Re: [Asrg] Summary/outline of why the junk button idea is pre-failed

[John Levine <[e-mail]>]

>> That is the underlying problem with the TIS button that is real. It
>> will generate ARFs that are really just list-unsubscribe requests
>> from perfectly legitimate sources. It will generate these in large
>> numbers and it will be impractical to reduce them with user
>> education. Anyone proposing to process the flood of such messages
>> will have to come up with an economical way of doing so that
>> doesn't inconvenience the list owners.

You say this like it's a new issue.  I get FBLs from a lot of large
providers, AOL, Yahoo, Comcast, Hotmail, Roadrunner, and a few others.
The vast majority of FBL reports are messages from COI lists.  A far
smaller number are forwarded spam that Spamassassin didn't catch on
the way out, and a very few are mystery complaints about normal mail.
The total number of reports is small, maybe two a week.  Considering
how large the mail systems are that already send me FBL reports, it's
hard to imagine that more widespread reporting would be more onerous.

The FBL reports are fed into a little perl script I wrote that
recognizes list mail, picks out the list name and recipient address,
and stuffs unsub commands to the list manager.  It's not a big deal.
It's entirely automated.  Anyone else with more than a trickle of FBL
reports should do the same thing.

>Having the report recipient automatically utilize the list unsubscribe 
>headers present in the headers immediately comes to mind.

You have a reputation problem, knowing whether it's a real list, or a
spammer trying to intercept complaints.  I suppose that it's at worst
harmless so long as the original recipient tracks the complaint rate
so they notice if it's a higher spam-like rate rather than a lower
unsub-like rate.

R's,
John