What is it about being an anti-spammer that gives so many of these guys a God complex?
Maybe they’re like the Internet’s version of vice cops where dealing with scumbags day in and day out makes them a little wacky. If that’s the case, we’d like to suggest rotating them out after a certain period of time so they can gain much-needed perspective.
Case in point: a podcast interview with The Spamhaus Project’s executive director Steve Linford on Out-Law.com.
During the interview, Linford uttered the following eye-popper of a sentence: “If we were to turn our service off one day, the spam levels on the Internet would literally bring the Internet e-mail system down.”
Excuse us? Those are the words of a man who clearly spends way too much time with his pixels.
Spamhaus—the organization that made news recently by ignoring an $11.7 million Illinois default court ruling against it—runs a blacklisting service that e-mail administrators use to help them decide whether or not to block incoming e-mail. Only a foolish e-mail marketer would fail to take the group seriously.
And to be fair, one long-time e-mail executive who didn’t want to be named said Spamhaus is nowhere near as trigger happy as was its marketer-despised predecessor Mail Abuse Prevention System, or MAPS. But, the executive said, sometimes Spamhaus’ listings are a little aggressive.
“That said, I’ve never seen a listing on Spamhaus where there was no reason to be there,” the executive said. “Sometimes the reason sucks, but there’s always a reason.”
According to Linford, 650 million users rely on Spamhaus to block spam from their inboxes. Linford also estimated that more than 90% of e-mail traffic is spam.
Spamhaus is a serious outfit delivering a service a bunch of people want. Of that there is no doubt. Where we come from, that’s called a market. As a result, if Spamhaus were to shut down, someone would step in to fill the void—kind of similarly to the way Spamhaus stepped up when MAPS took a powder.
Then again, if Linford is right about the effect shutting down Spamhaus might have, might we suggest he eat less red meat and exercise a little more?
What is it about being an anti-spammer that gives so many of these guys a God complex?
Maybe they’re like the Internet’s version of vice cops where dealing with scumbags day in and day out makes them a little wacky. If that’s the case, we’d like to suggest rotating them out after a certain period of time so they can gain much-needed perspective.
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