[SpamCop-List] Re: Spammer Soap Box?

[wayne]

In <bui1t8$mmg$1 at news.spamcop.net> "Lance" <lltbhill at linkearth.net> writes:

> How is a typical user like me supposed to know that a particular piece of
> email was sent in bulk?

You may not always be able to prove "bulk" but, most of the time, you
can tell if email is written specifically for you and unlikely to have
been sent to others.

It is the ISP (or whoever) that needs to know if it is bulk in order
to determine of the customer (or whoever) violated the TOS/AUP.  By
sending reports, they will be able to tell.


> I just deleted a penis spam that was sent to lance at someisp.com and
> Lloyd at someisp.com - that's not bulk - so it's not reportable?

Do you have any reason to believe that you have the only two accounts
that this email was sent to?  If not, then it is almost certainly
bulk.

The definition of UBE on http://www.monkeys.com/spam-defined/ says
that "bulk" is "two or more".  There shouldn't be a strict threshold
of, say, 10 or 100, or 10000.

Sometimes you can prove bulk by using bulk email detectors such as
DCC, Razor or Pyzor.  Sometimes you can prove spams by looking at spam
archives such as NANAS or spamarchive.org.


I'll an example of non-bulk UCE.  I own the elginwatches.org website
that talks about antique Elgin pocket and wrist watches.  I have my
email address linked for contacting me about "suggestions or a
corrections" about the website.  Nowhere do I solicit commercial
inquiries.

Still, about once a month or so, someone will email me wanting to know
if I'm interested in buying their grandparent's watch.  It is very
clear from the writing that these are individually created and almost
certainly not sent to anyone else.  They are unsolicited commercial
email (UCE), but they are not unsolicited bulk email (UBE).

I do not believe that such emails would be reportable to SpamCop.


How many UCE messages to you receive that you seriously don't think
are also UBE?


-wayne