Definition of SPAM

July 30th, 2008
By Simon

I found this interesting definition of SPAM in the spamhaus project

The word “Spam” as applied to Email means Unsolicited Bulk Email (”UBE”).

Unsolicited means that the Recipient has not granted verifiable permission for the message to be sent. Bulk means that the message is sent as part of a larger collection of messages, all having substantively identical content.
An email message is Spam only if it is both Unsolicited and Bulk.

1. Unsolicited Email is normal email (examples: first contact enquiries, job enquiries, sales enquiries)
2. Bulk Email is normal email (examples: subscriber newsletters, customer communications, discussion lists)

Technical Definition of Spam: An electronic message is “spam” IF

1. the recipient’s personal identity and context are irrelevant because the message is equally applicable to many other potential recipients;
2. AND
3. the recipient has not verifiably granted deliberate, explicit, and still-revocable permission for it to be sent.

So after reading this definition I thought “is that something missing? Or it’s just a matter of permission and identity?”. In my country (Italy) a lot of bad translated email messages are delivered everyday. No-one reads anymore these emails, but they are still sent and written (and badly translated), what’s the market behind that spam email sending, that makes it sustainable? All those spam messages in a bottle are flooding our virtual beaches.

There are many retailers for drugs, pills, strange furniture, music CDs, software… all those people are sending new mass emails everyday without caring for the global time wasting action they are doing.

As polite email marketers we need to difference ourselves from these common spam emails, we have to give to our readers something different, our mass emails must be different. And what’s the only thing that a computer text cannot fake? It’s human personality.

In this scenario, the only behavior for our polite, opted-in bulk emails it to send mass emails only to subscribed users in our mailing list. What if we get caught by the spam-filters network before we get to our prospect’s inbox?

Here’s my personal list for what I understood about email marketing

1. We can check our email for spam rate before sending
2. We can build an opted-in user-base
3. We can closed-loops double opt-ins (closed loops on spamhaus)
4. We can write spam-free emails
5. We can ask our recipients if they got our email
6. We can ask our recipients to put us in their white list
7. We can write a meaningful subject our emails
8. We can automate email subject merging
   
9. We can write meaningful contents
10. We can write cool call to action texts
11. We can check your sender’s reputation

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Free spam check test

March 19th, 2008
By Simon

Download here the freeware software for spam check and spam score test (11 Mbytes).

MailingCheck Spam test software features:

• analyze your emails spam level before sending
• free software download
• Email content spam test checker
• Email spam rate points results
• Customizable spam point ranges
• SpamAssassin test engine included
• Email spam cleaning suggestions included
• Razor Engine included
• SURBL blacklists included
• Optimizes your bulk email software and boosts your bulk inbox email sender rate
• Best offline email spam detection tool

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Tucows free spam check software review

December 02nd, 2007
By Simon

We got a review on Tucows, there is no cow-rate yet, but we hope it will grow soon. Here’s the link to our Mailing Spam Check software:

Try here SendBlaster our featured Free Mailing Software for bulk emailing.

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New standalone email spam checker

November 15th, 2007
By Simon

Free download email spam check software

We got a brand new installation setup for MailingCheck software.

Hot Features

• Absolutely free software download
• Email content spam checker
• Email spam rate points result
• Customizable spam point ranges
• SpamAssassin engine included
• Email spam cleaning suggestions included
• Razor Engine included
• SURBL blacklists included
• Can check emails for spam rates before sending
• Grows bulk email inbox rate
• Best offline email spam detection tool

Now you can install our little email spam scoring software without the need of SendBlaster (anyway, you can try the bulk emailer free version). Find and clean your email spam source, oh yeah!

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Email content spam check rating

November 04th, 2007
By Simon

As we learned in the past months the spam filters tests work in different application layers. In a single email sent from a sender to a recipient, we can analyze many possible spam engine alerting contexts:

• Sender Network
• Sender Address
• Email source (html)
• Email source (txt)
• Content
• Links
• Words
• Images
• Percentage Text on Images

A spam filter network can focus on a single context, for example SURBL lists each url contained in the email source. Many spam filtering networks are distributed and collaborative: Vipul’s Razor constantly updates a huge list of statistical signatures that can spot spam messages even though they are mutating in form and behaviour. This means that if your are spotted as a spam sender, of if your emails are signed as spam, every client in the Razor is seein your email as spam, until some one marks you as a clean sender again. Getting back from spammer status can be very hard.
For this reasons we should try to send emails as spam free as possible, and only to our mailing list subscriber. Now I analyze with Mailing Check (that incorporates SpamAssassin engine rules set, and incorporates Razor and SURBLS blocklists) the latest spam message that I received this morning:

This are the spam points scored by each single entry
Spam Score - Reason

• 3,6 - Contains a URL listed in the SC SURBL blocklist
• 3,4 - Contains a URL listed in the JP SURBL blocklist
• 3,3 - Contains a URL listed in the AB SURBL blocklist
• 2,6 - Contains a URL listed in the OB SURBL blocklist
• 2,5 - Listed in Razor2
• 1,5 - Razor2 gives engine 8 confidence level above 50%
• 1,5 - Razor2 gives engine 4 confidence level
• 1,5 - Contains a URL listed in the WS SURBL blocklist
• 0,5 - Razor2 gives confidence level above 50%

In this example we see how can be dangerous being listed in SURBL blocklists.
This email gets 20,4 spam points that means a very bad spam rating (it was in my spam folder). Now if we analyze each spam point source we notice that the spam points assigned for high confidence level are few, compared with points assigned for URLS contained into SURBL blocklist. The Razor confidence level means how likely the message is spam. This spam point source is assignerd depending on each email mime part and checked, then Razor gives a score.

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