Lay My Hat

I was pondering this and wondered if any of the gurus might have an answer.

I’m heartily sick of marketing spam from Cycling World Magazine (several each day), who seem to be hell bent on ignoring direct marketing regulations as well as taking money for advertising and magazine subscriptions from people with nothing in return.

I can set up checks on incoming emails at my server, and one possibility is to redirect them to a new address.
So, if I redirect everything from Cycling World and cplmedia back to one of the originators, is that likely to score against my reputation with the likes of Spamhaus and get me blacklisted?

Anyone know?

Why don't you just set up a filter to discard them?
If you have your own domain name, you can set this up quite easily and you then won't receive any further emails from them in your inbox.

newtimber wrote:Why don't you just set up a filter to discard them?
If you have your own domain name, you can set this up quite easily and you then won't receive any further emails from them in your inbox.

Agreed, I could easily discard them but having had several attempts to get them to stop, including pointing out that they are in breach of the rules for direct marketing, I’m sufficiently hacked off with Cycling World and petty enough to want to give them the inconvenience of dealing with receiving their own spam back.

Google Cycling World's MD's email address.

Sign him/her up for everything going on the internet. And I mean everything.

ManxRed1, you are naughty! Love it!

Back in the days of faxes (remember those, before email?), we had a problem with one particular firm sending us spam faxes. So we simply sellotaped 2 or 3 sheets of their spam into a return fax, and as soon as enough of the long sheet had been faxed to them, we sellotaped the beginning to the end, forming one circle that went through, round and round, gobbling up their fax paper. It only cost us one local call - and we never got spammed by that firm again.

There must be something similar, email-wise.

PW in Polemi wrote:There must be something similar, email-wise.

Unfortunately, its far too easy:
(obviously the real code is a teeny bit more complicated, but you get the idea)

Mind you, it may well get you blacklisted for sending SPAM, so use a free junk server to send it from, and by the way, you do not need a real From address, that is trivial to spoof so you can make it look like it came from Jeremy Corbyn if you want to.

I like the suggestions, but if you want to go a more regulatory route perhaps the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) might help? Being a self regulatory body they don't have much legal authority, but if they want to bite harder they can pass cases on to Trading Standards.

Greenbarn, you can add me to any complaint. I am getting several emails from them a day (different names, same magazine).
I put them in the spam box and many now go there automatically but I am as cross as you are about them.

I complained to the ICO (Information Commissioner’s Office?) about them as they are in breach of the Direct Marketing regulations. They acknowledged receipt but that’s all you hear.
Maybe they need more complaints.
The essence of the complaint is that they are sending this stuff to us as private individuals or sole traders and not as companies - I think companies are seen as fair game for any amount of spam.

So who else gets the constant traffic from them?
Surely it cannot be just you and me?

I'm feeling a bit left out here - we've never had a single email from them

Joanna, I'm sure if you ask nicely, Greenbarn and zebedee will pass on your details!

I see they have a FB page, it would be rather immature and I know you wouldn't dream of replying to every post they make asking them why they are continually spaming you.

Paul Carmel wrote:I see they have a FB page, it would be rather immature and I know you wouldn't dream of replying to every post they make asking them why they are continually spaming you.

The thought had never crossed my mind....

Nice to see you PC!