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All About Spam Spam Killer

Un-Due Process
Article by Elena Fawkner

"Automatic complaints are sent when a filter whose action is set to Kill after complaining is triggered. For each filter, you can configure who the complaint should be sent to. ... The message body is also scanned for e-mail and website addresses. If any addresses are found, they're added to the lists mentioned above."
Source: http://www.spamkiller.com/Features.html

SpamKiller is spam filtering software. Its purpose is to scan incoming email for spam and take appropriate action in response to those messages that are identified as spam, such as automatic deletion. Another handy function is that the software allows the user to generate automatic and manual complaint emails which the user then sends to the webmaster of the offending domain as well as any number of other recipients such as spam-reporting "authorities" and the webhost and/or ISP of the person sending the offending mail.

Good idea, you say? Fair enough, you say? Well ... maybe. Note the quote above: "... The message body is also scanned for e-mail and website addresses ... [and] added to the lists mentioned above", i.e. the list of recipients of the complaint.

Now, imagine this. Let's say you're a paying advertiser in my ezine. Your ad contains your URL and email
address. I spam mail my ezine or send it to someone who forgets they subscribed and they think it's spam.

Imagine further that the recipient of my so-called spam uses SpamKiller software (or some similar program). The software scans the message header and extracts the relevant information about the person who sent the email (me). Fair enough. Assuming that it IS spam, of course.

But the capability of the software doesn't stop there. As mentioned in the above quote, it also scans the message BODY, which contains your ad, and adds your URL and email address to the list of recipients of the complaint. The ever-diligent big-spam-hunter also makes sure that one or more spam-reporting "authorities" is copied on the complaint.

WeStopSpam.net*, diligent, professional organization that it is, immediately and automatically forwards the complaint to abuse@yourdomain.com and your webhost, an equally diligent, professional organization shuts your site down for three days for spamming.

You, of course, learn about all of this AFTER the event.

Think it can't happen to you? Think again. It happened to me. This week. Except I wasn't a paying advertiser in the offending ezine. The publisher of the ezine reprinted one of my articles. The article contained my resource box. The resource box contained my website URL. SpamKiller added my URL to the list of recipients of the email complaining of the "spam", copied WeStopSpam.net and WeStopSpam.net forwarded the email to abuse@ahbbo.com with the result that my webhost, DumbHost*, shut down my site for what was to be three days.

The actual downtime was two hours. By that time I had threatened to sue and they finally got around to actually READING the offending email and realizing that I, in fact, was just an innocent bystander.

There is so much that is wrong in this whole scenario that it's hard to know where to begin.

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