Jafo - 2:07 pm on Mar 9, 2006 (gmt 0)

Everybody can opt-in in everybody's database with a fake email address. That is why it is not enough to offer opt-in/out feature. Before you start sending your spam offers/newsletters what you need to do is obtain a confirmation from the email address owner! There is only one way to do that - send a request to the email address and get back a response/confirmation from the same email address.

One could say that using that logic, the confirmation is unsolicited.. A catch 22.

It doesn't matter if you get a confirmation, or even a recording on the telephone from the user saying "please put me on your mailing list" most ISP's will shut you down if someone merely complains. They don't spend the time to even ask you if the complaint is valid.

In the end, I just got my own pipe, my own servers, and send my mailings out myself.

My mailing list has been built over the last 5 years, and I record the email address, IP address and a couple of other things. Every email I send allows users to opt out and comes from a valid email address.

When I get a spam complaint from someone, I send them the info they signed up with, noting how the IP address/range of their complaint email matches with the email sign up log, and to be more careful when they sign up for mailing lists.

With all that being said, the original idea in this thread is foobar.