closed mailing list (Re: [Webdev] Send & Accept Checks by Email. FREE !)

[Adam Beecher]

Dermot McGahon said:
> Yes it does. You subscribe as normal using the web interface is
> probably the easiest. Then access your subscription options and turn
> on 'nomail' for the account that you want to be able to post from but
> not to have list email delivered to.
>
> I have been using this method on mailman lists for a year or two now
> and it works a treat.
>
It's a pity it's not as advanced as some of the websites that do this though. I
saw this only the other day on one, but I can't remember the URL. You register,
do all the usual do, and it offers you an option to subscribe other addresses as
"aliases" to send from. I realise it's pretty much the same thing, but it would
be nice if it was built directly into the interface for *one* subscription. I
might suggest it to the Mailman crew.

> The amount of SPAM doesn't seem huge to me. I watched someone access a
> hotmail account last night with ~200 spam emails and 3 emails that
> they actually wanted and had to weed out of the other 200. Scary.
>
Not on the list, but it's definitely getting worse. And worse again, we have all
these amateurs that bought "Licence To Spam" CD's coming on-line, including a
lot of Irish morons. Most of these amateurs don't know the first thing about
spamming though, thank god, so they post with their real email addy and put the
URL of their site in the message body. Ripe for complaint to their ISP's and web
hosting providers. Which people should do of course - I have a form email at
this stage for it.

I have a Hotmail account too, and I found myself having to turn on the Bulk Mail
filters again last night. I use it for registering and subscribing on websites,
which just goes to show that a good portion of the Privacy Policies out there
are just there for show. Sad really. Double Opt-In is the only real solution,
but how can it be enforced? But all this is mostly off-topic, so I'll shut up
now.

But hang on, to bring it back on-topic, I'm curious - how do other developers
feel about Spam for their own business - as a "marketing tool" (ick!) - and how
do they feel about the Double Opt-In method suggested by EuroCAUCE? Much like
subscriptions to mailing lists that is - you have to fill in your email address,
and then you have to respond to an email sent to that address. Also, how do
people feel about the automatically checked box on a lot of sites? Me, I think
that's Opt-Out by definition, but it seems a lot of people don't see it that
way.

Is this on-topic enough, or should I mention a PHP backend or summat?

adam