CALDER.NET Suspended. America Online members dropped.
Bruce H.G. Calder
CALDER.NET was suspended for about two hours on Monday by LunarPages.Com, the Los Angeles based internet company that hosts its website, because of complaints that CALDER.NET had been engaging in the practise of sending unsolicited emails or "spam."
Since 1996, Bruce H.G. Calder, the owner/operator of CALDER.NET has been publishing three free internet mailing lists, Joke of the Day, This Day In History, and The Daily Info, earning revenue through the selling of advertising space. When the Internet Bust of 2001 hit, advertising space that previously sold for $100 was lucky to go for $1, so Bruce Calder cut back on publishing editions of these mailings lists in order to focus on projects it was hoped would be more profitable in the new reality of the internet.
With the re-launch in July of 2003 of CALDER.NET as "The Calder Gazette", the Joke of the Day mailing, with over 13,000 subscribers was actively revived, beginning in August with a new edition almost every weekday.
On August 20, CALDER.NET was suspended because about 20 complaints were received by LunarPages alleging that mailings from Bruce H.G. Calder's Joke of the Day were recived even though no subscription was requested. Discussing the situation with the LunarPages support representative Lee Coleman, Bruce Calder discovered that all of the complaints came from members of America Online. Ms. Coleman indicated that all mail from LunarPages' 20,000+ clients to America Online members may be blocked by AOL if the complaints of spam did not stop immediately.
Mr. Calder impressed upon Ms. Coleman the fact that all subscribers of CALDER.NET mailing lists requested the subscription through a "double-opt-in" method, the industry standard method of ensuring that only those people who want to be on an internet mailing list are on the mailing list. When a message was received by CALDER.NET asking to be added to a mailing list, a confirmation message containing a unique 15 digit code was sent to the FROM address that was on the initial message. Only if that confirmation message ws returned, and the 15 digit code validated was that e-mail address added to the mailing list. In this way, only people who deliberately returned the confirmation received regular messages from CALDER.NET.
As feared and assumed by Bruce Calder, all of the effort expended in ensuring that only people who want to receive CALDER.NET mailings do so, was not taken into consideration in the face of a handful of complaints of "spam." The fact that the 20 complaints represents only 0.6% of of the subscribers with AOL.COM addresses is simply not relevent.
Bruce Calder blames a combination of factors for this situation. Before moving the CALDER.NET website to LunarPages.Com, the three mailing lists were maintained on a personal computer. It is believed that the three mailing lists, with a combined readership of over 25,000 email addresses caused America Online to consider the vast majority of CALDER.NET email as spam, which was blocked without the knowledge or consent of its members. After a few years, many subscribers no doubt forgot they had subscribed. When CALDER.NET began sending emails from the LunarPages system, most of the mail got through...for the first time in years. This, along with the new America Online software which makes reporting spam exceptionally easy, allowed for a minor flurry of spurious complaints.
Seeing as all of the complaints were received by American Online members, in order to re-activate CALDER.NET, Bruce Calder agreed to remove all AOL.COM email addresses from his mailing list, removing over 3,200 addresses from his 13,000+ mailing list! Each of the 3,200+ members were sent a message informing them of the problem, and asking them to re-subscribe. Many did re-subscribe, but the vast majority did not. These unsubscription messages were sent to AOL.COM members over the course of two days, alphabetically. "Coincidentally," AOL members whose e-mail addresses begin with A through F have re-subscribed, whereas no AOL members whose e-mail addresses begin with G through Z have re-subscribed. This fact leads to the obvious conclusion that the unsubscription messages sent to members G to Z were blocked by American Online, without informing either CALDER.NET or their own members! (Presumbly because AOL's system is programmed to start blocking messages when "too many" identical messages are received.)
Bruce Calder feels it is hopelessly unfair that honest e-mail senders who go to the trouble of forcing subsribers to jump through hoops to get on a list, and who provide valid return e-mail addresses and unsubscribe instructions, as required by law (when a law exists) are punished because 0.6% of American Online subscribers cry SPAM the moment they see something that is not recognized immediately, while anonymous spammers continue to send millions of emails with impunity.
Bruce Calder is convinced that much, if not most of the CALDER.NET e-mail sent over the past few years to AOL members has been blocked by American Online without the knowledge or consent of its members. Considering the fact that other sites (AOLSUCKS.ORG for example) have experienced similar problems, Bruce Calder believes that America Online simply cannot be trusted to deliver e-mail, at least not e-mail that is sent to numerious people. Because of this, potential subscribers to CALDER.NET mailing lists will, in future be strongly discouraged from using their AOL.COM email address when a subscription is requested.
