Sometimes Spam is not Spam or?

I am a member of a great service called Spam Arrest, they totally control my inbox and I am very satisfied with them. I have only been using their service for a few months, but I can really tell the difference. Before I used so much time filtering my e-mails and finding out which ones to mark as junk and which lists to unsubscribe from and so on.

As you can see I am pretty happy about Spam Arrest “controlling” my inbox, so it came as a surprise to me when I received an affiliate commission e-mail from Spam Arrest and it was marked with a warning. And when it´s marked with a warning, the original e-mail from spam arrest is attached (see the image below).

The e-mail is a standard e-mail telling me that the e-mail I have received (and is currently reading) appears to be forged. And I should only open the attached message if I am certain that it is really from the the person it claims to be from. Am I certain? Is spam arrest who they claim they are?

I did open the attached message and I guessed it. The e-mail was sent from PayPal with my monthly commissions from being an affiliate of Spam Arrest. And every single e-mail sent to me from PayPal with commissions “appears to be forged.” I am not sure why that is. If Spam Arrest is using PayPal themselves, why can´t they do something about this?

Receiving an e-mail like this from Spam Arrest (eventhough it was sent from the PayPal system) with a warning that the e-mail they sent might be forged makes me trust them a little less (well, kind of…). I understand why it happens (because of PayPal), but I don´t understand why they haven´t done something about it.

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This entry was posted on Saturday, July 7th, 2007 at 10:40 pm and is filed under Spam. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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4 Responses to “Sometimes Spam is not Spam or?”

Michael says:

This is actually technically caused by PayPal. You have turned on SPF checking and when PayPal sends you a notice, instead of sending with a “From” address of PayPal, then send them from the @spamarrest.com address which is basically sending a forged email. What PayPal should be doing is sending emails from @paypal.com instead of forging the FROM address.

July 8th, 2007 at 5:22 am

Jens says:

Hi Michael,

Thanks. I thought it was something like that, even though I wasn´t sure exactly what was causing it.

July 8th, 2007 at 8:36 am

David says:

I have been a loyal “paying” member of Spamarrest for a while and the last few months their service has gone down in reliability. They have lost emails and the service has gone down.
Today I canceled my recently renewed account with them and asked for a refund of the unused portion of my service. Here is their reply!

“Hi David,

Thanks once again.

David, I am very sorry to tell you that we are not able to offer you a refund for your account. You may continue to use your Spam Arrest account till 2008-10-01 by reactivating the account.

I truly apologize for your inconvenience, David. Please do let me know if you need anything else.

Best Regards,
Peter
Technical Support Specialist
Spam Arrest”

December 6th, 2007 at 12:07 am

Jens says:

Hi David

That’s not good at all.

Fortunately, I haven’t experienced any of your problems with Spam Arrest.

I think that they should have offered you a refund.

December 6th, 2007 at 12:46 am