Level 2: The No-Whitelist, Stonewalling ISP

Contents at a Glance Letter from Ken Evoy, SiteSell.com Who's "Using Spam" To Tilt the Field? "Deliver My Mail" (Download Package Here) Level 0: Ignorance or Super-Savvy? Level 1: What To Do If You Are Filtered Level 2: The No-Whitelist, Stonewalling ISP Level 2 Counter-measures Damaged? Class Action Lawsuit

What do you do if you've "fixed it all" and you're still filtered?

Escalate to Level 2.

It's too bad. You have been working in a spirit of cooperation. Unfortunately, that is not being reciprocated.

You are dealing with an inconsiderate ISP, mail service, and/or filtering provider. They come in one of two "flavors"...

1) The ISP or mail service that does not whitelist.

2) The filtering provider (a company that sells filtering services to large ISPs and mail services) that does not provide a reason why the e-mail sent by a small business is being filtered.

Who knows why these two un-cooperative, non-partners in the fight against spam act the way they do? In any event, the only relevant point to take away from these companies until they communicate in good faith is this...

They hurt your business every bit as much as the spammers do.

They are as inconsiderate, not to mention almost as hard to reach.

So unfortunately... if you want to rescue your business, your response to this attack on your business has to be aggressive. Yes, it is too bad that we and they are not working together and fighting the spammers.

But they made that decision, not you. Never forget that, and never let anyone take your eye off that fact.

You have moved through Level 0 and Level 1 in a spirit of cooperation and understanding, willing to take new responsibilities in the battle against spam. And this will most certainly help you through smooth sailing with the fair, responsible ISPs (the majority) and filtering services like Outblaze.

But There Are Others Who Do Not Want
To Cooperate In The Battle Against Spam

They want to reap the benefits of publicity -- "WE FIGHT SPAM." They're in the "spam-fighting business." But they want none of the moral responsibility (i.e., expense) that comes with the territory.

They appear to be quite content to hurt your sales, increase your refunds, anger your customers, and damage your reputation. And ultimately, if those companies do not change, they may be held accountable if YOU register for a possible class action lawsuit and if the action is successful..

At this point, do not allow them to take advantage of you -- recognize that this will be a confrontation. They will stonewall. They will lie. They will make you look bad to your customer. In short, they will damage your reputation falsely to protect their own. So...

In order to cut through the clutter of misinformation that an uncooperative ISP or mail service or filtering provider will feed you and your customers, let's review the basics, this time with the extra final step that is unacceptable...

• STEP 1) A customer wants AND expects a piece of mail, for whatever reason.
• STEP 2) A non-spamming small business sends that e-mail.
• STEP 3) The ISP filters it out.
• STEP 4) The customer doesn't get the mail s/he wants.
• STEP 5) The ISP/mail service refuses to deliver the mail, and/or the filtering provider refuses to tell the marketing company what the problem is.

Question: What constitutes an ISP who DOES whitelist? Answer: Customer-focused ISPs/mail services provide a fast and easy way for users to permit e-mail from a specific address to get through a filter (this process is called "whitelisting"). Question: What constitutes an ISP who does NOT whitelist? Answer: Many ISPs do not provide whitelisting. Few will tell you so, since they know that it is unacceptable to separate you from the mail that you want. Therefore, many ISPs say that they provide whitelisting. But if you encounter any of the following "tricks," they really don't... 1) Tools are easy to find, but don't work (ex., Hotmail's "safe list" process often fails). 2) Tool or process is so complicated as to be impossible to figure out. 3) Tools are so hard to find, that you give up, or maybe they don't exist despite the claims? 4) Some ISPs actually respond to a whitelist request BY TURNING OFF THE SPAM FILTERS COMPLETELY. That's like asking a workman to put a gate in the high wall around your house and the reply is... "Sure, we'll just take the ENTIRE wall down." 5) The ISP's support says to use the "tools URL." When you go to the referred URL, it says to contact support! 6) You can't get their support group to tell you how to whitelist. Either they don't answer you, or they dance around the question, or deflect blame. 7) Bad ISPs may make up all kinds of excuses, or even blame us, but the bottom line is that they are not delivering e-mail that YOU want. Period. Question: What constitutes a filter provider who does NOT provide "the reason" to companies? Answer: Conscientious, forward-thinking, partnership-oriented filter providers provide online businesses with USEFUL, SPECIFIC information regarding WHAT you are doing wrong. How they provide that information is up to them. It might be contained in e-mails that are bounced back by the filter. Or they might provide an online tool to verify a reference number. Obviously, since the bounce is automated (no human makes the decision), providing the reason CAN also be automated. IMPORTANT   Providing a generic Web page with a list of general guidelines does not constitute a filtering provider who provides useful, specific information. Yes, you should review those guidelines, even though they are already published in the deliver-my-mail.sitesell.com Web site. However, small businesses need specific information to specific problems... not a wide, scattershot generic Web page.

So Who Is To Blame?

This is not complicated...

Your customer (or affiliate or subscriber, etc.) expects to be able to receive e-mail that they want.

And...

It is the implied fundamental obligation of the ISP or mail service to deliver mail that is wanted.

So...

Customers find it unacceptable if an ISP or mail services won't whitelist upon request. Hotmail actually tells you that they have no way to whitelist -- however, a company can be effectively whitelisted by Hotmail if it pays a "bonding company" that is run by former senior Microsoft and Hotmail people!

From the small business point of view, filtering services do serious damage to them when they interpose themselves between the small business and the intended recipient. Who is to blame? This is not complicated, either...

Small businesses accept (or should) their responsibility to help ISPs and mail services fight spam, as outlined elsewhere on this site.

And...

They accept that filtering providers will deliver some false-positives. They deal with that, also in the name of the acceptable cost of fighting spam.

But it is unacceptable for filtering providers to intentionally go beyond false-positives and to filter/block a percentage of e-mail that significantly exceeds the normal false-positive rate. When that happens, significant damage is done to that business. And, when that happens, there is a reason. The filtering provider owes that small business the reason.

Why does it owe "the reason"? Damage is being done, so the filtering provider cannot be both "judge and jury." There may be a bug in the system, a simple miscommunication (such as we had with Outblaze), a low-level vendetta between techs or support staff, etc. The bottom line...

Small businesses find it unacceptable when they canNOT get an explanation as to why their mail is being filtered. If a business is being filtered by mistake, it's a simple matter of fixing that. And if the business is accidentally tripping a filter (ex., too many dead addresses on one of its mailing lists), then it must clean up its act. But how does anything ever get fixed if the reason is not revealed?

Why not complain to the ISP or the mailing service who hires the filtering provider?

If you complain to Hotmail, they claim ignorance, referring you to their filtering service, Brightmail, for information.

Here is an actual response from them to us...

Notice how carefully Hotmail washes their hands of our problem. But remember... if we pay their friends at Bonded Sender, suddenly we could be on a whitelist that gets through their filter. Does that mean that the word of their customer who specifically asks for an e-mail address to be whitelisted is not good enough for them?

Naturally, we followed their suggestions in the letter above and weeks later, it has led nowhere. We managed to "get in another door" and re-submit to another address. Still no answers.

Now, realize this...

Brightmail filters for Hotmail and other huge ISPs/mail services (ex., hotmail.com, live.com, bellsouth.net, earthlink.net, usa.net, verizon.net, worldnet.att.net, comcast.net) -- so a mistake by them causes huge damage financially, as well as to the reputation of a business.

So we had to spend substantial amounts in time, resources, and money to reduce that damage to near-zero and deflect the blame, and the angry customer, back to the truly guilty party.

But all of that was time "wasted" from our viewpoint. Damages.

Let's Use Our Experience To Illustrate

Brightmail ignored all our attempts to reach them for two business-damaging weeks (finally replying only after quite strong pressure from various sources), with this arrogant e-mail...

We are writing in response to your email we recently we received. We have not yet received your sample messages and currently do not have sufficient information to research whether our software is blocking your company's messages. Brightmail is willing, purely as a discretionary matter, to investigate the reason why your company's messages may be blocked by our filtering software. Please submit an example of a message that is not getting through directly, sent in the exact same way you would send to your customers, to investigation@brightmail.com. Brightmail will conduct an investigation using the provided sample(s). This analysis can only be done if the sample is received in the above-described format. Please allow 7 business days for the completion of the investigation. We request that you do not contact Brightmail during that time period as that may delay the investigation and cause it to go beyond the 7 days. We will contact you via email with the results of our investigation at the conclusion of the 7 days. Best regards, Brightmail Technical Support team

7 more days? More if we try to contact them again? What is that, a threat?

If it took their algorithms even 7 seconds to determine what's wrong with one e-mail, that would be slow. There is no excuse for one more day of their mistakes.

Brightmail, of course, knows that they are filtering us and may be damaging our business. They also should know, if their technology is as good as claimed, that we do not spam. But they do not like to admit mistakes (we suspect they were fooled by a trick called joe-jobbing which exposes the weakness of their technology), so they stonewall.

Please bookmark this page, because we would not be surprised if the spammer who is joe-jobbing us manages to continue to fool Brightmail (notice Brightmail did not actually ask for any kind of human answer that another human would evaluate). These joe-jobbers will continue on and on, fooling other filters and damaging other companies. This alone is a fatal flaw of filters.

Why don't filtering providers just admit a mistake, fix it and move on?

They feel that their credibility is more important.

For example, Brightmail promotes "the most accurate anti-spam technology" and "the best accuracy rates." They run contests like their "win a digital camera" contest (see below) to prove how "good" they are, because no one complains!

Of course, no one knows about the contest, because end-users generally don't know that Brightmail is the filtering technology behind large ISPs and mail services such as hotmail.com, live.com, bellsouth.net, earthlink.net, usa.net, verizon.net, worldnet.att.net and comcast.net.

Naturally, "end-users" won't know about this contest. (Did you? No, even though you've heard of every one of their clients.) The point is...

Filtering providers, the companies that provide filtering services to large ISPs and mail services, are generally not known to the end user. If they did, Brightmail would be flooded with what they purportedly seek... "False Positive Stories."

Stay tuned. We will update you on the outcome of our problems with Brightmail. And we're keeping our own records on false-positives (customers who are submitting their complaints directly to the client ISP, cc to us).

SIDEBAR:

Think that Brightmail is too big, too thorough, too savvy, to make mistakes? Think they are too technologically sophisticated to be lured in by a joe-jobber? We may never know since they are yet to provide us with useful information. However, their False Positive Stories contest might give you some insights. Here's a screenshot of it (as of late June, 2004 -- click here to open a new browser window and link to it to see if they have removed it now that end-users know about it. UPDATE: Within days after we exposed the BrightMail contest (see screenshot just below), they pulled it down, as we predicted they would. It would seem that this contest was not a sincere attempt to get user feedback (because we certainly sent them a lot of "contestants"). But do click on the link to the contest (just above) to see what is now at that location. Meanwhile, we have not changed this page, except for this update message, because BrightMail (now owned by Symantec, as you'll see if you click on the link) merely emphasizes the moral of this story by pulling down their "False Positive Stories contest." While the link above now dead-ends at a "sorry" page, this is where it used to go before they admitted we were right by pulling it down...   What do you notice? (Yes, it is "Copyright © 2004 Brightmail Incorporated" -- we make use of it as "fair use" for news reportage purposes only, to illustrate a point.) Yes, it is missing rules and regulations for a contest. Since this offers a "chance" to win a digital camera, it is a contest and subject to strict laws in many jurisdictions. The point is not to make Brightmail look bad. Any company can make mistakes, can get sloppy. But Brightmail's mistakes can hurt, even kill a company. And if they make mistakes when running a simple contest that has questionable promotional value, maybe they are making a mistake when they filter out your e-mail. Maybe a saboteur is fooling them. Who knows? More importantly... If filters like Brightmail are not held accountable, how would one ever know? If they do not have to justify filtering decisions, who is protecting the rights of e-mail senders? This contest is vague and does not appear to meet legal requirements in many jurisdictions. Since Brightmail does not reach end-users directly, it would be fair to wonder about misleading intentions of using this to promote their "most accurate" false-positive rates. Bottom line? Companies like Brightmail must be accountable. They are NOT above... "The Rest Of Us." SIDEBAR TO BRIGHTMAIL: One more thought, and we pose this as an "open question" to Brightmail directly. Fines for breaking contest laws range up to $1 million. Now, we're not saying that you are breaking any laws. But suppose, just suppose, that the government told you that you were breaking the law and would be fined $1 million. Actually, to make the analogy as close as possible to what you are doing, they merely render judgment. They do not even tell you about it. You simply find out, somehow. At this stage, it would be helpful if a government authority was to tell you exactly where your contest ran afoul of the law. But they just tell you to read the law. Fair enough. Your goal, is after all, to run a legal contest. So you spend months perfecting the legalities of your contest. But, after all that "good faith" work, the government is still about to penalize you $1 million. Why? Yes, of course you'd ask, "Why?" It takes you weeks to find anyone who'll give you an answer. But when you do finally get to someone... The government refuses to tell you why, or at best refers you back to the laws on this, leaving you back at Square 1. If all this happened to you, if you were about to be fined for breaking laws on holding a "contest".. Wouldn't you panic? After all, you've covered all the bases and you still have no idea what you're doing wrong. And yet your business is about to be hurt without you having had a chance for a hearing. And wouldn't you be outraged? After all, without any chance of being heard, it's very possible that the government could be making a mistake. All in all, with no recourse and with no way to get useful information, and with no due process... you are about to pay a unilaterally imposed penalty, a rather severe one. And you may not even be at fault. Well... That is how SiteSell, and all small businesses, feel when you refuse to tell them what they are doing wrong. Please... think about that, and then... Do the right thing. Join "the Rest of Us" in the fight against spam. SIDEBAR TO READER: We believe in accountability. We believe in due process. To be more specific, we believe that filters should have a rapid, accurate method that can tell Web marketers why they are being filtered. If you feel the same way, let Brightmail know. If you have been affected by the loss of e-mail that should not have been filtered (if you use hotmail.com, live.com, bellsouth.net, earthlink.net, usa.net, verizon.net, worldnet.att.net, comcast.net or some other Brightmail-filtered ISP/mail service), enter their contest by sending them your "False Positive Story" for a chance to win a digital camera. Here's how... 1) Copy the following text (control+c)... Hello, My name is <<ENTER YOUR FULL NAME>>. I am a customer of <<ENTER NAME OF ISP OR WEB HOST>>, a company that uses your e-mail filtering services. I am entering your contest for a digital camera. I trust it is a good one -- you were not very specific. Here is my False Positive Story: <<ENTER YOUR FALSE-POSITIVE STORY HERE. ONLY ENTER A STORY IF YOUR ISP OR MAIL SERVICE USES BRIGHTMAIL TO FILTER (EX., HOTMAIL.COM, LIVE.COM, BELLSOUTH.NET, EARTHLINK.NET, USA.NET, VERIZON.NET, WORLDNET.ATT.NET, COMCAST.NET, OR IF YOU KNOW THAT YOUR PARTICULAR ISP USES THEM).>> I do want to receive SiteSell's e-mail. I am also going to be e-mailing the network administrator of my mail service, informing them that I am switching accounts if I cannot get it. And oh yes... When will you be sending my camera? What model is it? Please inform me regarding the following... odds of winning make and model of camera retail value of camera how you decide who wins a list of previous winners when you will be sending my camera a complete set of rules and regulations for this contest Please reply to <<ENTER YOUR E-MAIL ADDRESS THAT BRIGHTMAIL IS FILTERING>>, which is the receiving address that incorrectly filters out SiteSell's e-mail. Anxiously awaiting your reply, <<ENTER YOUR FULL NAME>> P.S. If you want more details about your false-positives, please ask sitesell.com, and please don't ask me to jump through all kind of hoops to get my prize. By the way, are you sure your contest meets applicable rules and regulations? You may find the following URLs helpful... http://www.the-dma.org/guidelines/sweepstakesdosdonts.shtml http://library.lp.findlaw.com/articles/file/00077/002423/title/ Subject/topic/GamingLaw_Lotteries/filename/gaminglaw_1_415 http://www.dmaconsumers.org/sweepstakeshelp.html And one final point: I sincerely hope that you see how helpful it would be if a government authority was to tell you exactly where your contest ran afoul of the law. Suppose you spent months perfecting the legalities of your contest. And suppose the government was still about to fine you $1 million because you were still in violation of the law... Wouldn't you want to know "why"? Wouldn't you be a bit outraged? Well, sirs, that is how SiteSell.com, and all small businesses, must feel when you refuse to tell them what they are doing wrong, don't you think? 2) Visit Brightmail's False Positive Stories Web page. Paste (control+v) the above letter into the box (on the contest Web page) and customize to suit your taste, or enter your own version if you have the time. Click to enter. UPDATE: Within days after we exposed the BrightMail contest (click on link just above), they pulled it down, as we predicted they would. It would seem that this contest was not a sincere attempt to get user feedback (because we certainly sent them a lot of "contestants"). Do click on the link to the contest (just above) to see what is now at that location. Meanwhile, we have not changed this page, except for this update message, because BrightMail (now owned by Symantec, as you'll see if you click on the link) merely emphasizes the moral of this story by pulling down their "False Positive Stories contest." If you feel that filtering providers like Brightmail should tell businesses why their mail is being filtered, do visit their site, find the contact form and let them know. Refer them to this Web page for more information. You can start by following the above two steps and let Brightmail know. Hey... You might even win a camera! UPDATE: Sorry, no camera anymore. But do contact them, anyway.

Who Exactly Is NOT Obeying The Rules Of E-mail?

There are very strict regulations about being able to contact the source of all e-mails. Supposedly, it helps protect us against spammers. But who is protecting us against the so-called "anti-spammers" who also make money from spam?

Just like spammers, it's not in their interest to be reachable. So they are not. Spammers have an excuse... they are criminals. Maybe they just don't want to admit mistakes. For example...

Even our "golden island" mail servers that we reserve for one-to-one post-order e-mails and for one-on-one support correspondence are filtered by Brightmail. There is no possible good reason for that, except "sorry, SiteSell, we made a mistake." And that would be an excellent reason -- we do understand that mistakes occur -- fix them and let's move on.

(And if we are the ones who are making the mistake, just let us know, too -- we'd fix it ASAP. It's not about pride, just about "getting it right." But if filtering providers stonewall, they become the guilty parties. Without dialog, how can matters advance?)

Stonewalling and insincere evaluations must stop. Do you think filtering providers would give AOL the runaround like this? Or the "7 day warning?" So...

Why Do ISPs, Mail Services, And Filters
Treat Small Businesses With Such Utter Disdain?

It's obvious. Each of us, dealing alone, individually, with a Hotmail or a Brightmail, has no voice. So large companies think we can safely be buried by silence and/or misinformation to their customers.

That is the sad reality. No "AOL-like juice." Zero influence. And yet...

We are what makes the Internet a fun, exciting and diverse place to do business. Wal-Mart online is just a catalog online. Microsoft? So what?

It's the large companies like Google and PayPal that are exciting. They started small, like us, and grew through exciting new ways of using the Net to do business. And it's the tens of millions of small companies that address a near-infinite variety of fascinating niches that are exciting. But...

One by one... we small businesses have no voice.

That is about to change... if you want it to. And if you don't, consider the consequences... and be ready to live with them.

SIDEBAR:

Personally, I am not prepared to accept apathy as the response by small business people to this playing field that has been so badly tilted once again. I will leave this arena.

Here's the bottom line -- there is a very real danger posed by the uncooperative, selfish large companies who are not truly fighting spam. They are merely co-opting spam to take control of e-mail. They will use it to make money from spam, at your expense (some have already talked about charging for each e-mail sent!). And ultimately, they will make it impossible for you to compete profitably on the Net.

However, we do have one great chance to harness the power that does lie in small business as a group...

Collectively, We Add Up To One Very Big Voice

Level 2, the final level, involves escalating and joining together into one, big, loud voice that ISPs and mail services hear. More than just "hear"... they will listen.

To reverse this imbalance, we must join forces and work together. We must make ISPs and mail services live up to their responsibilities, to honor their "unspoken contract" in the fight against spam, to be accountable.

We are stakeholders and we must be involved and considered in this war against spam.

SIDEBAR:

When we mention spam-fighting companies, we are not concerned here with vigilante operations like SpamCop, which can put a company on a blacklist merely due to a few unsubstantiated complaints, then cover their Web sites with disclaimers absolving them of responsibility. These companies have never been helpful, and their rhetoric always smacks more of anti-business, with anti-spam being a useful vehicle. They are being marginalized, more and more, by all serious business. Just like in the Wild West way back, vigilantes are on the way out. Ralph Wilson, the dean of Web marketing (wilsonweb.com), said it best... Self-appointed vigilantes publish lists of bad senders, but provide no accountability or ways of correcting errors ("false positives"), which may run as high as 67% to 75%. Example: SpamCop. I was wrongly reported to SpamCop last week by a subscriber who made a mistake. I corresponded with him. But there was no way for him to correct his error.

Today, right now, decide...

Enough is Enough!

The ISP/mail service that bounces perfectly valid e-mail, especially golden e-mail like transactional e-mail and support e-mail AND that then refuses to whitelist that e-mail... they are not partners in the fight against spam.

The filtering provider that stonewalls and that refuses to provide answers... they do not appear to care about those very real businesses that they are hurting. They appear to care more about promoting the "statistic" part of "false-positives" than to worry about the the human reality.

Well, at this point, we don't call them "false-positives" -- we call them MISTAKES that the "mistakers" won't correct. And small business simply cannot keep paying for their mistakes anymore.

It is time to put the blame and responsibility back onto the shoulders of those who won't whitelist and let the mail through... back to those who refuse to give reasons, so that you can at least correct whatever the problem may be.

But that will only happen if we spread the word to other merchants, and if those merchants spread the word to their business friends and colleagues, until millions of small businesses are spreading the word to their customers, who are also the ISPs' customers, those very same people who are not getting the mail.

It's time for millions of small merchants, and tens of millions
of customers to forcefully tell their ISPs and mail services...

"Deliver My Mail"