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We send out emails to many people who may be interested selling old books. Some people ask us to remove them from our lists and we comply gladly. But some others simply flag our messages as spam. We want to remove these people from our lists too but how do we do this? Is there any API/service that we can use to identify these people and remove them from our lists?

MadHatter
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Dmartyn
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    Don't buy lists of addresses. – Michael Hampton Jul 23 '13 at 05:24
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    in what way do they flag your messages as spam? You can sign up for "feedback loops" from some providers such as AOL and Road Runner. You might need to embed codes to identify the recipients later. If they're reporting you to spamcop or worse then you might follow Hampton's advice. Trying to outsmart anti-spammers will get expensive. – user16081-JoeT Jul 23 '13 at 05:36
  • Thank you. Just to clarify: for example if i send an email from xyz@abc.net to foobar@gmail.com and foobar flags my message as spam. Do i have any way or means to identify foobar and remove him from my list? – Dmartyn Jul 23 '13 at 05:59

3 Answers3

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By nature this is impossible to do with global scope. Flagging a message as spam is not an action with well-defined standard consequences. It may submit messages to a blacklist, which may be local to an email client or an organization, or not, and it may cause the headers to be analyzed in detail or it may just be used as input to a neural net. In any case, the email addresses of users flagging messages as spam should never be disclosed for the same reason that nobody should reply to spam.

While there are a couple service providers who will make this data available when someone flags your mails as spam in certain cases, they are certainly in the extreme minority, and data so obtained will not protect your deliverability except to those providers at best. This also won't give you any information if someone reports you to a blacklist, if you somehow accidentally send email to a honeypot address (basically a spam collector), or if someone flags your message as spam in thunderbird. You'd also have to set this up with each email provider you send email to. Notably, this service is no longer available from google for gmail.

So, such a thing can never exist (and should never exist). The best policy is to avoid sending marketing messages to anyone who hasn't specifically asked for them.

There are ways you can reduce the likelihood that users who have requested your mails flag them as spam. For instance, RFC2369 recommends a List-Unsubscribe header which contains a URI the user can use to unsubscribe from email. It will typically cause an unsubscribe link or option to appear in the user's email client (though as with all things email, implementation is not universal). An example given in the RFC is 

List-Unsubscribe: <mailto:list@host.com?subject=unsubscribe>

This will cause the unsubscribe link to cause the user to send list@host.com a blank email with unsubscribe as the subject.

You can also include a prominent unsubscribe link yourself.

Falcon Momot
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  • AOL and others provide a "feedback loop" specifically for this purpose - so "flaggers" (who in fact often DO opt-in if not outright subscribe to mailing lists) can be removed without further ado. – user16081-JoeT Jul 23 '13 at 05:38
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    That is necessarily local in scope, extremely uncommon, and a terrible idea. – Falcon Momot Jul 23 '13 at 05:41
  • that's your opinion. AOL's been offering feedback loop for years and so does RoadRunner. It must be doing something right for they continue to offer the programs. – user16081-JoeT Jul 23 '13 at 05:48
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    @user16081 - yeah, because a major company has never continued with a terrible idea, ever – Mark Henderson Jul 23 '13 at 05:54
  • Thank you! So there is no universal/neutral/possibly free api/service outhere who do provide "DNC" for emails? Am i right in my assumption? I browsed thru spamcop, spamassasin to see if they provide such a thing..but no luck :-( – Dmartyn Jul 23 '13 at 05:56
  • You are correct. There are various programs out there but nothing universal, and nothing that makes it fair for legitimate marketers. In the email world you are considered "guilty even after proven innocent" – user16081-JoeT Jul 23 '13 at 05:59
  • Though, AOL's feedback loop doesn't actually tell you who flagged your message, so unless you're using [VERP](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variable_envelope_return_path) you have no way of knowing. – Michael Hampton Jul 23 '13 at 06:03
  • Thanks Michael, but isnt VERP only for bounces? In which case i can get to see which emails bounced thru my mail server. Please clarify if am wrong. – Dmartyn Jul 23 '13 at 06:06
  • It's been a few years but I believe you can put an identifying string in the link you send each user that can then be decoded from the feedback emails. – user16081-JoeT Jul 23 '13 at 06:08
  • Yes, that is VERP. Feedback loop emails, which are in effect abuse complaints, include the sender email address as I understand it. However, implementing that just for feedback loop is a lot of effort for very little gain unless you have a statistically unlikely number of AOL users on your mailing lists. – Falcon Momot Jul 23 '13 at 06:10
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    I just banned all AOL addresses from my mailing lists. No real loss. – Michael Hampton Jul 23 '13 at 06:12
  • I've been using FBLs for years and they do work well. Yahoo, Earthlink, Hotmail (and probably others) also offer FBLs, although Hotmail's has been very difficult to get working and they invented a new name for it. Gmail reportedly do something similar automatically based on indicators such as a working `List-Unsubscribe` header, working DKIM and your reputation. The `List-Unsubscribe` header actually *changes* Hotmail's Junk button into an Unsubscribe button. VERPs are a good idea to help handling bounces, regardless of their usefulness to FBLs. – Ladadadada Jul 23 '13 at 08:27
  • Actually, there was once an attempt to set up a DNC for emails. This was in the late 1990s/early 2000s, long enough ago that I don't remember the name of the "service". I created a new address and added it to the DNE list. I still get spam to that address, which has never been used anywhere else... – Jenny D Jul 23 '13 at 13:47
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This sounds like you are sending mass mails to people who didn't request it. If they didn't give you prior permission to do so then your mass mail is spam. Providing an opt-out mechanism doesn't make it any less spam.

See:

Gryphius
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  • this is not an answer to the question. how do you know they aren't opt-in recipients; could this never be a legitimate question? – user16081-JoeT Jul 23 '13 at 05:43
  • To answer above questions: We are interested in sending mails only to certain demography (students who want to sell books) and no we've not purchased these "lists" from any vendor. I'm only interested in legit email and want to know if it is possible to remove people who flag messages as spam..a technical solution :-). – Dmartyn Jul 23 '13 at 05:52
  • Yes majority are opt-in but some % are not be so and we want remove them from lists (for example if they dont reply asking us to unlist them but instead flag us). – Dmartyn Jul 23 '13 at 06:02
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    Well, if they never opted in then by definition you *are* spamming them. You should start by looking through your records and removing all addresses that didn't opt in. – Jenny D Jul 23 '13 at 13:44
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If a user clicks the 'this is spam' link you can get an email reply from the mailbox provider (except gmail, they have their own thing) that will tell you that the user clicked that button. BUT you'll never receive those messages unless you sign up for feedback loops (FBLs) from the major email box providers.

You might also need libraries from certain companies that can easily parse all of the bounce messages From the myriad providers on the Internet.

toppledwagon
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  • Nice! let me have a look at these FBLs. Thank you for the pointer. Could you please point me to such "certain companies". – Dmartyn Jul 23 '13 at 06:21
  • I've used bouncestudio, but I'm sure there are others. Also, depending on volume, you might also want to contact ReturnPath. – toppledwagon Jul 23 '13 at 16:43