What is your goal? Manage Spam or Spam Cops?

[Jack Ryan]

I came across your service because one of my users used a spamgourmet email address when they signed up for my newsletter and promotional emails.

I'm just curious to know how to handle an email address like this...normally I would just trash them for fear they are using this service to bust me for spam although I'm not a spammer...list is 100% optin and even permission passed.

After looking over your site to try and understand your service I felt that you were allowing users to manage their spam and not be "spam cops" for lack of a better term. Also, the user set the max amount of emails they can receive at 90 which made me believe they were ok with receiving my emails.

Thank you in advance for your thoughts!

[SysKoll]

After looking over your site to try and understand your service I felt that you were allowing users to manage their spam and not be "spam cops" for lack of a better term.

You are correct. If senders spam an SG address, the address owner will disable it -- or the address will disable itself. The spammers will thus be ignored. So no need to be cops.

Besides, cops aren't allowed to do what we do to the spammers we catch.

Actually, the main developer of SG is a lawyer turned techie. Another is a writer/software engineer. Can you imagine? The perversely subtle mindset of a lawyer coupled with the insensitive, coldly logical mind of a (*shudder*) software developer, with the devious wackiness of a writer thrown in the mix? Let me tell ya, it ain't pretty.

All this scheming nefariousness is pursuing only one goal: eating spam. Certainly not annoying legitimate mailing list owners. So if you're legit, you're safe!

Thanks for your interest.

[josh]

We started out with a working definition of spam as any email that users don't want to get (as expressed by their usage of spamgourmet features) -- this is broader than most definitions, and certainly broader than the definitions used by the blacklisting services with regard to blacklisting a site.

We don't distinguish between true opt-in and the least welcome V1Agr@ message at all -- if they're sent to an expired address, they don't go through. For this reason, it's not reasonable to speculate about the motivations of the people who sent them. So we don't.

[Guest]

I use my spamgourmet address because I can't always trust that everyone who has my address will keep it as secret as I might like.

For example, the email I gave my university is my spamgourmet address. This isn't because I think they will send me spam. It is because I can't trust that they will keep my email private. They could have a security issue that leaks the email address. They could blast out an email to all alumni that lists all the recipients in the headers. There are any number of ways that someone else could leak my address and I want to minimize that. I have setup my university as a trusted sender so they can send as many emails as they like to my address. But if someone else were to get it, it would be easy to manage that.

Now I'm even thinking about using my spamgourmet address for my friends. Not because I don't trust them, but because of all the viruses going around. One day someone I know is going to get a virus which harvests their address book and sends it to the spammers. Since my friend has my real address, the spammers will then too.

So I don't think the person used the spamgourmet address because they are a spammer or because they think you are one. I think they just want to have maximum protection of their address.

[Guest]

Guest posting 2:38 pm 21 Feb 2004 has the right idea. I issue individual spamgourmet addresses to each and every friend, contact, family member, etc. and use this for total email management. My forwarding address is no longer important, and I can change ISP's at will without losing email.