Saturday, October 21, 2006

No Junk Mail - works!


Each fortnight our paper recycling bin was filled to the brim. The combination of a daily broadsheet newspaper (my wife likes inky fingers) and a heap of junk mail was too much.

I printed a very simple "No Junk Mail" notice and stuck it on the letterbox.

It worked instantly, and comprehensively. Clearly the folks that walk the streets delivering the junk mail are under instructions to not waste the printing on folks that ask not to receive it. Our house is less cluttered, the paper recycling bin has some room, and no doubt there's some products we haven't felt compelled to buy.

If only there was a way to associate the label "No Junk Mail" with an email address. Maybe SMTP could be extended to be able to return properties. On the other hand mail goes through many servers and that would have to be passed back somehow. Perhaps it belongs in the DNS for the domain that accepts that email.

1 comment:

  1. Anonymous12:54 AM

    There was an Internet draft
    "Anti-UBE and Anti-UCE Keywords in SMTP Banners"
    http://www1.tools.ietf.org/html/draft-hoffman-legis-smtp-banner-01

    You have got to back it up with a
    shotgun or baseball bat, but don't
    mess up the spam bots queue or you
    will get same email 300+ times.

    ReplyDelete