Not to be outdone by the TSA (Transportation Safety Administration), the U.S. Department of Transportation (the DOT) has now started a blog. 

Is this how we know when something is officially passe?  When our government entities jump on the bandwagon, maybe it’s a sign that blogging is no longer cool. 

I mean, what’s next… a MySpace page for Fed Chair Ben Bernanke?  “Just upt intrst rate 4 fun. LOL!”

Anyway, back to the point… The DOT now has a blog, which you can see here.  Wonderful. 

The U.S. Transportation Secretary, Mary Peters, has decided the DOT needs to step into the technology age.  From her first-ever blog post:

“After all, if I’m going to insist on 21st Century solutions for our transportation system, I better communicate in a 21st century way!”

Right on, Mary!!  Blogs are the one thing that can instantly make you modern and hip.  I mean, governemnt agencies starting blogs is a bit like my mom getting a Facebook page. 

I think it’s important to know that some elements of this blog will be censored.  From the article:

“Comments are reviewed to make sure they’re free of personal attacks, slurs or inappropriate language. If a topic attracts hundreds of comments, an agency spokesman said a representative sample of them may be posted instead.”

So, if you use hate speak or attack anyone personally, or use slurs, or swear…. your comment may be deleted.  But if you ask me, “inappropriate language” is a pretty vague thing to pinpoint.  So, don’t be surprised if readers of that blog start complaining that they have a criticism comment that’s been censored. 

Also, it appears they may censor comments if they simply get too many of them, which is weird.  They’re going to post a “sampling” of them instead–yeah right… a “sampling” means “the nicest and most complimentary comments only.” 

See, the whole point of a blog is that it builds discussion… builds community… encourages dialogue.  But censoring comments simply because you already got a hundred others seems strange and counter-productive.  “Oh, there’s just too much discussion going on here… we’re putting a stop to that.”  Bizarre. 

According to Wikipedia’s page on the DOT, their mission is:

“to serve the United States by ensuring a fast, safe, efficient, accessible and convenient transportation system that meets our vital national interests and enhances the quality of life of the American people, today and into the future.”

They may need to ammend that mission statement now to include some mention of their new 21st century tactics.  Maybe just a “… by blogging” at the end of the mission statement.  That should cover it. 

Or maybe not.  Seems that the DOT is also going to be starting their own YouTube channel.  Wow.  Talk about riveting!  DOT officials talking about transportation issues?  Sign me up now!  Where do I subscirbe? 

Right now I seriously can’t think of anything more boring than DOT’s YouTube channel.  Perhaps if the Department of Housing & Urban Devleopment started Twittering… maybe then that would be more boring. 

So do we give the DOT props for at least trying to be relevant and hip?  I guess we have to.  At least they’re trying.  I mean, what technological advances has the Department of Agriculture embraced?  Yeah, that’s what I thought. 

Anyway, you can view the DOT’s official site here, which is badly in need of a makeover.  Or go straight to their awesome new blog here–which appears to have been specifically designed to look like a blog from 1999–stealthy.  Looks like one of their first orders of business was to let Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley write a post, which is WAY less boring than you might think.  Or not.

Am I being to hard on them?  Probably.  Is mocking them too easy a thing to do for me to resist it?  Almost certainly.  I guess I’m generally in favor of government agencies embracing cutting edge technology and communication tools, but it feels so forced, and more than a little behind-the-trend. 

Have you been getting a bit more spam lately?  Yeah, we all have. 

There’s a new kind of unwanted email that we’re all seeing a bit more of lately, called an NDR.  NDR stands for Non-Delivery Receipt.  It’s that error message you get telling you that a previous message you sent was unable to deliver.  Only lately, many people been getting NDRs for messages they never actually sent. 

So the email says something like “The message you sent to Steve could not be delivered because….”  But you don’t know any Steve, and you never sent a message to Steve.  So why are you getting this error?

Easy.  It’s spoofing.  We covered spoofing back in January, letting you know that messages you may receive that appear to come from yourself are just some hacker’s attempt to “spoof” your email address.  Apparently, with a little ingenuity, you can make an email appear to come from whichever email address you wish. 

It’s become a favorite tactic of spammers, because most Average Joe’s are more inclined to click on something or reply to an email if it’s coming from a sender they trust.  So spammers started spoofing real emails to try and entice you to let your guard down.  Having your email spoofed doesn’t in any way mean your computer or your server has been invaded or compromised by hackers.  It just means someone (or some automated program) either guessed at your email address or scraped it off a website someplace where it was published.

So the new issue is that some of these messages the spammers are sending are going to email accounts that don’t exist–or at least don’t exist any longer.  And that causes the email server to spit out an NDR back to the sender.  And since the sender spoofed your email, you’re the one getting the NDR. 

Postini–our preferred email filtering service–is actively pursuing a fix to this problem so that your inbox isn’t overflowing with NDRs.  And we know that many of you currently have inboxes that are filled with NDRS because several of you have called us to ask what’s going on.

Rest easy.  The fix is coming soon.  Until then, you can just ignore the NDR–assuming it’s for a message you didn’t initially send. 

Every time email and email filtering gets more sophisticated, the spammers respond by creating a new wrinkle in their tactics, resulting in a new kind of headache for you.  Spam isn’t going away, folks.  In fact, it’s only going to grow more prominent and more advanced.  Thankfully, you’ve got us to help keep you informed–and hopefully you have a powerful professional spam filter like Postini, who are on the cutting edge of the technology used to fight the spammers. 

If you’d like to learn more about Postini, you can do so here on our website. 

We know the NDRs are annoying you–we’re getting them too.  But it’s a temporary thing that will be sorted out soon enough.  If you have specific questions, or if you think your NDR problem is not the same as what we’re describing here, feel free to shoot us an email or call our office and we’ll be happy to take a look. 

Myself and several of my co-workers had the privilege of playing in Monday’s Hendersonville Chamber of Commerce Golf Tournament at the Bluegrass Country Club.

The weather was perfect, the golfers were jovial, and the birdies were flowing–for some teams more than others.

Any of you who participated in the tournament have probably already heard about our guerrilla marketing golf balls. For the rest of you, here’s the Cliff’s Notes version:

See, one of our fastest growing services is Search Engine Optimization–or, helping websites rank better on Google.  And we wanted to highlight that service to a tournament field filled with our core demographic… small business owners.  So we conceived of and designed some specialty golf balls. They were really nice golf balls, some of the nicest Nike makes. On one side we printed our logo, and on the other side was a catchy marketing message:

“Finding golf balls is easy. Finding your website on Google is hard. We can help. FoundGolfBall.com“

At 8:30, an hour or so before the groups all teed off, Eric and I hopped in one of the spare golf carts and headed out. We drove the whole course, “losing” 7 or 8 of our special guerrilla golf balls on each and every hole. Some were “lost” in the rough. Some were “lost” in the sand traps or near the edges of water hazards. Others were “lost” in the trees and wooded areas. Heck, we even managed to “lose” a few on or near the green on several holes.

The idea was that golfers are always on the lookout for free golf balls. Anytime a golfer hits a ball into the woods and stumbles upon another ball that someone else lost… it makes that bad shot just a little easier to take, because now he got a free golf ball out of the deal.

So we assumed that our Found Golf Balls would be found… often.

Anyone whose interest was piqued went home Monday evening and typed into their Internet Explorer address bar the website URL printed on the ball: FoundGolfBall.com, which took them to this page here on our website.

There they learned that the ball itself was a coupon, good for one free hour of Search Engine consulting with one of our Search experts (a $100 value). We’ve already had a few people email or call to take advantage of that offer.

What’s even more fascinating is the requests we’ve gotten to give estimates on recreating this Found Golf Ball promotion for our clients. Guess we should have seen that coming, as there were plenty of folks talking about it at the tournament’s reception.

So we’ve put together a nice, affordable package for any small business owners who want to make the biggest sponsorship splash of your next corporate golf tournament:

• 2-4 hours consulting time with our concept team. We’ll help you pick the perfect marketing angle and slogan for your guerilla golf balls
• 144 custom printed Nike golf balls
• A free web page to promote a specific service, product, special offer, or just your business in general. We’ll print the FoundGolfBall.com URL and a promo code on the ball, and anyone who visits the site and types in the code will be redirected to your special promotional page. This includes hosting and web design
• A handy PDF guide we authored with special instructions, tips, tricks, and suggestions to help make your golf ball promotion a rousing success

There isn’t a business or industry that these golf balls can’t help promote. Here are some examples:

Churches: “If only peace was as easy to find as this golf ball. Come join us on the journey at First Community Church.”

Golf Instructors: “If you were a better golfer, you probably wouldn’t have found this ball.”

CPAs: “Finding a CPA is like finding this golf ball… easy. Finding a CPA you can trust? Now that’s hard.”

So on and so forth. You see where we’re going here… any business can take this novel approach to marketing and, with the right guidance, come up with the perfect slogan.

Sure, you can sponsor the par-3 17th hole, like you do every year, and sit there giving away bottled water… like you do every year.

OR… you can do something that’s truly unique and totally memorable with the Found Golf Ball promotion from Keystone Business Solutions. Make a lasting impression on the CEOs and decision makers of local businesses in your area, and have some fun with it at the same time.

Give us a shout today to find out what it might take to get the ball rolling on your own amazing golf ball promotion.

XP users are a passionate bunch. 

While not yet at the discipleship level of, say, Apple fans, the XP-loving crowd is getting more vocal and organized by the day. 

You see, Microsoft is set to discontinue the 6-year-old OS in June of this year, and it will then no longer be available for purchase (off the shelf or pre-installed on new PCs).  For those not yet ready to embrace Vista, the looming retirement for XP is cause for concern. 

Vista has been plagued by bad reviews, from experts and users.  The biggest complaints are about Vista’s steep hardware requirements (it’s got more bells and whistles, so it needs bigger and faster hardware to run), incompatibility issues with some common software (such as the occasional crash of IE when trying to open an Adobe PDF file), and the annoyingly frequent security warnings. 

For some XP fans, those adjustments are just not worth the switch.  After all, they say, XP has been one of the most reliable and secure operating systems Microsoft has ever produced.  It’s the old “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” argument. 

Of course, once XP goes away, so will a lot of the official Microsoft support for it, such as security patches and system updates–but Microsoft has already said that support and updates will continue for XP through April of 2009. 

The movement’s unofficial leader is Galen Gruman, who started the website SaveXP.com.  The site has an online petition that asks Microsoft to extend the life of XP (something the software giant has already done before).  So far, over 140,000 people have signed the petition.

But Microsoft, so far, has no comment on the issue, except to issue a standard-sounding quote that says they:

“…will continue to be guided by feedback we hear from partners and customers about what makes sense based on their needs.”

The SaveXP folks make a decent point about the majority of Windows users still running XP.  From the article:

Al Gillen, an IDC analyst, estimated that at the end of 2008 nearly 60 percent of consumer PCs and almost 70 percent of business PCs worldwide will still run XP.

Gillen said efforts like Gruman’s grass-roots petition may not influence the software maker, but business customers’ demands should carry more clout.

“You really can’t make 69 percent of your installed base unhappy with you,” he said.

Well, that’s all well and good… but if 69% of PC users are still on XP… then where are their digital signatures on the petition?  69% of Windows users would come out to a number in the tens of millions–140,000 signatures then represents a sad minority. 

So are XP users simply not aware that their favorite operating system is about to become extinct?  Have they not heard about this petition?  Or could it be that they are maybe just… ambivalent?  Unconcerned? 

The current target for the release of Microsoft’s next OS (Vista’s successor) is 2010, so this battle over XP and Vista is likely to end soon enough either way. 

But plenty of XP fans are fired up right now… hoping to keep it around for those next two years until Microsoft can release another–hopefully better-received–OS. 

My two cents?  I recently bought a new Dell laptop, and chose to get one with Vista pre-installed.  So far… no complaints. 

I learned how to turn off the nagging security warnings (and yes, they are annoying… until you turn them off).  I haven’t had any crashes of any programs or files.  Sure, I bought a machine that can handle the hardware requirements (and then some), so maybe I would have more issues with a tinier processor or a lot less RAM.  But I’ve been pleasantly surprised by how much I’ve enjoyed Vista. 

The visual bells and whistles that the added hardware makes possible are quite slick (preview images on task bar mouse-overs, sweet transparency graphic effects, etc.). 

I think Vista was a bit more of a mess when it launched last year, for certain.  But now that we’ve passed the Service Pack 1 landmark, the Windows updates and patches will only make it more secure and more efficient. 

So while I may be in the minority, I’m not ready to call Vista a waste of time.  I would even go so far as to recommend it.  And I loved XP–loved it!  But after six years, and with Vista improving by the day… maybe this is a case of people just not wanting to change. 

I would love to know what some of our readers think… those still using XP and those who have made the switch to Vista.  Please feel free to let us know what you think below.  And if you’re still an XP devotee, then by all means… go let your voice be heard. 

YWCA Nashville is a local nonprofit organization dedicated to erasing racism and empowering the women of Middle Tennessee. They offer employment and career assistance as well as a wide array of educational opportunities. From their website:

Day after day. Year after year. For women and children caught
in multi-generational cycles of poverty and abuse, violence is
as familiar as their own skin. At the YWCA of Nashville and
Middle Tennessee, we’re here to help people transform their
lives through safety, counseling and education services. We
understand the cycles of abuse, poverty and racism - and work
to eliminate them through empowerment.

We have had a great time meeting and working with the staff at YWCA Nashville. They asked us to design a website that would be clean and crisp and would speak to the empowerment of women. It’s modern and bold, yet simple in layout and easy to navigate. Pay them a virtual visit at YWCANashville.com.

We frequently get questions from clients about recycling options for their old computers and computer parts. A lot of people don’t want to just throw something away if any part of it is useful to others. Some folks just don’t want to add to the landfill pile.

Regardless, the Tennessean has an excellent write-up today on some various computer recycling options for those living in Nashville and Middle Tennessee, and it’s definitely worth bookmarking for future reference.

They highlight that Dell, together with Metro Public Works, is hosting a computer recycling event this Saturday at the Nashville Dell Campus. From 10:00am to 4:00pm, Dell will take your old computers and, in return, will give you a free tree–a tiny sapling you can plant in your yard. Neat!

If you can’t make that event, there are a number of local organizations that recycle, resell, or refurbish old comptuers. Among the other options mentioned in the article:

Costco

Metro’s East Convenience Center

Born Again Technologies

Salvation Army

Goodwill

FreeCycle.com

Thrift Smart

Check out the entire article here. Special bonus: The article quotes Catherine Mahew of the Community Resrouce Center–who also happens to be a Keystone client. How’s that for tying things up with a nice little bow?

Faces of Hope is a nonprofit seeking to develop and build a Sumner County center for children with autism and special needs.  They have a location picked out in Gallatin and work should begin soon. 

According to their website, their mission is:

“…to maximize the potential of children with special needs by providing individualized, family-centered therapy services as well as a skilled nursing program for medically fragile children in a Christian environment.”

We’ve really enjoyed working with the Faces of Hope folks, and did our best to combine the vibrant colors of their logo with a very clean and simple layout.  Check out FacesOfHopeTN.com.

We here at Keystone offer our clients SEO services.  SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization, and it’s the process of helping your website communicate your business and your keywords to the search engines. There are a host of companies out there making outlandish promises regarding search engines, and they con a lot of people out of their money. 

From time to time, we get an email or a phone call from one of these companies, and I gamely play along.  I act stupid and ignorant of SEO practices and let them give me their snake-oil salesman routine so that I can better help you–the client–steer clear of such scams. 

Today I got a fun call from eLocal Listings, offering one of the shadiest SEO pitches I’ve ever received.  We’ll just call the guy Bob, because I was so busy trying not to laugh that I forgot his real name.  Bob started out by telling me that his company could help us land tons of new clients through search engine placement.  I’ll just list the errors, omissions, and outright lies I found in what he said, and then explain why he’s wrong: 

1. He didn’t do his research.  The first move Bob made was to not research our site and see that we offer SEO services ourselves.  So he could have saved himself some embarrassment by not trying to lie to someone who knows more about real SEO than he ever will. 

2. He didn’t test his theories.  Bob had done just enough research to know that Keystone offers Network Administration services (helping clients with their office computer networks) and that we were located in Hendersonville, TN.  So Bob asked me to go to Yahoo and search for “network integration hendersonville, tn” so I could see that we don’t rank well for that keyword phrase.  Problem is… we do.  We’re number one, in fact (because I do my job, and do it fairly well, and also because there simply aren’t a lot of “network integration” companies in the small town of Hendersonville, TN). 

I pointed out to Bob that we were already #1 for that term, and it was the first of many times to come where he was a bit speechless.  “Well, you’ve got that one organically, don’t you?”  Yes, Bob.  Yes we do.  Any other brilliant sales pitch techniques you want to run by me? 

Bob’s solution to this sales roadblock was to say “Well, what if you search for ‘web development hendersonville, tn’?”  I ran that query and as Bob started to point out how we didn’t rank for that, I interrupted him to say that “Well, we’re not number 1, but we’re on that first page… 8th down the list.” 

So Bob clearly didn’t run these queries before calling me.  He was just banking on the fact that he’d be right, and we wouldn’t rank at all.  Eventually he found a phrase we didn’t rank for, and seemed to feel some pride about it.  Good for you, Bob. 

3. He used Yahoo for his examples.  Bob, if you really knew about SEO, you’d know that Google is the dominant player, with over 60% market share, and that Yahoo is a VERY distant second.  It should be noted that I really could care less how well or poorly I rank on Yahoo.  But Bob was basing his entire pitch on a search engine that only has 17% of the search market at best. 

4. He made vague boasts about his services.  Bob said, “We have a special relationship with Google and Yahoo, because of the fine work that we do–in fact, both companies are considering buying us.  Google’s been to our offices and we’ve been to theirs.  Because of this special relationship, we can submit your keywords to them directly instead of going through the normal channels.”  Ugh.  So, I’ll deal with this more in a moment… for now, just know that no SEO has a special arrangement with Google or Yahoo that allows them to circumvent normal SEO practices.  It’s somewhere between a sneaky sales tactic and an outright lie.  Oh, and just because you have been to their offices (which I doubt) doesn’t prove some secret pact with them.  I’ve been to the White House, so does that mean I have a “special relationship” with President Bush?

5. He uses link farms.  Bob said that in addition to submitting my keywords to Google through his special relationship with them, he would also be providing me with a one-page website about our business.  And because they give these one-page sites to all their clients, he can also then promise hundreds of links would be set up to be directed at my site.  Links can, indeed, be helpful for SEO.  But there is a HUGE difference between links that occur naturally and links that are part of giant spammy link networks.  The former is helpful, the latter can get your site banned from search engines altogether. 

6. He lied to me.  Bob said they had Google’s logo on their site, and had it because of their “special relationship.”  He told him which page on their site had the logo, and I saw a little button that says “We follow Google’s Webmaster Guidelines.”  And there’s a small graphic with Google-colored circles in it.  But it wasn’t Google’s “logo.”

Bob went on and on about how hard it is to get Google to let you use their logo, so that MUST mean eLocal is legitimate. 

Whatever, Bob.  That’s not the real Google logo.  Besides, I can right-click and “save as” on any graphic I find online, and then post that graphic on my website… it doesn’t prove anything. 

Bob’s real lie, however, is in that button’s claim that eLocal  Listings “follows Google’s Webmaster Guidelines.”  No, Bob, you don’t.  See, I clicked that button, and it took me to this page on Google’s site, listing some of their qualifications on what makes someone a good or bad SEO.  There are three key passages on this page that I want to highlight to you, where Google takes the time to warn you about shady SEO people.  Here’s the first one:

Be wary of SEO firms and web consultants or agencies that send you email out of the blue.

Amazingly, we get these spam emails too:

    “Dear google.com,
    I visited your website and noticed that you are not listed in most of the major search engines and directories…”

Reserve the same skepticism for unsolicited email about search engines as you do for “burn fat at night” diet pills or requests to help transfer funds from deposed dictators.

Amen, Google.  And Bob here just cold-called me to offer unsolicited SEO services.  Sure, he didn’t email… he used the phone.  But I think I’ll go ahead and put him in the pile with the rest of the diet pill and Viagra solicitations I get.  Here’s another section I want to point out:

No one can guarantee a #1 ranking on Google.

Beware of SEOs that claim to guarantee rankings, allege a “special relationship” with Google, or advertise a “priority submit” to Google. There is no priority submit for Google. In fact, the only way to submit a site to Google directly is through our Add URL page or through the Webmaster Tools and you can do this yourself at no cost whatsoever.

Let me emphasize my favorite part… “Beware of SEOs that claim to guarantee rankings, (or) allege a ’special relationship’ with Google…”  Bob… buddy.  Pal.  You already told me on three separate occasions during this call that your company has a special relationship with Google.  Then you took me from your site to Google’s Webmaster Guidelines site that explicitly tells me to avoid people that do that.  Are you trying to kill your own sale?

Okay, here’s the last part of Google’s warnings that applies:

Avoid SEOs that talk about the power of “free-for-all” links, link popularity schemes, or submitting your site to thousands of search engines. These are typically useless exercises that don’t affect your ranking in the results of the major search engines — at least, not in a way you would likely consider to be positive.

So, again, you’ve linked me to a Google page that tells me to steer clear of link schemes, after you promised your link scheme would help me rank better.  Which is it, Bob?  Do you want to give me a bunch of spammy links to help my rankings or have me listen to Google (who tells me the opposite)?  I asked Bob directly why he was promising to use links in a way that this Google page said was bad, and do you know what he did?  He changed the subject immediately, and started talking about how they can choose the best 10 keywords for me and submit them to Google.  Deflection is the oldest shady sales trick in the book, people.  “Hey, look over there!”

7. He told me they would pick my keywords.  If I’m paying someone to rank my site better on Google, I at least want to have some input as to what keyword phrases are targeted.  For instance, even if Bob had been able to show that Keystone doesn’t rank well for “network integration hendersonville, tn”, it wouldn’t have bothered me.  “Network integration” is not a very common search phrase.  Maybe “network administration”… definitely “office computer networks” (which we rank #1 for, by the way).  But not “network integration.”  If this is the kind of keyword phrases Bob was going to be able to rank me for, I have to wonder how valuable that service is. 

8. He didn’t follow through.  Before we hung up, I asked him to send me something in writing via email… some overview of their services so I could “sit down with my boss and talk over our options.”  He agreed.  Here we are, 6 hours later and I still haven’t received it.  So either Bob lied and never intended to send it, or he sent it and it was caught by my spam filter.  Either way, it doesn’t reflect well on him. 

The list of errors could go on and on–and I’ve already written a novel here.  The point is, be on the lookout for shady SEO pitches, and run from them. 

For reference, here is the main launchpad page for Google’s Webmaster Guidelines.  It details pretty much all the do’s and don’ts of SEO, and will help you determine if that joker on the phone has any clue what he’s talking about or not.  Or… better yet… just call me when you have a shady SEO offering you unrequested services.  I’ll be happy to tell you what I think–for free.  And if you want to forward me any unsolicited SEO services emails, I am compiling a nice collection of these losers and would love to add yours. 

Most who have taken “Intro to Economics” in college are familiar with the term “TAANSTAFL.” My Econ 101 professor wrote that on the board as soon as he walked into the room. He proceeded to explain: “If this is the only thing you learn or remember, you’ll be far ahead of most of the world.”

For those who weren’t introduced to the term, please allow me to decode it for you:

There Ain’t No Such Thing As A Free Lunch.

Yes, it’s bad grammar, but it gets the point across.

There is always a price to be paid with “free,” period. There are no exceptions. Either you’re paying with your time, your connections, or you’re paying in ways you don’t yet comprehend. You may never understand how you paid, but trust me…you did.

And free software is no different.

Some “free software” installs code on your computer that allows someone to track your Web surfing habits. They view your online history then push pop-up advertising, specifically related to your interests, as you surf the Web…wasting your time and annoying you to no end. But hey…that software was free, right?

“SpamAssassin” is a popular “free” spam-blocking application. It’s quite popular amongst the free software set.

When SpamAssassin blocks suspected spam, it creates a message that tells you why that particular message was blocked. It compares the incoming potential spam message to a list of criteria that might indicate a message is spam. If the domain name the message is being sent from (such as kbsweb.com) hides the identity of the owner, SpamAssassin considers the message potential spam.

Sounds like a good reason to block mail, right?

Unfortunately it’s a terrible idea. Over the years, scammers and rogue domain registrars have utilized the public database of domain owners as their own private spam and direct mail database. Despite the fact that the organization created to police the registrars has specifically disallowed such behavior. By posting your real address, phone number, email address, etc., you’re essentially giving these scofflaws your exact location and a way to contact you.

The market, being the ultimate genius, started to offer “private registrations” for your domain names, thereby thwarting the would-be spammers attempts to contact and defraud you. Millions of domain owners utilize this service. Millions.

As I mentioned previously, SpamAssassin made the ridiculous assumption that if a domain owner is hiding their contact information using private registration services, they’re probably a spammer. SpamAssassin utilizes the database at open-whois.org to determine which domains utilize private registration.

Here’s what open-whois.org has to say about “privacy”:

What do you have against privacy?

In a word: nothing. This is not about privacy, but about accountability. The Internet is built upon cooperation and accountability, anything which undermines accountability is a bad thing. The usability of the WHOIS database is seriously undermined by anonymous domains.

Open-whois.org’s stance on privacy and the Internet is patently ridiculous. It might have been feasible for everyone to be committed to “cooperation and accountability” when the Internet was a few thousand benevolent techno-geeks fifteen years ago. I’m pretty sure you can agree that it is not a good description for the Internet in 2008.

So, fast forward to me on the phone talking to a customer who wants to know why emails he is receiving from certain senders all go to his junk mail folder. Ugh.

Freedom isn’t free…and neither is software.