Zbigniew Szalbot wrote:

Hello,

2008/1/24, Khalil Abbas <khillo100@hotmail.com>:

...

Hello mailman guys..

ok, I have a dedicated server .. and I use mailman to send a daily newsletter.. I recenly got a list of 1,000,000 email addresses that I want to use to promote my website and mailing list .. can I create another mailman installation and add these addresses to it and use it to send an invitation to visit my website and join my mailing list without the risk of getting blocked by hotmail or yahoo or others because these emails I bought will have many faulty ones and will generate excessive bounces..

is mailman programmed in a way to avoid getting blocked by hotmail and others?? or do u think it's better to buy another server and use it for promotion?

I may sound harsh but you cannot just get a list of 1,000,000 just like that. I do not think Mailman creators wanted their product to be used as a tool for spammers. Unless, these people have volunteered to be sent offers.

I am not suggesting any solution because I am very much against such practices.

It is not harsh.

Unless you know for certain that every address on that list belongs to someone who has asked to receive a class of mail which clearly includes your intended mailing (something which is almost certainly not true regardless of any assurances from the seller of the list), you are spamming that list.

If 1% or 10,000 of those addresses are for example hotmail addresses, whatever portion of those are invalid, I think hotmail should blacklist you for sending a bulk mailing to 10,000 hotmail addresses.

-- Mark Sapiro <mark@msapiro.net> The highway is for gamblers, San Francisco Bay Area, California better use your sense - B. Dylan

Date: Thu, 24 Jan 2008 15:31:48 -0800 From: Allan Hansen <hansen@rc.org>

So I suppose that the best response is to simply ignore requests such as this which so obviously is from a spammer.

I disagree. They shouldn't be ignored. They should be denounced.

Previous posters covered all the bases just in (the unlikely) case the poster had a legit list (or perhaps a list he was told was legit when he bought it). I can't imagine this guy is a seasoned spammer with full knowledge of what he is doing or he wouldn't have posted for help. If he wants to do things legally and ethically, it's not too late. If he doesn't, well, we're not going to help him with his mailer issues.

Cyndi

From: Khalil Abbas <khillo100@hotmail.com> Date: Fri, 25 Jan 2008 06:41:14 +0000

Now this is the most logical and reasonale answer I've ever got .. this is what I call: a reply from a professional.. she's right, I have no idea that this is spamming.. all I know about spamming is those who send you repeatedly every once in a while, and all I wanna do is send a simple invite and that's all.. if this is spamming, then screw it .. I'm no programmer and no whiz.. somebody gave me this huge list of emails for money and said it will make people more aware of my site if I used it to invite them ..

anyways, thanks cyndi.. I really appeciate your help ..

You're welcome. But as you read further in your email you'll see that others here shared my views.

I'm very glad to hear you've changed your mind about this mailing. I wish you luck in your legitimate promotional efforts (buying ads on search engines or mailer software or elsewhere is a good choice).

Cyndi

On Fre, 2008-01-25 at 06:41 +0000, Khalil Abbas wrote:

Now this is the most logical and reasonale answer I've ever got .. this is what I call: a reply from a professional.. she's right, I have no idea that this is spamming.. all I know about spamming is those who send you repeatedly every once in a while, and all I wanna do is send

The problem is: If a sequence of unwanted mail is "spam", then even the first mail of that sequence is "spam". Apart from laws (which quite are different in different jurisdictions when it comes to "spam"), most people live with their own definition of "spam". And a "newsletter" for marketing people may very will be "spam" for techies. Personally I consider every invitation (I stopped counting long ago...) to whatever service/social network/... coming from unknown people/email addresses as "spam".

a simple invite and that's all.. if this is spamming, then screw it .. I'm no programmer and no whiz.. somebody gave me this huge list of emails for money and said it will make people more aware of my site if I used it to invite them ..

Uh, I hope you didn't pay too much as most the addresses are probably dead anyways (for one or the other reasons).

As for sending 1E6 emails[0] with mailman: mailman is probably the least problem - it hands them over to whatever your local MTA[1] is. And the MTA has the burden to deliver the mails. And it makes no sense to implement e.g. a "sent at most 1 email per second per destination domain" feature as the MTA afterwards may/will (depending on configuration etc.) reorder it for whatever reason. That time is better spent to tune your MTA[1].

As for "avoiding to be blacklisted": The blacklisting side defines the rules if an IP-address (or whatever) is blacklisted. And these rules may change over time .... So there can't be a (really working) magic "avoid being blacklisted" check box somewhere. In theory one could make such a check box for every blacklisting organization but that's in practice a lot of work (initially and ongoing) to not violate others "rules" and thus too expensive to be commercially interesting. And I really doubt that there are people out there who do such a thing for free (as in "free beer").

anyways, thanks cyndi.. I really appeciate your help .. [....] anyways, no harm done..

[ Fullquote deleted ]

Bernd

[0]: There such large installations (without spam intention) out there - e.g. the linux-kernel mailing list has according to http://vger.kernel.org/vger-lists.html 4751 emails on it and sends 200-300 emails per day. That makes 950200 to 1425300 mails per day. More "details" in http://lkml.org/lkml/2007/5/7/124 and the following discussion. LKML doesn't use mailman though. [1]: as in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mail_transfer_agent

Firmix Software GmbH http://www.firmix.at/ mobil: +43 664 4416156 fax: +43 1 7890849-55 Embedded Linux Development and Services

On 1/25/08, JB@comcast wrote:

Thake the million # List and break it into 1000 member Lists and START from there. Yep, gonna mean that you will have to reveiw EACH member of EACH 1000 person List.

But you can't really do that, either. One key difference between spam and a proper mailing list is that you have hard confirmation from the recipient that they asked to get the particular content in question.

In other words, they signed themselves up for a list, they got a confirmation notice, and they then acted on the confirmation notice to say "yes, I really do want this content".

Any time you buy a large list of addresses from somewhere, you bypass the first steps of that process, and that would make you a spammer. Even if you just send out invitations to those people to join your list, and you don't send anything else to them without their explicit confirmation, you're still a spammer.

The Direct Marketing Association says that they just want one bite of your apple, no more. But when you've got a billion people taking just one bite each out of your apple, do you honestly think you're going to have an apple left?

-- Brad Knowles <brad@shub-internet.org> LinkedIn Profile: <http://tinyurl.com/y8kpxu>

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1

On Jan 24, 2008, at 6:31 PM, Allan Hansen wrote:

I agree, and it's not harsh enough.

My first reaction to this was Oh-My-God.

My second reaction was to think that we needed an agreement among
Mailman list users that Mailman not be used for spam. Then I
realized that that would only inconvenience legit Mailman users and
spammers would not care to lie, just as they don't care about how
grievously they inconvenience and lie to everyone on their 1,000,000
long subscriber lists.

So I suppose that the best response is to simply ignore requests
such as this which so obviously is from a spammer.

Let me chime in for just a second.

Without really knowing the details of this specific case, I should
point out a few things. First, as anybody who's seen my replybot
message knows, I consider spammers reprehensible and am saddened
whenever I see them using Mailman for their nefarious purposes.
Fortunately, I'm always gladdened in more than equal measure by all
the great people using Mailman for positive, fun, interesting, and
socially important ways.

Second, because GNU Mailman is licensed under the GPL, we cannot
legally restrict Mailman from being used for any purpose. The GPL is
copyright based -- there's no user agreement anywhere to be found. I
sometimes wish we could legally prevent spammers from using Mailman,
but we cannot, and in fact I think in the long run, that benefits all
of us. Spamming activities certainly run afoul of other, better laws,
and I'd rather err on the side of more freedom than less.

However, I think it's perfectly appropriate to denounce spammers, and
refuse to help them. I hope we can also educate them so that people
who might be inadvertently or naively spamming people will come to
understand that there is a better way. Some people know exactly what
they are doing and don't care. Those people deserve our scorn. But I
also know of cases where people really didn't realize that what they
were doing was unacceptable or possibly illegal. Let's help them
understand they can use tools like Mailman in a more acceptable way.
If they still want to do bad things, we don't have to help them.

Cheers,

• -Barry

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Zbigniew Szalbot wrote:

Hello,

2008/1/24, Khalil Abbas <khillo100@hotmail.com>:

...

Hello mailman guys..

ok, I have a dedicated server .. and I use mailman to send a daily newsletter.. I recenly got a list of 1,000,000 email addresses that I want to use to promote my website and mailing list .. can I create another mailman installation and add these addresses to it and use it to send an invitation to visit my website and join my mailing list without the risk of getting blocked by hotmail or yahoo or others because these emails I bought will have many faulty ones and will generate excessive bounces..

is mailman programmed in a way to avoid getting blocked by hotmail and others?? or do u think it's better to buy another server and use it for promotion?

I may sound harsh but you cannot just get a list of 1,000,000 just like that. I do not think Mailman creators wanted their product to be used as a tool for spammers. Unless, these people have volunteered to be sent offers.

I am not suggesting any solution because I am very much against such practices.

It is not harsh.

Unless you know for certain that every address on that list belongs to someone who has asked to receive a class of mail which clearly includes your intended mailing (something which is almost certainly not true regardless of any assurances from the seller of the list), you are spamming that list.

If 1% or 10,000 of those addresses are for example hotmail addresses, whatever portion of those are invalid, I think hotmail should blacklist you for sending a bulk mailing to 10,000 hotmail addresses.

-- Mark Sapiro <mark@msapiro.net> The highway is for gamblers, San Francisco Bay Area, California better use your sense - B. Dylan

Date: Thu, 24 Jan 2008 15:31:48 -0800 From: Allan Hansen <hansen@rc.org>

So I suppose that the best response is to simply ignore requests such as this which so obviously is from a spammer.

I disagree. They shouldn't be ignored. They should be denounced.

Previous posters covered all the bases just in (the unlikely) case the poster had a legit list (or perhaps a list he was told was legit when he bought it). I can't imagine this guy is a seasoned spammer with full knowledge of what he is doing or he wouldn't have posted for help. If he wants to do things legally and ethically, it's not too late. If he doesn't, well, we're not going to help him with his mailer issues.

Cyndi

From: Khalil Abbas <khillo100@hotmail.com> Date: Fri, 25 Jan 2008 06:41:14 +0000

Now this is the most logical and reasonale answer I've ever got .. this is what I call: a reply from a professional.. she's right, I have no idea that this is spamming.. all I know about spamming is those who send you repeatedly every once in a while, and all I wanna do is send a simple invite and that's all.. if this is spamming, then screw it .. I'm no programmer and no whiz.. somebody gave me this huge list of emails for money and said it will make people more aware of my site if I used it to invite them ..

anyways, thanks cyndi.. I really appeciate your help ..

You're welcome. But as you read further in your email you'll see that others here shared my views.

I'm very glad to hear you've changed your mind about this mailing. I wish you luck in your legitimate promotional efforts (buying ads on search engines or mailer software or elsewhere is a good choice).

Cyndi

On Fre, 2008-01-25 at 06:41 +0000, Khalil Abbas wrote:

Now this is the most logical and reasonale answer I've ever got .. this is what I call: a reply from a professional.. she's right, I have no idea that this is spamming.. all I know about spamming is those who send you repeatedly every once in a while, and all I wanna do is send

The problem is: If a sequence of unwanted mail is "spam", then even the first mail of that sequence is "spam". Apart from laws (which quite are different in different jurisdictions when it comes to "spam"), most people live with their own definition of "spam". And a "newsletter" for marketing people may very will be "spam" for techies. Personally I consider every invitation (I stopped counting long ago...) to whatever service/social network/... coming from unknown people/email addresses as "spam".

a simple invite and that's all.. if this is spamming, then screw it .. I'm no programmer and no whiz.. somebody gave me this huge list of emails for money and said it will make people more aware of my site if I used it to invite them ..

Uh, I hope you didn't pay too much as most the addresses are probably dead anyways (for one or the other reasons).

As for sending 1E6 emails[0] with mailman: mailman is probably the least problem - it hands them over to whatever your local MTA[1] is. And the MTA has the burden to deliver the mails. And it makes no sense to implement e.g. a "sent at most 1 email per second per destination domain" feature as the MTA afterwards may/will (depending on configuration etc.) reorder it for whatever reason. That time is better spent to tune your MTA[1].

As for "avoiding to be blacklisted": The blacklisting side defines the rules if an IP-address (or whatever) is blacklisted. And these rules may change over time .... So there can't be a (really working) magic "avoid being blacklisted" check box somewhere. In theory one could make such a check box for every blacklisting organization but that's in practice a lot of work (initially and ongoing) to not violate others "rules" and thus too expensive to be commercially interesting. And I really doubt that there are people out there who do such a thing for free (as in "free beer").

anyways, thanks cyndi.. I really appeciate your help .. [....] anyways, no harm done..

[ Fullquote deleted ]

Bernd

[0]: There such large installations (without spam intention) out there - e.g. the linux-kernel mailing list has according to http://vger.kernel.org/vger-lists.html 4751 emails on it and sends 200-300 emails per day. That makes 950200 to 1425300 mails per day. More "details" in http://lkml.org/lkml/2007/5/7/124 and the following discussion. LKML doesn't use mailman though. [1]: as in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mail_transfer_agent

Firmix Software GmbH http://www.firmix.at/ mobil: +43 664 4416156 fax: +43 1 7890849-55 Embedded Linux Development and Services

On 1/25/08, JB@comcast wrote:

Thake the million # List and break it into 1000 member Lists and START from there. Yep, gonna mean that you will have to reveiw EACH member of EACH 1000 person List.

But you can't really do that, either. One key difference between spam and a proper mailing list is that you have hard confirmation from the recipient that they asked to get the particular content in question.

In other words, they signed themselves up for a list, they got a confirmation notice, and they then acted on the confirmation notice to say "yes, I really do want this content".

Any time you buy a large list of addresses from somewhere, you bypass the first steps of that process, and that would make you a spammer. Even if you just send out invitations to those people to join your list, and you don't send anything else to them without their explicit confirmation, you're still a spammer.

The Direct Marketing Association says that they just want one bite of your apple, no more. But when you've got a billion people taking just one bite each out of your apple, do you honestly think you're going to have an apple left?

-- Brad Knowles <brad@shub-internet.org> LinkedIn Profile: <http://tinyurl.com/y8kpxu>

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1

On Jan 24, 2008, at 6:31 PM, Allan Hansen wrote:

I agree, and it's not harsh enough.

My first reaction to this was Oh-My-God.

My second reaction was to think that we needed an agreement among
Mailman list users that Mailman not be used for spam. Then I
realized that that would only inconvenience legit Mailman users and
spammers would not care to lie, just as they don't care about how
grievously they inconvenience and lie to everyone on their 1,000,000
long subscriber lists.

So I suppose that the best response is to simply ignore requests
such as this which so obviously is from a spammer.

Let me chime in for just a second.

Without really knowing the details of this specific case, I should
point out a few things. First, as anybody who's seen my replybot
message knows, I consider spammers reprehensible and am saddened
whenever I see them using Mailman for their nefarious purposes.
Fortunately, I'm always gladdened in more than equal measure by all
the great people using Mailman for positive, fun, interesting, and
socially important ways.

Second, because GNU Mailman is licensed under the GPL, we cannot
legally restrict Mailman from being used for any purpose. The GPL is
copyright based -- there's no user agreement anywhere to be found. I
sometimes wish we could legally prevent spammers from using Mailman,
but we cannot, and in fact I think in the long run, that benefits all
of us. Spamming activities certainly run afoul of other, better laws,
and I'd rather err on the side of more freedom than less.

However, I think it's perfectly appropriate to denounce spammers, and
refuse to help them. I hope we can also educate them so that people
who might be inadvertently or naively spamming people will come to
understand that there is a better way. Some people know exactly what
they are doing and don't care. Those people deserve our scorn. But I
also know of cases where people really didn't realize that what they
were doing was unacceptable or possibly illegal. Let's help them
understand they can use tools like Mailman in a more acceptable way.
If they still want to do bad things, we don't have to help them.

Cheers,

• -Barry

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