RE: OT - E-mail slowdown

Pretty incredible, and if true, it sounds rather arbitrary and heavy-handed 
on the part of ISPs because senders are getting no notification. I would 
have preferred the scandal of my Carnivoire theory, at least there'd be a 
sexy news story and public outrage.

What is the tarpit you're talking about, specifically? Where can we read 
more about it?
How does one find out if their ISP, IP number, or domain has been sent to a 
'tarpit', or labeled as a spammer? Does this count if, say, a domain is 
delisted (thus bouncing mail) for a short time, or a mailbox bounces 
because it's full?


At 10:23 AM 9/11/03 -0500, Davies, Elizabeth H. wrote:
>Sounds more like the sender IP has been blacklisted.
>
>More and more ISP's are locking down send rates on incoming mail. If you 
>hit them too fast they'll throw you into a 'tarpit' and slow you down 
>rather than cut the connection. Bad or malformed emails increase your 
>chances as being labeled a spammer. You may slide 5-10-20 emails through 
>and enough of a percent of 'bad' addresses will label you as a probably 
>spammer and you get shunted into an ever slowing 'tarpit'.
>
>You can get hurt worse by the percentage limits with a small list. 
>Example: an ISP has an internal limit of 20% bounces and they tarpit you. 
>If I have 1000 emails going into one ISP I'm less likely to hit their 
>'slowdown' with a few bad ones. The chances that I have my 20% of bad 
>addresses near the top of the queue is pretty small. I'm more likely to 
>get mostly through my send even if I DO have 20% bad. If I have 10 and 2 
>are bad and they happened to be the first two ... that's pretty darned 
>bad. Next time that ISP won't wait to tarpit my send. And if it repeats, 
>they may block me 100%. "Savvy" ISP's won't bounce you out, they'll simply 
>suck you into a tarpit and slow you down. That costs true spammers money 
>because it ties up their servers.
>
>AOL has a 10% bounce limit. Exceed this and you will end up being blocked.
>
>BOTTOMLINE: Clean the lists, make sure they are very clear on who ASKED 
>for email. Double opt-ins or reply-confirmation is increasingly important! 
>It is VITAL to keep newsletter lists clean and VERIFIED.
>
>Elizabeth Davies
>Web Designer, email specialist

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