Ah yes, more vendor spam, only this time, it came in a dead-tree version.

URGENT SECURITY NOTICE FOR $FooCorp:

IDENTIFIED AS SENDING SPAM

Dear Rybolov:

It has recently come to our attention that $FooCorp is sending spam. The end is nigh, we have the solution, send us a big bag of cashola and we’ll look the other way.

Ok, so I paraphrased. Actually, I was so amused I took it home to show my wife. =)

And as “evidence”, they enclosed a printout of IP addresses that are spambots. That’s cool and all, but none of those match $FooCorp’s IP range. Hmmm… could it be that these are spambots that are sending email from compromised machines outside of anything that $FooCorp controls? I think that’s the case…

But wait, they sell a “reputation guarantee service” that I can buy to be whitelisted because all these spammers using my domain for a return address have sullied my brand name. Wow, I don’t know why I didn’t think of it before. Oh yeah, it’s because it sounds like a protection racket: “You got a really nice SMTP relay there, I wonder what would happen to you if it became ‘unuseable'”. =)

Maybe I should set up a business doing the following (slashdot-stylie business model):

• Build email filter list (easy, just throw some grep and sed action at my spam box and I’ll have a good start)
• Sell the blacklist to people who want to block spam
• Sell the ability to be whitelisted to people who want to send email and end up on the wrong side of the list
• ???
• Profit

Now I know these guys, they make solid stuff and have a good reputation out there in the market. But they need to understand something: I find it offensive that that they think I don’t know my own IPSpace, and I don’t buy products from people with a marketing department that uses scare tactics like this.

• Targeted Spam
• My Stalking Spammers
• Some Thoughts on Comments to My Blog…
• Once Again, I’m not a Bank!
• On Why I Blog… FUD is the Reason for the Writin’