In Defense of Blacklists

A recent horrific tragedy — “horrific tragedy” falling miserably short in describing it, but words really do fail on this one — should cause marketers to take a second look at unsolicited e-mail, this time from an anti-spammer's point of view.

Warning: This isn't pretty or funny.

On July 24, convicted spammer and minimum-security-prison escapee Edward “Eddie” Davidson called his wife Amy, told her he was ready to turn himself in to Colorado police and convinced her to meet him at a Home Depot parking lot with their 3-year-old daughter, infant son and Davidson's teenage daughter by a previous marriage.

When his wife and children arrived, Davidson reportedly forced his way into their SUV, drove the family to a home they'd recently sold, and shot and killed his wife, the 3-year-old and himself. The infant was physically unharmed. The teenager was grazed in the neck, but got away.

When news of Davidson's murder/suicide broke, members of the Nanae online anti-spam discussion group immediately began debating how to react to his death. Importantly, none of them had to be told who Davidson was. They all knew him, or at least knew of him.

Steve Linford, executive director of anti-spam blacklist Spamhaus, responded to a request for comment with the following statement:

“Words can't express how sorry I feel for the family,” Linford wrote. “That said, Davidson had all the characteristics of a sociopath and had made death threats to an anti-spammer some years ago. The world of spam botnets, malware and fraud spammers is highly criminal and violent. Many of the hard-core spammers we track are sociopaths and it's a small step for them to go from their daily criminal activity into violence.”

Translation: Though Davidson's end was shocking, that a spammer would resort to violence was not. There are a lot of Eddie Davidsons out there, and Linford and other Spamhaus volunteers deal with them every day — and not without risk.

In fact, we all deal with them. Just check your spam folder and read the subject lines. If they're not out to steal your bank account or trick you into thinking they can sell you a bigger penis, they're trying to get you to click through to sites promising photos and videos of people engaged in twisted sexual acts, sites where your computer will most likely get hijacked to send spam.

These people aren't just a nuisance. They're a cancer on society. And Linford has taken it upon himself to do something about them. Does that excuse the occasionally overzealous attitude of Spamhaus and other anti-spam outfits toward law-abiding marketers? No. But it should at least help us understand the reasons behind their seemingly unreasonable ways at times.

This is the world Spamhaus and other blacklisters are trying to keep out of our inboxes. “These guys are an important part of defending the e-mail ecosystem from some really scummy people,” says George Bilbrey, general manager of Return Path's delivery assurance unit.

When Spamhaus blacklists an e-mailer for spamming, it's the equivalent of a cop pulling someone over for questionable actions in the worst neighborhood imaginable. That these cops are self-appointed is troubling. But marketers would do well to understand that without Spamhaus, people's inboxes would be unusable. And for the most part, the reason marketers get blacklisted is because they were displaying behavior similar to that of some of the most despicable people the human race has to offer.