The IP Slam
Peter Cooper has an interesting post on how the interoperability of the internet is breaking down. He keys in on one of the most annoying problems that I have encountered, being from the email marketing industry, IP range blocking.
“The fact is, the Internet is being broken, first by spammers and scammers, and secondly by over-zealous sys admins who are responding to them.”
This is one of the most painful problems one can run into when they are working with a large volume of IP’s and or email. The sys admins gets a complaint or two and in turn blocks out an entire range of IP addresses. Generally, rather than dealing with a handful of isolated cases on a particular IP range, its easier for them to block a range and think “problem solved.” In the end you leave legitate services like FeedDigest and permission based email marketing companies hanging. The worst part about it is, as Peter mentions, the lack of response and difficulty of remedying such a situation. I know people are busy and overloaded, but certainly there has to be a better way to handle these types of situations?