British Expat Forum

I got an interesting message from someone today via the BE contact form. However, they let me know that if I replied via email, then Spam Arrest would ask me to verify myself.

I've not heard of, or even thought about, SA since their big scam several years ago. So I did an Internet search to see what people were saying about them. I found plenty of stuff about their scam.

I think what outraged people (including me) the most was that a so-called anti-spam company, went and spammed all their own customers' correspondents. I think they'll never live that one down because people have long memories about abuses of trust like that. Even so, they do appear to still be in business.

I guess my best bet in this particular case is to reply to the person using their website's contact form and tell them that I can't enter into any email correspondence with anyone via SpamArrest as, having been scammed once already by SA, I simply can't trust them. Pity, because I liked the person's website and what they were offering.

Yes. That was a particularly stupid thing for that company to do. Challenge/Response is already a volatile subject for many people.

I actually think challenge/response is a very good idea - and about the only thing that would have stopped the spammers if used properly.

I'm on the lookout for an external mail host that has challenge/response myself. I thought I had found it. Transferred all my stuff over to that host, and a couple of months later, they dropped the challenge/response functionality.

I haven't been bothered to set it all up on my servers again yet, but I did like it. Zero spam. Ahhh...

Spam may be one of many reasons that people now use social networks rather than e-mail for a lot of their correspondence...

A lot of my mailbox content is now newsletters that I run for a few months before cancelling my sub.

In the particular case I mentioned, it's all fine. I contacted the person via their website contact form and told them why I wouldn't use Spam Arrest. They gave me an alternative email address, so that's all fine.

Going back to the subject of Spam Arrest itself, they can never be forgiven for what they did to their customers. I'm amazed that they're still in business.

The Spam Arrest scam is still fresh in many people's minds. I for one would never use them again, and I don't mind telling people why not either. The very idea that an anti-spam company would harvest email addresses and spam their customers' correspondents absolutely beggars belief.

From what I've read on the Internet recently, they're also trying to rewrite history as though the Spam Arrest scam never existed. They've asked webmasters to remove content referring to the Spam Arrest scam.

Well, we all know it happened and I for one won't be quick to remove our references to the Spam Arrest scam.

Did any of you get caught up in the Spam Arrest scam like we did?

No. Never used Spam Arrest. Used to report spammers to Spamcop for a while, but got bored with it. Akismet is pretty good at catching spam on my WP sites - not much gets through, and I haven't had a false positive yet.

I'm not sure what spam filter thing I've got right now - Dave set it up for me - but it's quite useless. At least it doesn't try to scam people.

I'll never forget the Spam Arrest scam and the backlash I got from our visitors after they had been scammed by Spam Arrest.

The very mention of the name Spam Arrest immediately rings alarm bells in my head saying scam.

Yeah, Akismet is pretty good for blogs.

Email is a different thing. I like when a system learns. I mean if I keep saying it's junk, then learn that it's junk and don't let it through next time. I've not been happy with it for a long time. Maybe I'll have to pick Alan's brains soon.

http://www.whichspamfilter.com