Subject: IMPORTANT - PLEASE READ! Topica Policy Change - Disabled subscribers
Author: Charlie Mullendore
Date: Sep 9, 2002, 4:18 PM
Post ID: 1710978551
To all Loopframe_Guzzi List members,
All owners of lists hosted by Topica have been notified of some changes being made in the way "bounced" emails are handled. I'm passing this information along to each of you so that you will understand what's going on should you stop receiving list mail or be unsubscribed. Here's the text of the letter with my comments:
"As many of you know Topica offers the convenience of automated bounce handling for your email communications. Based on a proven set of parameters we disable a subscriber when it is determined that the email address is permanently or temporarily invalid."
"As Topica has grown, we have developed a close relationship with the Internet Service Provider community. Recently we have been working with them to address issues that they see due to our increased volume. We often receive complaints from ISPs and other email administrators noting that we appear to be repeatedly sending email to accounts that are inactive."
"We researched this issue and discovered that our product allows an unlimited number of subscriber re-enables. We know that a list owner needs to re-enable certain subscribers and we have determined that re-enabling disabled subscribers more than 5 times is considered unreasonable by ISPs. We will be implementing a process to automatically unsubscribe any subscriber who has a disable count which is greater than 5 times. We will be sending an email to any list owner whose list is affected with a list of those subscribers that were unsubscribed. This will give the list owner the opportunity to contact those addresses personally if there is any concern that the address is still valid."
"To help mimimize any impact that this may have on your list we suggest a simple change in your list management. If you use the bounce management feature only re-enable your subscribers once per month instead of daily or weekly. By re-enabling subscribers less often - it leaves time for the recipient server to resolve any problems or issues."
"This change is required by the Internet community at large - and is something Topica needs to implement to be a good Internet citizen. In the near future we will implement these procedures as a permanent feature. We have received valuable feedback regarding this policy change and will make sure to incorporate those ideas and concerns into our final features update."
Currently I re-enable anyone "bounced" daily (sometimes several times a day), but will do as Topica requests and only do this monthly. There are two email addresses which have in excess of 50 "hard bounces" which means they are most likely unused or invalid accounts. Worldnet and MSN address seem to bounce emails more readily than others for some reason. If you are unsubscribed, simply resub (maybe try a different email account if another is available to you) and I'll turn your address back on as soon as I can. One thing that will help keep you from being unsubbed by Topica, is to keep your email from becoming full (this usually ends up a "soft bounce"). All of this means a little more work for me so bear with me as I try to keep everyone subbed and enjoying the Loop List! If you have any questions, comments, or suggestions feel free to email me OFF-LIST and I'll respond the best I can. Thanks! Charlie.
__________________________________________________________________
The NEW Netscape 7.0 browser is now available. Upgrade now!http://channels.netscape.com/ns/browsers/download.jsp
Get your own FREE, personal Netscape Mail account today athttp://webmail.netscape.com/