Bernhard Seefeld's Blog

Usability of E-Mail Whitelist Services

Someone just got the following message and asked me wether this was serious or just some fraudulent data collector:

Alfred here,

I'm protecting myself from receiving junk mail.


Just this once, click the link below so I can receive your emails. You won't have to do this again.

http://spamarrest.com/a?#################



You are receiving this message in response to your email to Alfred, a Spam Arrest customer.

Spam Arrest requests that senders verify themselves before their email is delivered.

When you click the above link, you will be taken to a page with a graphic on it. Simply read the word in the graphic, type it into the form, and you're verified.

You will only need to do this once per Spam Arrest customer.

Webmasters help stop spam and make 50%.
http://spamarrest.com/affiliates

He sends a lot of email and just the name 'Alfred' alone didn't ring any bells immediately. Thus, he decided to ignore this message.

I had to reread it several times before I came to the conclusion that this was actually real and that probably only, because I heard of spamarrest before. I personally think, that whitelist systems like this destroy too much functionality of emails. Others think alike (e.g. Jon Udell).

And I guess that owners of these systems run into enough problems themselves. Especially where wanted automated emails are in the game, like in mailinglists, order confirmations, etc. I think this is the wrong way of solving the spam problem.