No Email -- And I know why

Well, as pointed out in another thread, Linden Lab has decided to outsource their newsletters to vresp.com, better known as Vertical Response. Unfortunately, to most of the common email folk out there, they're just known as professional spammers.

So yes, I know why I haven't received a newsletter, ever, nor have I received any of these 1.2 updates. Vertical Response is listed in several DNS RBLs, as a UCE source. I hope Linden Lab can send this information out themselves -- cause there's no way they'll make it into a decently protected mail server.

While some might call this 'overly active' spam protection, it really is not. They are confirmed sources, not just suspects.

Another unfortunate part, since it's a DNS RBL, there's no real way to just whitelist email they send on behalf of LL.

Any thoughts on this, Mr. & Mrs. Linden?

Interesting. LL has an email for me I give to very few places. It used to be spam free but I did notice the spam is now coming there. Did LL have any agreements with these folks to keep our info sacred? Seems not. Bummer.

So THAT'S why it was in my junk email folder....

Why in God's name would LL outsource a mailing list of maybe 2000 people? What's wrong with cc:?

But, at least I know why I haven't gotten the email either. Yay stargate, inc

I've got my own mail server; Im gonna open up two accounts, and have one be my linden lab correspondance account, and see if it gets spam.

LL, bad Linden Labs.


LF

Hmm yes very interesting - my spam e-mail has gone from none till pretty bad lately.

I'd prefer not to get the LL e-mails if this would mean I wouldnt get spammed..

Ohhhhh, no wonder mine got nuked. Lindens, doing business with spammers? For shame!

I hear that they just sent out another e-mail. (makes two that I did not get) I hope they do not plan to send out our personal land info this way because I will never see it.

I hear ya Don. I would certainly like to get this famed "email," and I would also like to be put on whatever mailing list my presence is lacking.

i also have noticed alot of spam on the account i gave them , it was one that only friends and important places had but now my inbox is full of SPAM.but dont always get the LL emails on it anymore ,just lot o spam


any idea when the rest of us are going to get our email,or we just supposed to go on hersay ?

I've been perfectly spamless for a year and a half. If this soon changes I will be ROYALLY pissed at Linden Lab and make sure to complain LOUDLY!
I didnt give them my real mail at first and have only recently changed it because I have grown to trust LL - which is quite a compliment since i trust absolutely no company on the face of the Earth. Unless I have no choice :\

Our arrangement with Vertical Response is very clear in terms of privacy -- under no circumstances would your mail addresses be shared. I know they are very concerned about the perception that they enable spamming (most mail houses deal with that problem whether they are legitimate or not, and as far as I can tell, nearly anyone doing mass mailings ends up on the lists as spammers).

However, I'm really bummed to hear that there's a possibility some of you are getting more junk as a result of being on our list. I'll see what we can do about that next week.

BTW - your individual emails were not sent out via VR, nor are any mails that come from support.

If you didn't get an email about your land status, it's because your land holdings are below the allotment, and your bill either won't change or will be decreasing.

What would the from line look like or the subject line look like so that can keep an eye out in our trash folders?

The mail that went out yesterday (to current paying customers) had the subject line:

Second Life v.1.2 Update.

We updated the FAQ at the same time with the same information.

V1.2 FAQ

New things to look for:

- explanation of prim allocations
- $L pricing for monthly land use fees
- explanation of dwell and reputation bonuses

Robin,

Thanks for the clarification. I'm sure my holdings outside my group are indeed under the allotment. I have gotten the newsletters so that explains not getting the other email.

I use "disposable" email so I control who gets what and what goes where. The one you guys have had been spam free. Not sure whats up there. If it is them, it's good you caught wind of it.

Aha. That might explain the spam. Please look into this, as I have a dummy account for not-as-trustworthy signups and whatnot, and my main account (which I use for SL) is getting as much if not more spam than that is.

FWIW, I'm not getting any additional UCE in my system from the fact that LL has my "ultra private" address on a system I own and operate.

In fact, I've gotten more spam from the job search services I've signed up for then from Linden Labs.

Well, well... That would explain why I get tons of viagra and zoo porn spam on an email account I created expressly for SL and have never published or given out anywhere else. Bad show, Lindens.

Now now guys, I never implied this company gave out email addresses, nor are they known to send this particular type of spam.

They're listed as being a "corporate spam", as in you buy something from Dell, and all of the sudden you start getting advertisements from them every week.

The viagra, manly enlargement, and porn spams aren't coming from this company :}

Well I took the precaution of creating dummy addresses for SL, so that I actually have a Mac Beach address that forwards to my real e-mail address. I haven't received a single spam from that forwarding address at this point. That is not to say that LL shouldn't make absolutely sure that their agreement with this third party company does not allow them to either share those addresses or market to them themselves.

Here are some things to keep in mind though: Filters used by your e-mail host are not cast in stone. One of the major black hole lists closed up this past year, others have been under denial of service attacks and have become unreliable. This causes the ISPs that host our e-mail to tinker with how (or if) they use these lists to filter for spam.

With ISPs in general running on thin margins it is awfully tempting for them to accept a few bucks from companies for the privilege of marketing to their user base. Don't discount the possibility that your own ISP has introduced some amount of spam into your inbox. yeah, and while you are at it go look at your TOS to see if that is ruled out

I recently changed ISP (well a year ago anyway) and in so doing my Dilbert cartoon subscription started up again. I had thought that I had just dropped off their list somehow, but it turns out that all of the Dilbert cartoons were being blocked as spam by my OLD ISP, but were not being blocked by my new ISP. Along with the return of my Dilbert subscription came about one message a day (on average) from various unsolicited sources (viagra, diplomas, nigeria, the standard set of junk). Obviously my new ISP has a different filter set-up than my old one did.

Finally I have experimented with a company called mailblocks.com which uses a challenge/response system to ensure that all email comes from a human being or it is automatically blocked. It works great, reducing the 75 spam message on my old Yahoo account to zero over night. But in the TOS Mailblocks reserves the right (at some unspecified point in the future) to send me messages "on behalf of their trusted sponsors". We'll see how that goes. For $10 for 3 years I thought it was worth trying and am so far pleased.

In the long run though the best thing is for your ISP to allow everything to come through and allow YOUR software locally to make the decision about what is spam and what is not. AOL, Yahoo, Verison, Rackspace and a number of other large hosting companies often show up on the black hole lists (many of which are run by rather egotistical individuals) just to keep them on their toes. That means that if you have friends using those services you may not be getting all of their e-mail. Which problem would you rather have?

When I signed up for SL I used a dummy address from www.spammotel.com (it is a free forwarding service and you can make up as many email addresses as you want and suspend the ones that send you junk mail). About 2 months ago I changed my email address in my SL profile to a clean account I only give to trusted people (not public info) and since then my very clean address, which I have had over 3 years, started receiving all the standard spam. I can only attribute this to the change I made in SL. I have learned not to trust any company with my real email address and have reverted back to the dummy I originally gave LL. I fear it may be too late as once an address gets in the hands of the mass mailers, it is impossible to stop the flow of junk.

To update on the email questions...I've spent some time with Vertical Response. They're a small company like us, but the folks there are very experienced in direct marketing, and also very concerned that they not be named as a company that generates spam. In fact, they will turn down clients who are known to be spammers, rather than legitimate (opt-in) email marketers.

I know this might not be a consolation to you if you're receiving spam, but of the options open to us for emailing the resident base, VR continues to appear to be a good choice. Following is an excerpt from their privacy policy. I'd urge you to follow up with them if you feel they have violated the policy in any way that has caused problems for you.

In the meantime, we'll continue to try to find ways to stay in touch that don't necessitate mass mailings or the risk of exposing Second Life Residents to spam.


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Security
This website takes every precaution to protect our users' information. When users submit sensitive information via the website, your information is protected both online and off-line.

This security is enhanced by our use of firewalls protecting all of the VerticalResponse servers. We also do everything in our power to protect user-information off-line. All of our users' information is restricted in our offices. Only employees who need the information to perform a specific job (for example, our customer service representative) are granted access to personally identifiable information. Our employees must use password-protected screen-savers when they leave their desk. When they return, they must re-enter their password to re-gain access to your information.

Furthermore, ALL employees are kept up-to-date on our security and privacy practices. Every month, as well as any time new policies are added, our employees are notified and/or reminded about the importance we place on privacy, and what they can do to ensure our customers' information is protected.

Finally, the physical servers that we store personally identifiable information on are kept in a secure collocation facility, within locked cages that only VerticalResponse network administrators have access to. This facility provides security 24 hours a day, 365 days a year and guaranties our servers against power outages by using automated backup power systems.

If you have any questions about the security at our website, you can send an email to [email]info@verticalresponse.com[/email].

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Robin,
Is there a way you can get a list of IP addresses (or just a subnet) for the VR mailservers, and also the email address that the emails will be sent "From" so that I can include them in a whitelist?

hmmm...

I'm pretty sure that optigate gave them a block, but I'm not sure how big it is without knowing the subnet mask. It's aprobably a /28 (240 subnet mask), starting at .143 and ending at .159, based on the numbers I saw in my fast research. I could be waaaay off though, so I'd listen to the lindens first.

Here's the MX ( Mail exchanger) listed in DNS for them:

Non-authoritative answer:
Name: a.mx.verticalresponse.com
Address: 65.60.34.148


And their web server, which also does catch all to the domain:

Non-authoritative answer:
Name: www.verticalresponse.com
Address: 65.60.34.144

Optigate.net owns that block:
[from arin.net/whois]
Search results for: 65.60.34.144


OrgName: Optigate Networks Inc
OrgID: OPTI
[snip]

NetRange: 65.60.0.0 - 65.60.63.255
CIDR: 65.60.0.0/18
NetName: OPTI-BLK2
NetHandle: NET-65-60-0-0-1
Parent: NET-65-0-0-0-0
NetType: Direct Allocation

Their MX is going to be their inbound mail, so is of no real use to me. I also don't quite want to assume that their corporate network is the same as their production delivery network, as often companies don't run their systems out of their home offices, right LL?

It's very likely their production network is housed in a facility like Level3, and is unrelated to their corporate headquarters. That, and I need the actual email addresses they will be sending "From", as from the sample emails people have posted it looks like they change them every time. It would be nice if they kept something consistent.

Oh, that.

Received: from mkt13.verticalresponse.com (mkt13.verticalresponse.com [65.60.34.168])

One could extrapolate and port-scan the /26 that they are in to see what is what.