I get these alot at work. "John is using ServiceX to protect his inbox from Spam Mail. Please click here to verifty this email is coming from a real person" blah, blah, blah. Spam mail protecting other people from Spam mail.

At some point I am thinking this will start happening when I respond to email people send me for the site. I want to clarify that I will not be spending time clicking links and filling out forms so that I am added to your "buddy" list. If you decide to get one of these services then by all means add me to your "okay" list first so that you will get my messages. This is actually the problem with these services as they assume people will be willing to spend valuable time doing this "hoop-jumping".

My email is [email protected]

Thanks,
Jim

Wow, am I really your buddy? Can I borrow $5 buddy? Thanks buddy, you're a real buddy.

Sorry Jim, I couldn't resist.

Sounds like they are using either "Quib" or "MailFrontier Matador" of which they both use that bogus anti spam email verification. I tested both of these and did not like either one. The idea of sending spam to verify a non spam is ludicrous!
The one program I really do like is "Spam Inspector". It's jam up! It works great and does not need a verifying spam bounce.

I didn't think about it until Ken wrote it - sending spam in response to spam is dumb. I use Earthlink's blocker because I get blasted with almost 200 spam messages a day. It got to the point where I dreaded e-mail. I wish there was a way for them to modify the program to not send back what's virtually spam in reply. After reading this thread, I sent the suggestion on to them as a way to improve the service. Maybe they will get enough to act on it...

Gunnie

What's funny is I am having to do something similar (manually) for all the MSN signups we get. Sometimes I can tell the user is a spam-bot right away, but other times I email the person and ask them to reply to verify they are real. I have yet to get a reply on the ones I have done this with. MSN is obviously getting saturated with these bogus user accounts whose sole purpose is to spam the group discussion boards.

Ken - I am using Spam Assassin for our mail server and it's about 70% effective in finding all the spam. I could turn up the setting and catch more but that may mean real mail gets trashed. So I deal with the 30%.

Cheers,
Jim