Wrongfully Accused Of Spam
from the happens-all-the-time dept
What is it with resume spammers? You might remember Bernard Shiffman, the moron resume spammer who got quite a lot of attention for threatening people who turned him in for being a spammer. It's now time to add David Scott Anderson to the list of resume spammers. Declan McCullugh details why Anderson is an unapologetic resume spammer over at Politech. It seems that Anderson resume spammed McCullugh from a Yahoo account. When McCullugh reported the abuse, Anderson went nuts, calling McCullugh all sorts of name and reporting him for spamming - which put Politech on a spam blacklist. Having been wrongfully accused of spamming people twice in the past few years myself, I agree that it's a pain. McCullugh brings up some very valid points about various blacklists involving shooting first and asking questions later. I know these lists are trying to be helpful, but it would be much better if there were some way to prevent false positives sent in by people who are either mistaken or simply vindictive.
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The human factor
It is probably almost as impossible to keep people from sending false positives as it is to keep spammers from sending positive falses.
ISPs understand that there are going to be false complaints. The monsterhut.com (spammer) v paetec (ISP) spam court case started was when monsterhut exceeded the 2% false positive spam report rate that was agreeded upon when they signed with paetec.
The only solution I can see at this time is the human factor. The investigator at an ISP who looks into a complaint and determines if it is spam or a pissing contest between a few people.
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