FC: SpamCop targets another rival: Despammed.com's free service

[Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>]

Previous Politech message:
"More nuttiness: SpamCop intentionally blocks anti-spam service"
http://www.politechbot.com/p-04259.html

More background:
http://www.politechbot.com/cgi-bin/politech.cgi?name=spamcop

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Date: Wed, 18 Dec 2002 14:48:02 -0500
From: Michael <michael () despammed com>
To: declan () well com
Subject: Re: FC: More nuttiness: SpamCop intentionally blocks anti-spam service

He's periodically blocked Despammed.com, too (yes, another free-service 
competitor).  For over a month I couldn't even get comments as to why, 
until I started copying SpamCop on my customers' complaints and telling 
them all that, like MAPS, SpamCop seems more interested in market share 
than in fighting spam.  Corporate corruption of the worst kind.

As it turned out, it was interaction of overzealous reporting on the part 
of my own Italian (i.e. non-English-speaking) users with some oddities in 
the way I handle my DNS setup.  But -- this is significant -- whereas *I* 
(or any ethical person) would have set up some special code to exempt an 
odd setup, once I knew what the situation is, SpamCop's administrators 
categorically refused to vary their rigid code for the convenience of 
anyone but themselves.  And some of the logic they use to label people as 
spam-enabling is highly suspect, if there is no intent to intervene when it 
turns out that the rules are insufficent to describe reality.

I can't say enough nasty things about SpamCop.  My ISP is still worried 
about reports they get.  I'm a free spam filtration service, for cryin' out 
loud!  How much less spam-friendly can you get?  I don't even charge people 
for the service even though I kill roughly a million spam messages in the 
course of three months or so!  And I used to think Julian was a kind of 
cool guy, too.

Michael Roberts
Despammed.com




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