CASL Slips to 2013

The Financial Post reported last week that Canada's new anti-spam law won't actually take effect until 2013.

(Hat tip: EmailKarma.net)

SMS Spam: Google Voice is Helpful

That we can now report SMS spam to various wireless carriers is a good thing, but the process is still overly complicated and I'm doubtful that enough people take the time to report SMS spam received. I have Verizon Wireless, and the spam reporting robot gets confused and, for example, won't accept a spam report about a message received from a short code. One hopes that gets addressed at some point in the future, and that something, somewhere happens to give us end consumers some confidence that something useful is actually being done with the complaints received.

Spam Complaints Matter

When you're fighting spam, you reach out to a lot of different people. If you received spam and you're savvy enough, you send it to the ISP from whence it originated, and ask them to take action to make the spam stop. If you work for an ESP or a blacklist group, you might reach out to the sender and ask them to prove that this person opted-in, with details, in order to resolve the "he said, she said" situation inherent to most spam complaints.

A flippant, but true, response.

Almost every time a sender I'm talking to is dealing with a Spamhaus issue, they ask me, "Why now? Why did I get blacklisted today, when I've emailed this very same list three times previously." The answer I have, might be kind of flip, but I think it's appropriate: "Do you get a ticket every time you speed?"