Working together for standards The Web Standards Project

In fact, the best way to get on our bad side is to email our abuse account, which since we put it on our abuse page has received several hundred messages from spammers.

People have tried to sell us DIY Web Site Solutions (complete with popup window warning us that their site has been “optimised for Internet Explorer V5.5 and above” – gag), “pilfer proof caps”, Free CD Business Cards, Exterior Bi-Fold Doors, metal gifts, racing supplies and online address book updaters. Clearly, these are not reputable businesses if they’re so stupid as to spam a working abuse account. In fact, one might say that they’re worse than scum.

We get spam from Nigerians of questionable status and with questionable holdings. We get spam from French lawyers. We get spam expressing religious fervors of various kinds.

We get spam from damn near everyone, to the address we maintain, per RFC 2142, so that people may report spam and other abuse. This despite the fact that we don’t send mail from this domain (our members send mail from their own accounts, even when promoting official WaSP business).

So, on the off chance that someone reading this happens to have purchased a CD containing “opt-in” email addresses (never mind the sheer absurdity of that idea) – if our abuse account is on it, please rest assured that any mail we receive will be reported to your ISP or upstream provider, any relevant registrars, governmental and law enforcement agencies, and may well result in your imprisonment or at least suspension of your account or domain name. Please think carefully before engaging in unsolicited bulk email, as it is not worth the risks. In many places, it is also illegal.

And, please, if you have received any spam that claims to be from webstandards.org, read this before reporting the spam to us. We don’t want to hear about all the spam you get, we get plenty of our own. We only want to hear about it if it is forged from this domain, or if the spammer is using the (discontinued for many months) Browser Upgrade Campaign redirect code in their spam or on their Web sites. But even then, we can’t do much about it, so please don’t email us threats or mention frivolous lawsuits – you’re just wasting your time and ours. Thank you.

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