Exactis Mail Servers Blacklisted; File Lawsuit
- by November 16, 2000
The decision to list Exactis' mail servers occurred after Exactis repudiated a previously negotiated agreement to implement measures which would have prevented unsolicited bulk and commercial email from being sent through Exactis' mail servers, as well as ensuring that addresses on Exactis' own mailing lists were fully verified.
In return, Exactis has filed a lawsuit in U.S. Federal District Court, in Denver, Colorado, in which they assert that "Exactis transmits approximately 500 million emails each month" and that "it is Exactis' client, and not Exactis, who determine which consumers should receive what information based upon the requests and permission provided by those consumers."
The RBL is a database, which is updated in real time, containing the Internet addresses of Internet sites which have been proven to either allow their users to send spam directly, or which allow others to send spam using their resources. Subscriber sites may, at their discretion, choose to block traffic from these sites in order to reduce the burden that spam places on their networks.
"Unfortunately, we felt that we had no choice but to proceed with the RBL listing of Exactis," said Peter Popovich, Director of Online Operations for MAPS. "We have been working with Exactis since April, and yet we continue to receive credible and actionable reports of unsolicited bulk e-mail from Exactis' mail servers. Exactis claims in their lawsuit that "Exactis has adopted the standards recently approved by the Responsible Electronic Communication Alliance," which is ironic, both because RECA's standards are still clearly in the draft, not approved, phase, and RECA has specifically sought input from MAPS, along with other organizations, in developing those standards."
MAPS and Exactis reached an agreement in Spring 2000, specifying that Exactis would implement fully verified opt-in list management practices for all of their e-mail lists as well as those of their clients.
"Although Exactis had previously made us aware that some agreed upon items might be completed later than MAPS had expected, we were assured that the delay would be limited to a few clients and reasonably brief. However, Exactis has repudiated the agreement. Exactis is not following through on their commitment, and as a result we feel that we have no other option in stemming the steady stream of unsolicited email flowing from their mail servers but to list them in our RBL database. It is our last recourse in protecting our own network from receiving this unsolicited commercial email," added Popovich.
