Whitney McNamara's Sea Monkey Rodeo.
This blog moved over here in August 2006. Come by if you're interested in newer posts.
rss feed
del.icio.us links
My ten most recent del.icio.us bookmarks listed below. Also spliced into the RSS feed, courtesy of FeedBurner.
monthly archives
June 2004
July 2004
August 2004
September 2004
October 2004
November 2004
December 2004
January 2005
February 2005
March 2005
April 2005
May 2005
June 2005
July 2005
August 2005
September 2005
October 2005
November 2005
December 2005
January 2006
February 2006
March 2006
April 2006
May 2006
June 2006
September 2006
contact email
seamonkey (located at) absono.us
creative commons
standard disclaimer
All opinions expressed here are, of course, entirely my own personal views, and do not reflect the views of my employer or its associated companies.
Tuesday, December 06, 2005
SAFELINK safe links? Really?
There's been some discussion of Marketing Scoop's SAFELINK offering here at Return Path...most of it rather more charitable than my thoughts.
According to Marketing Scoop's site:
Businesses who subscribe to the program are provided with a SAFELINK icon to be displayed in emails sent to prospective customers. Those who receive the email know they are protected from computer viruses, scams, or unsolicited pornography. When clicking on the icon, consumers view a SAFELINK certificate, complete with information about the SAFELINK member company.
Sigh. Been there, done that.
This is an effort to bring sender reputation into email, which I totally support, but it's a really, really half-assed effort. Even putting aside from the fact that the design is fundamentally flawed, this approach puts the burden of validation on the user for each and every email message that they receive. For Truste-style Web site validation this is arguably acceptable, since it's a very occasional imposition on the user, but asking me to manually validate every stinking email? No, thanks...
8:00:03 AM "Wow! 481 emails in my inbox...guess I'd better get cracking."
8:00:08 AM "Excellent, message number one has the SAFELINK icon, so far, so good."
8:00:27 AM "Okay, not good. The SAFELINK icon linked to www.really-disturbing-porn-emporium.net, not the Marketing Scoop site."
8:03:32 AM "Holy shit. How do I make these popups stop? No, I don't want to allow ActiveX controls to run. Shitshitshit."
8:27:41 AM "Man, that sucked. Okay, on to message two. Yep, it's got the SAFELINK icon..."
