Here's some mail exchange with a spammer who's threating me with a lawsuit.
On August 25 I received spam advertising single4you.net in the feed from Prolocation. There were several NANAS postings for it and I blacklisted it.
On September 1, the domain owner tried to contact me, but got stuck in my mailfilter, as his sending domain was listed.
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From: "Webmaster" mail@single4you.net To: joewein@pobox.com Sent: Wednesday, 01 September, 2004 9:58 Subject: Spammer???
Why are you blacklisting me? Who put you in charge? If you want to run a spam blacklist, make sure to pick the ones who are spammer’s not small businesses who are trying to make a living. But I guess you don’t’ care and feel good about yourself driving hard working folks like me into the ground.
Christian Schiffer
Webmaster
Singles4you.net
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Since then I added instructions to my site to help people wanting to contact me to get through the filter and he tried again:
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From: "Christian Schiffer" memberservice@single4you.net To: joewein@pobox.com Sent: Sunday, 26 September, 2004 20:19 Subject: [BLACKLIST] www.single4you.net Notice of legal action
Dear Sir,
We purchased an opt inn mailing list witch we later found to be no so opt inn as we thought. As soon as we became aware of this we stopped using it. This was a one time mistake from our side and we decided to stop using bulk mail altogether to prevent further mistakes. Instead we purchase other services witch do not include e-mail advertising at all. Therefore we demand to be taken of your list within 24 hours as well as getting written confirmation that you have done this. We did send you an e-mail to witch you neglected to reply in a nice tone of voice several weeks ago. Because of your false accusations more then 50% of our customers witch all have explicitly asked to get e-mail from us are not getting their member mail, notice of e-mails from other members who wish to contact them and so forth. This is totally unacceptable and you are forcing us to sue you for a substantial amount should you not stop blacklisting our domain.
We are sure that you wish to stop spamming problems and we find such an effort admirable as every legitimate business on the internet is suffering from spam; however, we are not spammers.
We would prefer to solve this matter peacefully, and if you have further questions or concerns please don’t hesitate to bring them to our attention, but be also assured that we will have no other option that to go to severe legal actions against you should you choose to neglect this e-mail and continue your blacklisting of our company. In the future we would advice you to contact businesses you are suspecting to be spammers before making false accusations. Any business witch is falsely accused of spam will have a working return mail address on the mail the send out. And so do we, we had a working return address on our mails before and we have it now, solely because we are not spammers.
We are looking forward to hear from you today.
Sincerely yours Christian Schiffer
webmaster@single4you.net
www.single4you.net
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Here's my reply:
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Dear Sir,
Mr Schiffer,
let's get a few things straight:
We purchased an opt inn mailing list witch we later found to be no so opt inn as we thought.
In other words, you are admitting that you sent spam advertising your website. Yet you demand your domain to be removed from a list of domains advertised via spam.
As someone who runs a business, you should be familiar with the legal situation of sending bulk email.
Since January 1, 20004, sending bulk email to recipients without a valid postal mail address for unsubscribing is a violation of US Federal Law ("Can Spam Act of 2003"), signed into law by President Bush last December. You emails included no such address.
Furthermore, sending email to recipients in the European Union with whom one neither has an ongoing business relationship nor who have granted permission to send them email is a violation of EU law.
Spam is not about how often you email someone, it is about (lack of) consent.
As the anti-spam community has explained for a long time, the only way to avoid spamming people when sending bulk email is to only use confirmed opt-in lists that you yourself have built. Any other approach risks sending bulk email to persons who have not given their consent.
As soon as we became aware of this we stopped using it. This was a one time mistake from our side and we decided to stop using bulk mail altogether to prevent further mistakes.
Well, that's obviously better than continuing to break the law, but it does not undo the violations that have already happened. You are standing on very shaky ground.
Therefore we demand to be taken of your list within 24 hours as well as getting written confirmation that you have done this.
On what legal grounds?
I stated on my website that your domain has been advertised in spam. That is obviously true. In your latest email you yourself admit to that fact.
I have copies of at least one unsolicited bulk email for every domain on my blacklist, including yours. The one that advertised your domain was received on August 25, 2004.
Furthermore, there is evidence by other people that we came across when we researched your domain, which confirmed our conclusions. For example, take a look at these usenet postings:
http://groups.google.com/groups?q=single4you.net
We did send you an e-mail to witch you neglected to reply in a nice tone of voice several weeks ago.
That email didn't make it through our spamfilter, because it originated from a blacklisted domain. To avoid communication problems like that I later addded the advice about [BLACKLIST] in the subject line. That's how we could finally communicate.
Because of your false accusations more then 50% of our customers witch all have explicitly asked to get e-mail from us are not getting their member mail,
I am not blocking email to your customers. I don't control the mail servers they are using. The only mail I control is the for my own email accounts. When I publish which domains I refuse mail from, I only exercise my freedom of speech.
It is up to the postmasters of other servers which mails they choose to accept and which they refuse.
But more to the point, even if I were to remove you from my personal list, you would still find your emails blocked because there are numerous other people who have received spam for your domain and added you to blacklists.
My personal advice to you is to register a different domain and gradually switch over to that (and this time keep your hands clean). Unfortunately for you, the damage to your domain name is already done and you have no one else to blame for that but your own carelessness.
Regards
Joe Wein
Yokohama, Japan
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From: "Christian Schiffer" memberservice@single4you.net To: "'Joe Wein'" joewein@pobox.com Sent: Monday, 27 September, 2004 0:11 Subject: RE: [BLACKLIST] www.single4you.net Notice of legal action
Mr. Wein,
This is the absolute last warning. The accusation of spam against our company is not correct; furthermore we do not admit having spammed anyone at any point in time. That the business we purchased our mailing list from are spammers is not our fault, if you need to put someone on your blacklist, put them on, they are the once behind spam, they were advertising their opt inn list as a consented list of users interested in our product.
Hiding behind the freedom of speech act and denying other the same right is ridicules. I will not waste anymore time with you but hand over this matter to our lawyer's tomorrow morning. That you admit not having even tried to contact us, having blacklisted us without any reason or concern and then even admitting to hiding by denying our e-mail speaks for itself.
Even now after the second mail explaining how this could happen and trying to reach a friendly solution you are still in denial of your offence.
We will therefore sue you not only for the business lost in the future but also for the business lost in the past. You are looking at a multimillion dollar lawsuit; I hope you can afford that.
I also suspect you working for the completion and our law firm will investigate that too.
Should you choose not too submit to our demands within the hour this will be your loss. I can assure you that we will take any action possible within the law to bring you down, both financial and personal, for trying to wreck our business.
Christian Schiffer
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That's it so far
Joe
Hi!
This is the absolute last warning. The accusation of spam against our company is not correct; furthermore we do not admit having spammed anyone at any point in time. That the business we purchased our mailing list from are spammers is not our fault, if you need to put someone on your blacklist, put them on, they are the once behind spam, they were advertising their opt inn list as a consented list of users interested in our product.
Geez. What a complete dork, no, we are not responsible, we bought a crap 'opt-in' list but that the problem of the guy who made the list. Bummer for him. Doesnt work that way. His company used 'a' list, his company should apply to the CAN-SPAM laws, they obviously didnt.
And even, besides that, is it illegal to publish a domain list? We are not blocking anyone's mail. A mail admin picks lists to filter mail with. And appearently thats their choise.
Joe if there is a problem, just take it out of your list, he is, as i told you in private mail, still listed in other datasources, so he will be blocked anyhow.
Even now after the second mail explaining how this could happen and trying to reach a friendly solution you are still in denial of your offence.
We will therefore sue you not only for the business lost in the future but also for the business lost in the past. You are looking at a multimillion dollar lawsuit; I hope you can afford that.
Did you visit the page btw? He can better invest his money in his site first ;) hahahaha.
'Source Error:
An unhandled exception was generated during the execution of the current web request. Information regarding the origin and location of the exception can be identified using the exception stack trace below.
Stack Trace:
[InvalidCastException: Cast from string "CONVERT(DATETIME, '1954-9-26 00:" to type 'Date' is not valid.] Microsoft.VisualBasic.CompilerServices.DateType.FromString(String Value, CultureInfo culture) +161 Microsoft.VisualBasic.CompilerServices.DateType.FromString(String Value) +53 www.single4you.net.card1.createQ() +1123 www.single4you.net.card1.Page_Load(Object sender, EventArgs e) +485 System.Web.UI.Control.OnLoad(EventArgs e) +67 System.Web.UI.Control.LoadRecursive() +35 System.Web.UI.Page.ProcessRequestMain() +731 '
Cool stuff.
Should you choose not too submit to our demands within the hour this will be your loss. I can assure you that we will take any action possible within the law to bring you down, both financial and personal, for trying to wreck our business.
*smack* ;)
Bye, Raymond.
Joe Wein, quoting Christian Schiffer, wrote to SURBL Discussion list:
CS> We will therefore sue you not only for the business lost in the future CS> but also for the business lost in the past. You are looking at a CS> multimillion dollar lawsuit; I hope you can afford that.
BWAHAHAHA! His domain is 188 days old, and, as near as I can tell, was listed in WS on September 4th, which was 22 days ago. So, if "multi-million" means, at minimum, $2M, SURBL cost him, on average, $90K per *day*. I'd really like to see his business model. (Actually, I'd also really love to confirm that SURBL cost a spammer that much money! :-)
CS> I also suspect you working for the completion and our law firm will CS> investigate that too.
"working for the completion"? Does he mean "working for the competition?" Heh.
CS> Should you choose not too submit to our demands within the hour this CS> will be your loss. I can assure you that we will take any action CS> possible within the law to bring you down, both financial and CS> personal, for trying to wreck our business.
BWAAAAAAAHAHAHA!!
Best case, the guy will go bankrupt trying to convince his lawyers to "bring you down", while you ignore him. Probably, though, he'll just go away after awhile. "Within the hour" is especially cute, given the timestamp of his message:
From: "Christian Schiffer" memberservice@single4you.net To: "'Joe Wein'" joewein@pobox.com Sent: Monday, 27 September, 2004 0:11
I bet, if he was even half serious, he'd realize that most lawyers aren't cheap at 1:11am. :-)
Thanks for posting this, Joe.
- Ryan
OK I was away from email for a while, but if this domain has legitimate uses, then we probably should not list it, by our own rules.
Yes, he did buy an unclean list from spammers. Yes, he did send spam using it. Yes, he did violate U.S. and E.U. laws. Yes, he has no legal grounds at all to sue anyone since he admits to violating these laws by admitting to spamming. Yes, he is a spammer.
But that's not the question. The question is: does the domain have legitimate uses. If so we shouldn't list it. We should not list domains that have legitimate uses, even if they do send in some spam.
Unfortunately many people will probably not understand this position or approve of it, and some will misinterpret it as "caving in to spammers," but in reality it's simply applying our own rules consistently. (To those people I would say you do not understand what we are doing.)
What I need to know is: do they have legitimate uses: yes or no?
Jeff C. -- "If it appears in hams, then don't list it."
Jeff Chan wrote to SURBL Discussion list:
What I need to know is: do they have legitimate uses: yes or no?
The site doesn't seem to work very well, so, whether he's spamming or not, he's not going to have much success. :-)
Anyway, given the guy claims to have stopped spamming, and he's not listed anywhere else (SBL, XBL, ...) I'd be in favour of de-listing for now, and then re-listing in the case of future mishaps.
- Ryan
"Jeff Chan" jeffc@surbl.org
But that's not the question. The question is: does the domain have legitimate uses. If so we shouldn't list it. We should not list domains that have legitimate uses, even if they do send in some spam.
Hi Jeff,
the latest emails from Mr. Schiffer were much more friendly in tone. He also admitted that he was only bluffing when he talked about legal action, as he really does not have any money for that.
I have removed his listing and let him know about that. I hope he learnt something from it.
I probably wouldn't have removed the domain without your reminder. Looking at this case I realise how difficult it really is for submitters *not* to list spammers who may have some legitimate uses.
Joe
On Sunday, September 26, 2004, 8:35:40 PM, Joe Wein wrote:
"Jeff Chan" jeffc@surbl.org
But that's not the question. The question is: does the domain have legitimate uses. If so we shouldn't list it. We should not list domains that have legitimate uses, even if they do send in some spam.
Hi Jeff,
the latest emails from Mr. Schiffer were much more friendly in tone. He also admitted that he was only bluffing when he talked about legal action, as he really does not have any money for that.
I have removed his listing and let him know about that. I hope he learnt something from it.
I probably wouldn't have removed the domain without your reminder. Looking at this case I realise how difficult it really is for submitters *not* to list spammers who may have some legitimate uses.
Joe
Thanks Joe. Hopefully he's learned his lesson.
Jeff C. -- "If it appears in hams, then don't list it."
Joe Wein wrote:
"Jeff Chan" jeffc@surbl.org
But that's not the question. The question is: does the domain have legitimate uses. If so we shouldn't list it. We should not list domains that have legitimate uses, even if they do send in some spam.
Hi Jeff,
the latest emails from Mr. Schiffer were much more friendly in tone. He also admitted that he was only bluffing when he talked about legal action, as he really does not have any money for that.
I have removed his listing and let him know about that. I hope he learnt something from it.
I probably wouldn't have removed the domain without your reminder. Looking at this case I realise how difficult it really is for submitters *not* to list spammers who may have some legitimate uses.
Joe
This is the sort of people I deal with all night at work. Those who "CLAIM" to be loosing a hundreds/thousands a day... of course they're running off a residential DSL connection which is in violation of our companies AUP. Course if they are really losing this amount per day I sell them a T1 8*))
But most of them back down when you point out they hav no leg to stand on.
-Doc (Who needs to get to said job soon)
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Doc Schneider -
Jeff Chan -
Joe Wein -
Raymond Dijkxhoorn -
Ryan Thompson