Partisan Spam Filters - I Want To Make The Decision
I recently started looking into spam filter abuse and I came across two interesting letters… “Risks of Partisan Spam Filtering” and "Partisan e-mail censorship as spam filtering". These concerned spam filtering services blocking certain political views.These letters mention how a major spam filtering service quarantined anti-Schwarzenegger and anti-Bush email. An excerpt from one of the letters states…
“…what can be done to avoid giving ISPs and anti-spam companies extensive, fully automated censorship abilities?"
Wow, interesting point. Determining what is and is not a valid email should be determined by the corporation or organization receiving the mail. Offsite filtering services should not set policy for their clients.
Often though, some outsourced email filtering services use a common filter for multiple clients. This practice should raise a red flag.
Technology today can be customized “over, under, sideways, down” until it matches the unique needs of its users. Why should someone rely on an eMail Management Service, using common filtering schemes shared among multiple clients, to tell us how to think.
Personally, I don’t want to receive political email but I want the option to make that decision myself.
Tags: Spam Filter Antispam Spam Email Management Service Spam Filtering Service Bush Schwarzenegger
