SMTP Whitelists for Charity

Having spent some quality time with SMTP whitelists lately, it’s occurred to me that all these lists exist to do is costly signalling.  In my experience, all that getting added (or being removed from) a list takes is a polite note confirming you’re real and have a reason to send bulk mailings.

Rather than giving money to ReturnPath, why not have charitable whitelists.  A single tax-deductible bank transfer (no stolen credit cards please) to your chosen charity, a quick sanity check by their staff (or Amazon Mechanical Turk) [call the phone number, visit their site, etc] and you’re listed.

It’s free revenue to the charity, and using the whitelists to score spam is great way for mail providers to contribute to Corp. Social Responsibility without spending anything!