Spam News
Thousands of small business webmasters briefly lose their domain names at expiration, due to a simple lack of understanding about the roles of three key players in the drama: domain name registrars, web hosts and internet service providers. Fortunately for most, they learn quickly how to save their web site from oblivion by using the 30 day redemption period for expired domain names enforced by ICANN. One simple solution is to extend domain registration for the maximum ten years. The other solution is to treat domain registrar data as the critical business element it is.
I Can't Remember Where I Purchased My Domain Name!
It wasn't until my third client had called asking how to regain control of her domain name that I realized that it was a common problem for small business webmasters to forget where they had registered their domains. WHOIS my registrar? Why didn't I get an email about renewal? Why did my site stop working today?
People rarely realize how important it is to keep their domain registrar notified of changes to their email address and and other contact information. The registrar will send renewal notifications to the email address last on file. For most domain owners, the only time they think about contacting a registrar is the day they reserve their domain name. If they move to a new city and get a new internet service provider, it doesn't occur to them that the old email address will change and that meeans that the registrar can no longer contact them through the previous address, or phone or fax as each of them change and we rarely notify the controller of our domain of those changes.
Sometimes the first indication a business owner will have that there is a problem is the day their web site stops working. If they failed to notify their domain registrar of changed email address, they may never have received their domain renewal notice. Since many registrars honor a 30 day "redemption period" allowing expired domains to be redeemed, it may be possible to save the registration within 30 days following expiration by contacting registrars during 30 day domain redemption periods.
The following URL leads to the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (AKA ICANN) discussing the grace period and redemption period rules it enforces.
http://www.icann.org/bucharest/redemption-topic.htm
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News
and Spam References
Would
you buy anything from"F7jspxy3@undisclosed-recipients.com"?
Ebay
Seeks Ban on Email Harvesting
Washington
State Upholds Constitutionality of Anti-Spam Law
Legislative
Spam Debates in the House Judiciary Committee
Monster-Hut
Versus Pae-Tec
B2B
Marketing Biz Spam Report
Hormel
comments on the use of their trademarked name
Hormel
Sues makers of SPAM Arrest email Filtering Software
Can SPAM it's no UCE!
Internetweek recently ran a survey asking companies if they ever
use Unsolicited Commercial Email to market their business. The results
were astounding assuming the respondents represent real, legitimate
businesses! (How many spammers read Internetweek?)
"In fact, one in 25 of our survey's respondents said their companies'
marketing efforts include the distribution of unsolicited e-mail."
And that is just those who ADMIT spamming! That is a very ugly percentage
and something needs to be done. I am in contact with the Chief Privacy
Officer of one of the largest email marketing companies on the web
asking to be removed from the marketing database by domain.
That seems to be difficult. Why? I want my subscriptions to remain
intact, I want my hosted applications to continue undisturbed, I
want to request information from online companies and I want all
of that while also wanting to stay out of marketing databases.
This seems like a relatively simple thing to do technologically.
Internetweek recently published an article titled "Privacy tools
emerge" at:
http://www.internetweek.com/ebizapps01/ebiz042301.htm
What makes the process of privacy protection so hugely complex?
WebSite101 recently added a privacy protection tool to our domain
which protects our database from outside access and seems like a
perfect solution to keeping our subscribers and site members information
private on a shared server. We highly recommend it for those who
value the privacy of their web site members.
Isn't it clear we all want a solution?
There are raging anti-spamming fanatics getting legitimate companies
shut out of their ISP's by falsely accusing people of distributing
UCE (when their domain is mentioned in an article published by *anyone*)
by running entire newsletter through a service called SpamCop. This
tool is abusive and should be shut down or discredited since it
extracts every domain name mentioned in the newsletter and sends
email to the host of those domains and endangers the owners of those
domains with knee-jerk reactions by their ISP's. It is not uncommon
that victims of these complaints are shut down by their web host
without investigation!
"Guilty until proven innocent" is the attitude of many service providers
since they are under constant pressure from everyone from their
customers to their own providers to do something to prevent further
complaining and end email abuses. This has caused a new backlash
by innocents who have been threatened with the closure of their
online business stemming from those spurious complaints.
If this anti-spam article were published in an anti-spam newsletter
and the newsletter were submitted to SpamCop every domain mentioned
within this text would be turned in to their ISP for spamming. How
effective a tool is one that indiscriminately shoots at everyone?
That is essentially the effect of anti-spam software used badly.
It would shoot to kill all, including the anti-spam sites mentioned
here.
http://www.cauce.org/
http://www.emailabuse.org/
http://spam.abuse.net/spam/
http://www.junkbusters.com/
http://www.mail-abuse.org/
http://www.abuse.net/
http://www.samspade.org/
http://spamcop.net/
http://www.spamrecycle.com/
http://www.suespammers.org/
Everybody is hot under the collar about spam but nobody is doing
anything real to stop it legitimately. The government is debating
the issue and threatening to pass stringent laws, but haven't figured
out how to legislate the issue. Reference laws:
http://www.spamlaws.com/federal/summ107.html
Now there are fanatics on both sides of the issue and it is going
nowhere but occassionally to the Realtime Blackhole List. This is
one attempt to address the issue that creates more heat than light.
Marketing companies want the Black Hole List shut down. Why? 24/7
media have recently won a court injunction to have their domain
removed from the Black Hole list.
For info about the Blackhole List at the Mail Abuse Prevention System
or MAPS visit:
http://www.mail-abuse.org/rbl/
Is Spam destined to join religion as one of those things we avoid
discussing in polite company out of fear of brawls breaking out?
I recently attended a marketing conference where the topic of spam
turned a roomful of reasonable folks into sharply divided camps
raging loudly at each other across the conference table.
I've just joined a spam discussion list where many of the same emotions
are raised in what seem to be otherwise reasonable folks. Everyone
seems to agree there is a problem, but each have very distinct ideas
about what should be done to address the problem. Comparisons are
constantly made to core issues of freedom of speech, gun control,
product liability, totalitarianism, and all the while, nobody agrees
on a solution.
Marketers should take the lead and help develop technological solutions
to unwanted email before they are hit with a massive public backlash
and the complete loss of this valuable marketing medium due to public
hysteria and government over-reaction.
I vote that DoubleClick, WhiteHat, 24/7 Media and their cohorts
commit a bit of their thinning profits to helping solve the problem
of spam before they get wiped out by the building tsunami of public
opinion.
We've recently added a Spam Tutorial to WebSite 101:
http://www.website101.com/spam_kills_business.html
You can read it or adopt the following SPAM guideline:
DON'T DO IT! End of lesson.
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