Considering e-mail was never conceived with marketing in mind, and the fact that ISPs and End-users all objected to the practice right from the beginning, I find it offensive we have so many "e-mail marketers" out there now. With so many e-mail marketers, they have this false sense of "legitimacy" behind what they do, and they're now regularly brow-beating all the ISPs over "false positives". The ISPs and end-users will never forget all they've gone through (and are still going through) as a direct result of the "Marketing Machine" and its bullheaded desire to cash in on "free advertising" at everyone else's expense. We have filters, blocklists, anti-spam products, and all the rest because THESE MESSAGES WERE NEVER WANTED. Still, they kept coming. If the marketers had left e-mail alone in the first place, as they were very strongly requested to do, the whole issue of "legitimate vs illegitimate marketing e-mails" would never have even started. Sure, we now have "opt-in subscription". But, the majority of these subscriptions are still acquired deceptively, and the contact info is rarely used for only the purpose advertised. What's more, you still can't trust anyone to remove you when you do all the right things. That's why more and more people are not subscribing. We have false positives because "opt-in" continues to be abused. You sign on for what you understand is "1 thing from 1 company", just to get a shitload of stuff you didn't consent to, along with stuff from "affiliates" that may or may not be mentioned in any EULA given. Very few opt-in services maintain their lists properly, respect privacy enough, honour unsubscription, or fully divulge the scope of the subscription. And there are just TOO MANY HIDDEN "AFFILIATES". As a result, you have unwanted mail still getting sent because the contact is "on someone's list". Unwanted mail does get reported as spam. In most cases, what is being called a "false positive" is actually spam that has been correctly tossed. If marketers adopted a totally non-deceptive approach, you wouldn't have lists of unwilling recipients, and false positives might even vanish. It is their own fault! Another reason for "false positives" is the marketers' involvement with domains that are "known spammers". ISPs can, and do, reject the traffic from these domains, and rightly so! The term "false positives" is, again, incorrect, when this is the case. Marketers are responsible to do their homework on any "affiliates" or 3rd party services they partner with on these campaigns. Since they quite often don't, or even care about that, it is, again, their own fault their mail gets trashed or bounced. Marketers need to stop bitching about "rights" they were never even given, and start respecting e-mail, its users, and the ISPs (who curiously have to struggle harder to provide the service). Until then, marketers will continue to be viewed as a major part of the problem.

Back when I started college, before I even herd of Gmail, I decided to pay $20 for Hotmail Plus, knowing that I would need the 2GB of space for school. While I was a member of hotmail plus and paying Microsoft I noticed that the spam filter was working quite well. By the time my annual subscription came up I had already started using Gmail with my free 2GB account so I discontinued the payment to Microsoft. Since I stopped giving Microsoft money the spam levels in my account have gone up. Coincidence?? You tell me...