[ih] Endliss misconceptions about Email reliability

[John Gilmore]

It appears that Jack Haverty via Internet-history <jack at 3kitty.org> said:
>Apparently if receivers of a distribution list email somehow tag it as 
>spam, it may lead to that list being categorized as a spam source

Some of the biggest sources of spam deliberately don't allow the
recipient to mark a message as spam.  MailChimp is classic.  They will
let you "Unsubscribe" from a list that is spamming you, but never give
you a chance to say "I'm unsubscribing BECAUSE THEY SPAMMED ME."  They
would rather keep collecting money from that spammer, than be told by
the email recipients that they are facilitating spam.

However -- almost every message that is sent through MailChimp is full
of spyware.  They replace every link with a link that goes through their
own servers and logs who and when followed it (and which exact piece of
email, to which recipient, the link came from).  And they add a fake 1x1
pixel image to each message in the hope that the reader's MUA is stupid
enough to download it and thereby report your mail-reading location,
time, date, and each message read, to MailChimp.  They have told good
friends of mine at the Internet Archive that to run a mailing list
through them, you MUST insert spyware into every email.  And they claim
it's an "anti-spam" measure to spy on every recipient, when really it's
all about collecting billions of points of surveillance every day (about
the innocent readers of mailing list messages) and selling them to the
highest bidder.

The whole ecosystem has gotten really sick.

	John