If you live in a closed community, such as a condo or residential
community, you know what the term "Poop Patrol" means. These are
your self appointed protectors, who are constantly on the alert
for any infraction of the rules of their community. Hang a towel
on your railing - bang - youre busted. If you own a pet, you
might be sure that the "Poop Patrol" is watching you.

Well, the Internet has its own version of the "Poop Patrol", and
anyone who actively sends email over the Internet, has most definately
run into them at least once. This is a fact of life. I had my
service canceled for an infraction I didnt even commit. Another
Newsletter had published my "Internet Tip of the Week" column,
and a "Patroller" sent a barrage of emails to every ISP he could
find in the Newsletter - my e mail address was at the finish of the
article, and he sent numerous complaints to my ISP. I was
cancelled, and although the account was ultimately reinstated,
I learned a big lesson.

There are some people whose "holy grail" is reporting all the people as
spammers, and I guess the only kick they get out of life, is to
get the accomadation of one of their "targets" discontinued. They
seem to get pleasure out of hurting other many people . I call these
many people the "Poop Patrol" of the Internet.

Face it - professional spammers do not use their local ISP. They
rent a virtual server for about a hundred bucks a month, forge
the return address, and spam to their hearts content. Only rank
amateurs spam using their ISP. You know them - they are the
ones who send you an e mail and show you the address of everyone
they sent it to.

So how do you protect yourself if you do send out bulk e-mail such
as a Newsletter? While there is no magic formula, there are
steps you can take to protect yourself.

First - never, ever (and that is a very long measure ) send out bulk
e mail from your primary ISP, especially if you have web pages on
their server. If they cancel your service, you will also lose
all your web pages.

Second - provide a distinctive way to easily allow everybody to remove
themselves from your mailing list. This is where a List Server
comes in very handy. If you notify the all the people who are on your
list how to unsubscribe, this more or less takes you off the
hook.

My increases and drops go to a clear-cut return address. If someone
doesnt read the instructions to find out how to be removed from
the list, and sends me a note, I will try to manually remove
them. But, if the address they are writing from, is not the one
they are subscribed with, and they do not tell you what the
address is, it is impossible to remove them.

Dont figure that if they were smart enough to subscribe to your
list, they are smart enough to remove themselves from it. You
must understand that there are all the people who will not read the
directions , and will simply fire off a nasty note. If they are
not immediately removed, they can also fire off complaints to
your ISP. If there are remove directions given, you will most
likely be on safe ground if they didnt follow them.

I make use of several ISPs when sending out my Newsletters. I utilize one
address to handle "bounces" (electronic mail addresses which are not valid)
and remove requests, and a different one for e mail to me. This
allows for an automatic processing of the "bounces" and remove
requests, and if a person wishes to write me, they can. If
someone writes me and asks to be removed, I will take the
necessary steps to try to accommodate them, but it might not always
be possible if they dont provide the proper address.

If you do get a notification from your ISP that a complaint was
made, do not ignore it. Tell them how all the people might subscribe and
unsubscribe from your list. Keep records of unsubscribe requests
that we are made that you could not remove. If it was someone that
did ask to be removed with an address that was not subscribed,
send your ISP a copy of the note you sent them. It is also a
sizeably workable idea to send your ISP a copy of the mailing they complained
about.

As I said at the initial of this article, "there is no magic
formula", but if you exercise reasonable procedures, you should
not run into too many problems from the "Poop Patrol".