Re: opt-in mail list best practice

On Thu, March 17, 2005 2:37 am, Scott Haneda said: > on 3/16/05 12:46 PM, Todd Trent at todd@hogfishdesign.com wrote: > >> - This could be hosted on shared hosting server. >> - Opt-in list could be less than 100 or in the 1000¹s. >> - May need a way to track sending success. > > Check this out: > <http://phpmailer.sourceforge.net/> > > I use it to create HTML emails, send them to 1000's of people. I think I > did a test to 30K or so, it handled it fine using mail locally. > > As for tracking, what we do is embed a image bug in the html and track > when > that loads, it is getting less reliable in todays anti spam world, but in > my > case these are paying subscribers so they generally want to get these > emails. > > To track your users, at least the bounces we set the bounce address > (return-path) to mysql_user_id@domain.com and POP check domain.com every > few > seconds. We then scan for the bounce address and mark that user as > bouncing > x times, if they go over y we cancel the account. So I could forge a bunch of bounces from somebody else's email account and guess/use their ID in your table, and get them kicked off your service? Cool! [that was light sarcasm] You might maybe wanna use some kind of one-time token such as that described on http://php.net/uniqid instead... PS Yes, some semi-legitimate spammers will drop you from their lists if you bounce email. The total scum spammmers won't -- Their return address isn't even their own, much less something they check. I *WISH* all email clients had a "Bounce" button to return emails as if they had bounced... -- Like Music? http://l-i-e.com/artists.htm