SPAM - How to get block removed

Aim

To get the spam block removed by Outblaze.

The Sequence of events

03/Jan/2007 mail sent: How can the two of us work together ?

Dear Mr. Suresh Ramasubramanian, President: CAUCE India This is to introduce ourselves. Our organisation is in the forefront of measures for spam mail and tele-calls. How can the two of us work together ? G Naga

04/Jan/2007 mail received from ...@kcircle.com: Your organization could implement the MAAWG

Hello

Your organization could implement the MAAWG sender best practices - these are developed by large email marketers together with ISPs in the USA. http://www.maawg.org/about/MAAWG_Senders_BCP Maawg HomeAbout MAAWGMembers RosterWhite PapersSenior Technical AdvisorsMAAWG Published DocumentsMAAWG Senders BCP DocumentNews and EventsMember LoginPrivacy Policy Request a Member ID & PasswordHome » About MAAWG » MAAWG Senders BCP Document MAAWG - Senders BCP Sender BCP Document This draft is open for public comment until 22 December 2006. Send all comments to senderbcp@maawg.org If you would like additional information or have questions, please Contact Us.

06/Dec/2007 dmai encloses the copy of the mail received from them on 2007 Jan 04th recd.

From: Secretary@direct-marketing-association-india.org To: info@edeskonline.com Subject: Re: Fwd: [ST #2017877]:Outblaze Postmaster Team: eMail rejection Date: Thu, 6 Dec 2007 11:33:50 +0530 Dear Sirs, Enclosed is the copy of the mail received from them on 2007 Jan 04th recd.. Subsequently, we have had phone conversation with this gentleman regarding areas where the two organisations could work together. The IP addresses, and dates desired by you are in the process of being collated from our logs. We aver that we have sent a valid email. Regards, G Naga Secretary

06/Dec/2007 eDeskOnline requested to remove the block

Dear Postmaster@Outblaze, > Based on your feedback, we have checked with our client who had sent out > the mail in question. > Please guide from the below noted correspondence what further action is > required. > Also we request you to remove the ip block as unnecessarily it is > affecting our other clients for no fault of theirs. > Regards, > eDesk Online

06/Dec/2007 reply recvd. saying User did not itself subscribe for NL

I remember that conversation. I am the one with that address

1. It took place in 2002. For all of 5 minutes - back when random Herbalife / Amway etc salesmen were sending out spam email with a DMA India provided disclaimer referencing a nonexistent US law at the bottom. On the lines of -

<<<**Since India has no anti-spamming law, we follow the US directive passed in Bill.1618 Title III by the 105th US Congress, which states that mail cannot be considered spam if it contains contact information, which this mail does. If you want to be removed from the mailing list send mail to yohaniza@rediffmail.com>>>

[In case you want to know what nonexistent law that disclaimer was a variant of, see http://www.jamesshuggins.com/h/tek1/spam_and_law.htm for example .. and I have seen laws referencing the US can spam act of 2003 - but US law is certainly not applicable in India last I checked .. and such laws provide for who can or cannot be prosecuted. They dont provide for whether or not ISPs can block people who send their users spam.]

Further -

2. I did not ask to be placed on such a mailing list

3. I did not subscribe to it either

That is the reason for the block.

Please have your client thoroughly read the MAAWG best practices for email marketing - http://www.maawg.org/about/MAAWG_Sender_BCP

For now, I will leave your IP blocked.

regards postmaster

06/Dec/2007 DMAI removed the email id from NL list

Dear Sirs, The conversation is this year itself ending with their letter in January. The phone conversation was sometime then when we had discussed mutual collaboration. We have removed the email id from our newsletter list. We are extremely sorry if this episode has inconvenienced your other subscribers. G Naga Hon. Secretary

12/Jan/2008 DMAI sent measures followed against SPAM policies

Dear Sirs, As per best of our knowledge, we have never violated any of your mentioned policies. Mails are sent only to users who either have subscribed for the newsletter, or with whom we share a prior relationship. We do provide an option for unsubscribing in every newsletter that we send. We look forward to the unblocking of outhe said domain direct-marketing-association-india.org. Regards, DMAI

15/Jan/2008 recd. from postmaster@outblaze.com

Dear Mr.Naga That zorro.sf-bay.org text in the email header below would be from where you added one of my accounts suresh@india.cauce.org to your mailing list Please review http://www.maawg.org/about/MAAWG_Sender_BCP/MAAWG_Senders_BCP_Combine.pdf for the best current practices most reputable email marketing providers as well as large ISPs such as yahoo, us, hotmail etc have worked together to develop These are much stricter than anything the DMA USA follows, and these are what the world is using now Please convert your mailing list to confirmed optin and follow other best practices mentioned in that document, then let me know regards srs

17/Jan/2008 DMAI sent to jointly approach TRAI

We have gone through the MAAWG_Senders_BCP_Combine document. The initiative taken in documenting best practices is commendable. In our opinion, we should be more pro-active in stopping spam. Like the penal action against errant tele-marketers, let us jointly approach TRAI and get them to focus on spam.

17/Jan/2008 recd. from postmaster@outblaze.com

Hello 1. That would not be within TRAI's remit as yet 2. What I asked was that you follow those best practices for your mailing lists. And if you wish - encourage your members to do so for their mailing list postmaster

20/Jan/2008 DMAI sent to a close relationship

Hello The Postmaster, > We should be more pro-active in stopping spam. TRAI has taken penal action against errant tele-marketers. We should jointly approach the TRAI. I am sure that with the involvement of the Cyber Police, and cyber-sleuths, we can put an end to spam and online-fraud. > We maintain a standard policy of over 14 years of using best practices for our mailing list. In fact, we have been using double opt in. We also encourage our members to do the same. In fact, we actively discourage attempts by marketers to even seek bulk email ids. If you could provide us witha precis of MAAWG_Senders_BCP_Combine, it should be a good element of our next newsletter. We could also include it in our "report" which is a compendium of the DM scene. We should also consider sharing links on each others' "additional resources" web-page. > Looking forward to a close relationship. Regards, G Naga Hon.Secretary n.b.Please let us have your name and phone number for our records.

20/Jan/2008 recd. from postmaster@outblaze.com

Sorry but we are not joining hands with you All I am asking you to do is for you to fix your mailing list management practices Then I lift the block Then we end this conversation thank you postmaster

18/Oct/2008 Outblaze blamed DMAI for sending spam mails

• as per the url http://spamblock.outblaze.com/AMM937370 recvd. in return mail
• The domain direct-marketing-association-india.org has been blocked for mailouts which we deem is in violation of our mass mail sending policy. This policy applies to any entity sending mass mails to Outblaze hosted domains.

• Header of the bounced mail - http://wiki.edeskonline.com/Talk:SPAM_-_How_to_get_block_removed#Text_of_the_bounced_mail

About CAUCE

http://www.india.cauce.org -an international organization of people dedicated to fighting Spam. Suresh Ramasubramanian

Theory

Sometimes back DMAI was not in a practice of having automated NewsLetter subscription opt-in. Now from approx 6 months back double opt-in is implemented for NL subscribers. In the course of this activity a NL subscriber is supposed to receive a confirmation mail from DMAI. This confirmation mail was blocked by Outblaze.

• Current Issue:
  • One of the visitors to DMAI website, subscribed to DMAI's monthly NewsLetter by inserting his eMail ID in the NL opt-in box. A confirmaion mail goes to the requester to confirm his email Id to start receiving monhly NLs.
  • This confrmation mail bounced back, because domain was india.com managed by Outblaze.

Next action

We need to send the whole story to Outblaze administrators, so as to remove the block implemented and informing them about the double opt-in practice of DMAI.

Draft Mail

• Dear Sir,
  • We have received a request of subscription to our newsletter from emailID mohancnair@india.com.
  • We sent a him a mail to for confirmation.
  • The mail got rejected by your server with message:
    • > MailEnable: Message could not be delivered to some recipients. The following recipient(s) could not be reached:
    • > Recipient: [SMTP:mohancnair@india.com] Reason: Remote SMTP Server Returned: 550 : No thank you rejected: Mail refused: See http://spamblock.outblaze.com/AMM937370
  • Please let us know how we can help this subscriber to receive the Newsletters.
• Thanks and Regards,
• G. Naga
• Hon. Secretary
  • > n.b.: The header of the mail:

..........

RESULT

• The block has been now removed by Outblaze.

Ritesh R 09:43, 9 December 2008 (UTC)

See Also

• Bounced emails
• Spam (electronic)
• EMail
• Reading email Headers
• MIME
• E-mail authentication
• Newsletter by email