Internet and e-mail policy and practice
including Notes on Internet E-mail


2010
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27 Oct 2010

Why e-pending is a bad idea Email
If you take a list of people for whom you don't have e-mail addresses, and find e-mail addresses for them, that's called e-pending. Different people do it in different ways. The companies with giant junk mail address databases have e-mail addresses for many of those addresses, so it's just a database lookup. Others try to guess, so if your name is John Smith and you're with the Generic Company, they'll try john@generic.com, jsmith@generic.com, and so forth. Regardless of how it's done, e-mail to e-pended addresses is spam. Why?

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  posted at: 23:37 :: permanent link to this entry :: 0 comments
Stable link is https://jl.ly/Email/epend.html

20 Oct 2010

ICANN's compliance has a long way to go ICANN

About a month ago I reported a domain to ICANN which has the most completely bogus WHOIS non-information I've ever seen. On Monday they sent me this message.

Take a look at the WHOIS info in the message, which is exactly the same as it was when I reported it. I realize that doing a good job of compliance is hard, but really, we have computers. If Knujon can recognize obviously wrong WHOIS info, why can't ICANN?

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  posted at: 23:00 :: permanent link to this entry :: 3 comments
Stable link is https://jl.ly/ICANN/notcompliant.html

09 Oct 2010

A tempest in a Libyan teapot ICANN
The .LY domain is Libya, and their government recently
cancelled the registration of the short and snappy VB.LY, provoking great gnashing of teeth. If you direct your attention to the address bar above this page, you'll note that it's at JL.LY, equally short and snappy. The .LY registry started allowing two letter second-level domains last year, and there was a quiet land rush. Now they restrict those domains to people actually in Libya, but say they'll let us keep the ones we have. How concerned am I that they'll take my domain away, too? Slightly, but not very.

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  posted at: 17:06 :: permanent link to this entry :: 0 comments
Stable link is https://jl.ly/ICANN/vblue.html

06 Oct 2010

Mysteries of sort of opt-in mail Email
This week I got an email newsletter from a patent law firm near Washington DC. Since I didn't recognize the name of the firm, and the pharmaceutical patent law they do isn't related to anything I do so I was pretty sure I wouldn't have signed up and forgotten, and it was to my CAUCE address which I wouldn't use if I did sign up, it was spam. I was about to send of the usual mostly automatic report to their ESP, when I noticed that several of the items were written by an old college friend of mine. It wasn't out of the question that she'd put me on the list so I could see what she's doing, but she'd have used my regular address if she did. So I forwarded it to her and asked if she knew why they'd sent it to me.

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  posted at: 11:08 :: permanent link to this entry :: 1 comments
Stable link is https://jl.ly/Email/lawyermail.html

Topics


My other sites

Who is this guy?

Airline ticket info

Taughannock Networks

Other blogs

CAUCE
It turns out you don’t need a license to hunt for spam.
26 days ago

A keen grasp of the obvious
Italian Apple Cake
584 days ago

Related sites

Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial E-mail

Network Abuse Clearinghouse

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