It took me a few minutes of hard thinking to figure out connection, but once I worked it out, I was shocked at power these amateur spam cops now have. An accusation appears to be as good as a conviction, at least in eyes of Virtual Avenue.

It appears this is what happened: for whatever reason, a disgruntled subscriber has been unable to unsubscribe from WhatUSeek newsletter. So instead of just complaining straight to publishers of this newsletter, or even to Host of newsletter web page, they decided to get VERY nasty and file spam reports against every link & email address that they can find within that newsletter (and it is normally quite a big newsletter !).

So this person sees my harmless article, checks out resource box and sends off a spam report to Host of my advertised web page. Even though I have never sent an email to this person in my life ! In response to a single unsubstantiated report, Virtual Avenue IMMEDIATELY shuts down all my web sites without any warning.

Numerous further emails were exchanged over next few days, with "support" people (now there's an inappropriate title) refusing to reinstate my web sites, even though they eventually acknowledged I was not a publisher of newsletter and had not spammed anyone. They had received robot complaints from Spam Cop and were determined that someone was going to suffer for it. I was simply guilty by association.

Meanwhile, I have been spending at least 30 minutes daily responding to all emails complaining about site being down, not to mention many hours involved with shifting websites elsewhere. I have lost bucket-loads of customers due to a false accusation and a trigger-happy Host who seems anxious to shut-down its own members.

So next time you get annoyed by unsolicted commercial email in your Inbox, just remember - it could be worse. At least these pests aren't actively trying to close down your business.

http://www.legitima.com/evalidator/ http://www.fairlogic.com/worldcast/

After you've verified your spam, it's ready to go into an autoresponder and served to guests or customers. Your autoresponder must have capabilities to import lists. GetResponse can do this and send out your message in timed intervals with an opt out option.

http://www.getresponse.com/ http://fastfacts.net/ http://www.autorespondersplus.com/

The quick cook recipe works if you want to serve your spam in a hurry, but remember that your autoresponder will not go well with FFAL websites and some classified ads. Your autoresponder host doesn't like it when you submit autoresponder addresses to these pages and will minimum, shut your responder down.

Quick Cook Recipe

Instead of putting your pop3 email address on guestbooks or classified ads, use autoresponder address. When spammers harvest your autoresponder address, they immediately get a serving of spam rehash, thus serving your customers and guests faster.

Remember, if they send it to you, send them something in return. Bon appetit!