individuals about the decades-old Internet standard prohibiting the sending of unsolicited commercial email, and to serve as a warning about the hazards of using unconfirmed addresses or submitting your own address to any website or company. The information on this site is simply anecdotal information culled from the website owner's personal experience, and is meant to illustrate the growing problems caused by unauthorized information sharing and the use of unconfirmed email addresses for marketing. Limiting the spam sent to your email address: Here are a few suggestions for keeping spam out of your inbox: + Don't post your email address on a message board or newsgroup. Get a free "disposable" email account and use it for posting. Or, use an "aliasing" service to create a disposable address that automatically forwards to your real address. Spammers also use automated software to harvest addresses found in Usenet news groups and Web-based message boards. + ALWAYS read the privacy policy on a website before submitting personal info like an email address. If the policy says something about retaining the right to share your address with "our marketing partners" and/or "affiliates", be extremely cautious. You have no idea who those partners are or how many, nor do you know what those partners may do with your information once it's shared. This is one of the problems that the Clueless Mailers site deals with: the unauthorized propagation of email addresses. You may be giving permission to share the address once, but unless there's language stating exactly who will get the information, and what they are allowed to do with it -- sharing and otherwise -- we recommend that you don't submit an address or other information that you want to keep spam-free/private. And we recommend that you don't submit info if there is no privacy policy. In fact, we recommend that you only submit a permanent email address
or personal information to companies you are very familiar with. But as
the Spamdemic Map shows, even these companies may have policies that allow
the sharing of some or all of your info. If in doubt, use a disposable
address. • Spammers are notorious for selling addresses to each other. When
you reply to a spammer, you verify that your email address is "deliverable".
This makes your address more valuable to the spammer, since deliverable
addresses sell for a higher price. So, you might (or might not) stop receiving
spam from that particular spammer, but there's a possiblity that you may
start receiving spam from countless other spammers. • Spammers are well-known for retaliating against those who complain
about their activities. They sometimes attack a spam victim through mail-bombing—
the sending of hundreds or even thousands of messages to a victim's mailbox
in a very short time, filling the mailbox and making the victim's account
unusable. They are also known for committing "Joe jobs", in
which they impersonate you and forge your email address and/or website
URL into countless spam messages. Abuse reports are filed by the recipients
of those messages, and your account may be terminated for spamming, even
though you never spammed. • You have no obligation to surrender your address to a spammer.
The burden of proof of permission lies solely on the shoulders of the
sender... not yours. If a mailer can't positively prove they have your
permission, they have no right to send you email. If the sender were using
a closed-loop confirmed opt-in subscription system, they wouldn't be spamming
you in the first place. • And the spammer has already violated your trust by sending you
unsolicited commercial email. Why would you want to enter into a transaction
with or even communicate with someone who has already proven themselves
to be unethical, or at the very least, irresponsible? All of this is why we also recommend thoroughly removing all references
to your address and identity from a spam mail before forwarding it as
part of a spam report.
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