From: TomCrouser@aol.com
Date: Sat, 12 Oct 1996 12:32:27 -0400
Subject: EMAILERS Or SPAM?
Content-Length: 18515
X-UIDL: 845227933.006

Crouser Report OnLine Copyright 1996 Thomas P. Crouser, October 12, 1996 -
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consent of the copyright holder.
***** ***** *****
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***** ***** *****
EMAILERS Or SPAM?
Transmitted from Charleston, West Virginia

Our subject of this message is about either direct mail in the electronic
age, or it s about SPAM, the hated email messages which fill up our mail box
depending upon your view. These discussion started a few issues ago (Pricing
PreFlight Time$ and More; September 23, 1996) on another subject, which was
the concept of a printer emailing to clients a newsletter. We mentioned
FLOODGATE, a software program and we were off to the races. Here are three
points of view about SPAM. . .or Emailing beginning with the original
message. 
*****
Subj:	Junk Fax is a NO NO, something crooks do.
From:	SpamHater
To: 	TomCrouser
 
Tom. . .About Floodgate, and Bulk Email. Floodgate is a hacker tool, that can
harvest email addresses from AOL, mainly, but other online services too. It
will be disabled soon, I expect.  The problem is that bulk EMAIL, also known
as SPAM, is against AOL s policy, and they ll cancel your account in a
heartbeat if caught.  Also, it s probably a violation of the junk fax law,
and if not, it will be soon.  So, the penalty for sending SPAM will be at
least $500 per recipient.  
 
Anyway, don t you think the advertiser should pay for their own advertising,
rather than shifting the cost to someone else (AOL, their internet provider,
or the recipient)? No, Tom, sending Spam is unethical, and NOBODY should buy
anything from such creeps.  Can you believe some people send THREE MILLION
PIECES per week!  It s not like junk mail you can just throw away.  The
sender has to pay the Post Office to deliver it.  With email, the recipient
(us) has to pay for the AOL time to receive, and the overhead for the mail
server to forward it.  Then the time to delete it. Something crooks do.  Not
honest people.  Just like JUNK FAX.
*****
Okay. Junk email and the sending of SPAM is bad. But, wait. Here s Emailer.
*****
Dear Tom. . .I just had to write concerning the issues of Floodgate.
SpamHater is WAY off base with his misconceptions about Bulk Emailing. I had
purchased the software ($345) about a month and a half ago. Since that time,
I have averaged approximately 1,000-2,000 emails a week. Nothing spectacular.
I m trying to provide printing services to selected/targeted markets. Can
they be found online without Emailing half a billion people? You bet! I do
however have to take issue with SpamHater on several issues:



Floodgate is a hacker tool, that can harvest email addresses from AOL,
mainly, but other online services too.

  ......This is far from the truth.
AOL has a set of tools that is available to anyone for downloading; in fact,
it is a set of tools that is supported by AOL. These tools incorporate many
aspects and functions attractive to the Bulk Emailer. Being familiar with
hacking abilities, this is not a true statement. Floodgate DOES NOT operate
in conjunction with AOL, or any other online service. FLOODGATE is a
legitimate stand alone program that operates independently of any online
service. It does nothing more than pull data from a file that YOU MUST
PROVIDE FOR IT TO RUN! Besides, hacking has NOTHING to do with lifting names
off a service provider. Trust me, its been done to death; i.e., the challenge
of 

that

 is over.

It will be disabled soon, I expect. The problem is that bulk EMAIL, also
known as SPAM, is against AOL s policy, and they ll cancel your account in a
heartbeat if caught.  Also, it s probably a violation of the junk fax law,
and if not, it will be soon.  So, the penalty for sending SPAM will be at
least $500 per recipient. ......Here again is another misconception. If
SpamHater were familiar with programming, he would be aware of the fact that
FLOODGATE is a stand alone program. Unless someone came into my shop and
erased the program, there would be no way to disable it. It would be similar
to saying that PageMaker will no longer work because you are connected to
AOL. SPAMMING is against the TOS of AOL, but is NOT against the junk fax law.
Take a moment and look at the junk fax law. There are no fax machines
involved; i.e., cyberspace is open for use.
 
Anyway, don t you think the advertiser should pay for their own
advertising, rather than shifting the cost to someone else (AOL, their
internet provider, or the recipient)? No, Tom, sending Spam is unethical, and
NOBODY should buy anything from such creeps.  Can you believe some people
send THREE MILLION PIECES per week!  It s not like junk mail you can just
throw away.  The sender has to pay the Post Office to deliver it.  With
email, the recipient (us) has to pay for the AOL time to receive, and the
overhead for the mail server to forward it.  Then the time to delete it.
Something crooks do.  Not honest people.  Just like JUNK FAX.  .......We do
pay for our own advertising. We pay our ISP s just like you do. Does everyone
send THREE MILLION PIECES a week? Hardly. I couldn t handle the responses.
What everyone has to know is that the HONEST PERSON places a disclaimer at
the heading of his/her EMail. If you want to be removed from a particular
mailing, you just place the word remove into the subject field and hit


reply.

 In any event, the way FLOODGATE works is in its ability to 

cull
out

 people from a master list to which you have already sent a piece of
EMail. You have to remember, there are REAL PEOPLE on the other end of your
EMail list. I like to send an offer to them every three months. Mine is for a
tangible product; PRINTING. I include my REAL NAME, COMPANY NAME, ADDRESS AND
PHONE NUMBER.  Next time you get some BULK EMAIL, see if the sender does the
same.

Crooks? I think not. I ve had WAY more problems in the past 12 years of
printing for customers face-to-face than I ever will from hitting a 

delete


button. Seems to me that the First Amendment principal must have been lost
here somewhere. AOL is not the real world. It s a great starting point for
most users, but get yourself an ISP and see the vast differences. It is
simply amazing. This is not meant as a personal attack on anyone, just to
give you another point of view. Emailer.
***** ***** *****
If you are located within a 6 hour drive of Jacksonville, Florida and aren t
doing as well as you should, then message me with your name, address and
telephone. I am tentatively planning a special group project this winter for
six selected companies. See the end of this message for more details.
***** ***** *****
Okay, okay. Emailing is like direct mail. It s actually a service to the
person receiving the mail. Or it s junk mail, just like the perception of a
lot of direct mail. Dr. Terry Montgomery addresses the same question in the
October 1996 edition of  

I-Way of the Highway.

 (To subscribe to this very
good printing industry newsletter, message sysop@printer-net.com).
*****
Subj:	

I-Way of the Highway

, October 1996
From:	sysop@ printer-net.com
To:	tomcrouser@aol.com

                              I-Way or the Highway
       A printer s guide to the Information Superhighway
PrinterNet Vol. 1, No. 7                             October 1996
______________________________________________________

***** Marketing with Email

It s probably not surprising to learn that the biggest drawback about email
is the amount of unwanted or unsolicited email being distributed on the
Internet.  Some call it 

SPAM.

 Personally, I don t have a problem with
unsolicited email that gives me the opportunity to 

unsubscribe

 from future
distributions.  Some folks get down right incensed when they receive even the
first issue of such a message.  It s a very ticklish issue these days.
 However, I can assure you that the use of email to MARKET products will
continue to grow and grow. Why?  MONEY, of course.

Consider this ... The cost to send advertising mail (including postage and
printing) to 1 million people:  $827,000. The cost to send advertising email
to 1 million people: $1,499. Think about it.  (Source: ComputerWorld,
9/23/96)
*****
But, SpamHater is adamant.
*****
Subj:	Tom Crouser s Report (Floodgate)
From:	SpamHater
To:	      Emailer, TomCrouser

I disagree.  My email box is my own, not yours.  I don t want advertisers
trying to use it, especially for chain letters and get rich quick schemes.  I
get plenty of those. About the Junk Fax law, read Infoworld 9/9/96, Page 74.
 It s going to apply to email soon, if it doesn t already.

And, correct me if I m wrong, but doesn t floodgate have to be running on
your computer when you are on AOL?  If so, it could be disabled.  And, having
sent many 

Remove

 messages, there s often no real person at the other end, I
get at least half of those messages back as undeliverable.  So, lots if not
all of the junk emailers couldn t care less about 

remove

 messages.  

And, paying $19.95/month for unlimited internet does not constitute the right
to sent out millions of ads for free.  You don t seriously think online
services are going to deliver that much advertising for free, do you?
 They ll find a way to get paid for it.  Remember, until this year CompuServe
charged 

Postage Due

 for internet mail.  I don t particularly want a return
to that.  I m just afraid I ll be the one having to pay, since they won t be
able to get paid by Cyberpromo.  And the reference to 

Hacker Tool

 is from
Steve Case, not me. SpamHater.
*****
Now, here is excerpts from AOL s letter to users.
*****
Dear Member. . .As the Internet grows in popularity, unfortunate situations
like this are likely to continue to occur. This problem of 

junk

 bulk e-mail
is not limited to America Online, many online services are experiencing this
phenomenon. On America Online, as with many other service providers, sending
unsolicited commercial e-mail is a violation of Terms of Service. For more
information, you can read about the Community Action Team s policy regarding
unsolicited mail at keyword: TOS. Snip> 

What You Can Do about Junk E-Mail. If the mail comes from an AOL account or
contains ads that ask you to reply to an AOL account, you may forward it to
the screen name: TOSEmail1. If that mailbox is full, try screen name
TOSEmail2, but please do not send it to both of these screen names. Our Terms
of Service/Community Action Team staff will take appropriate action, which
may include warnings and account termination. Please use the Forward button
to send a copy of the offending mail to our TOS/CAT staff and please make a
note in your mail of the AOL addresses involved to assist our staff in taking
action. Snip

Your best course of action consists of the following four steps:
 
 1. Remove Yourself from the Distribution List.  If the re-mailer gives
instructions on how to be removed from the distribution list, follow those
instructions exactly. (You do not need to cc

 screen name Postmaster when
doing so, but please let us know if those instructions prove faulty.)
 
 2. Complain to the Other Site s Postmaster. You should complain directly to
the Postmaster at the site from which the mail originated. Often such abusive
mail is a violation of the ISP s (Internet Service Provider s) usage
agreement. By looking in the mail headers at the bottom of the mail message,
you will often see a line reading something like 

Message-ID:

. In such a case, you can try writing to


postmaster@example.com

 and ask that they curb their errant mailer.
 
Several large ISPs have special addresses for registering complaints.
Following is an alphabetical list of some providers, their typical e-mail
addresses, and the address you should send complaints to:
 
 Compuserve ( @compuserve.com)--postmaster@compuserve.com
 Interramp ( @interramp.com)--abuse@interramp.com
 Netcom ( @ix.netcom.com)--abuse@netcom.com
 Prodigy ( @prodigy.com)--postmaster@prodigy.com
 
If the Message-ID line is missing or looks like it might be fake, then look
at the bottom of the headers for the bottom-most line, which should read
something like: Received: from mail.example.net mail.example.net
[192.229.169.1]) by emin22.mail.aol.com (8.6.12/8.6.12) with SMTP id
TAA00559; Sat, 6 Dec 1999 19:13:39 -0500
 
This indicates the mail arrived at AOL from a server called mail.example.net.
In this example, you would want to contact postmaster@example.net. You can
omit the 

mail

 or any other qualifiers that you see in the address. If there
are multiple Received lines, please also send complaints to any other domains
shown.
 
Note: You do not need to forward a copy to the AOL Postmaster unless you have
a problem contacting the postmaster the offending site. Internet protocols
require all domains to accept mail addressed to postmaster at their domain.
If for some reason your mail is returned to you as undeliverable, this is an
egregious breach of protocols. Please forward a copy of the error message to
screen name Postmaster for follow up.
 
Be Careful! Many junk re-mailers know that their recipients will do this, and
forge mail to make it look like it comes from elsewhere. So be nice, since
many system administrators have no idea their system is being abused. If you
aren t absolutely sure where the mail is originating from, forward a copy of
the Internet headers, from the bottom of the mail message, to screen name
Postmaster here at AOL. We ll provide you the means of registering a
complaint with that individual.
 
 3. Complain to the Advertiser about the Re-mailer.  If the commercial
re-mailer includes multiple ads with e-mail addresses of the people whose
services or products are being offered, you might consider sending a polite
message to each of them, explaining your situation. Keep in mind that many
advertisers are unaware that the re-mailer they are using sends unsolicited
mail. For example, you might say: 
 
 Are you aware that the bulk

 re-mailer you used to advertise your product
(or service) sends unsolicited e-mail? By sending me this unasked-for junk
mail, you have cost me both time and money. 

Collect

 phone calls are a bad
method of advertising, and junk e-mail isn t any better--please consider more
reputable means of advertising in the future. Thanks!
 
 This is concise, polite, and--most important--not abusive. (Again, if the
advertisers have AOL addresses, please see the steps shown above for filing a
complaint with AOL s staff.)
 
 4. Complain by Other Means.  Some junk mailing companies are proud of their
accomplishments and provide information on contacting them by postal mail,
phone, or fax. By all means, use those methods. You might also consider
notifying the Better Business Bureau and other consumer protection agencies
in their locale to complain about their practices. You should keep copies of
your correspondence (on disk and paper) as documentation of your complaint.
Make sure everything is dated accurately.
 
 If you continue to receive further junk mail from a particular remailer,
ignoring it and deleting the messages may be your only option.
 
 What AOL Is Doing. AOL has not provided your e-mail address to any junk
e-mailer. These names are collected through a variety of methods: capturing
screen names in chat rooms, on bulletin boards, from the Usenet, and through
random searches of our Member Directory. AOL is working on many fronts
(including litigation in a Federal District Court) to put an end to junk
e-mail.
 
 AOL is actively pursuing a means of filtering mail from abusive sites and
we ll implement that filtering as soon as we can assure that it will not
cause problems for legitimate mail delivery. In addition, we are working on
means of allowing Members to put up their own filter on their mailbox; this
feature will be available in a future release of our software. But until
then, a grass-roots campaign by the recipients of unsolicited commercial mail
can have an effect. Snip Regards, Lee, Community Action Team
America Online, Inc.
*****
Well, now that we have settled that. . . . .actually, I know folks have
strong opinions on all sides. Sort of depends on whether you are a buyer or a
seller. . .and it s also the same argument that has been going on about
direct mail for decades. Anyway, the three points of view are meant to give
you a realistic view of the marketplace, especially if you find yourself in
the future as a seller.

Until next time, Happy Trails,

Tom and Pamela Crouser
*****
If you are located within a 6 hour drive of Jacksonville, Florida and aren t
doing as well as you should, then message me with your name, address and
telephone. I am tentatively planning a special group project this winter for
six selected 

emerging

 companies in addition to our normal work load.
Companies do not have to be 

successful,

 be making money or, for that
matter, have a lot of money. An alternative fee structure is available. The
companies should, however, have $250,000 or so in sales, be in good markets,
have the ability to print and be willing to embrace changes once they are
fully explained.

Message me with your name, address and telephone. We are tentatively planning
a special project this winter for companies interested in a quick turnaround.
I ll give you a call and we can discuss it.
***** *****
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TomCrouser@aol.com and include the word 

UNSUBSCRIBE

 in the body copy of the
message.

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Hey, do we get around or what?