So, a recruiter just sent me an email asking to post a job in Wisconsin to the Seattle BEA User Group mailing list on Yahoo. So, I sent an email back saying, sorry, we only post jobs for the Seattle area.

Now, here's the funny part. Checking my spam folder later that day, I found an email indicating that the recruiter won't actually get my message unless I click on a link to be taken to a website, indicating that I have a valid email address. I'm supposed to validate that I am a human being by typing in a word from a generated graphic.

This wouldn't be so funny, except for the fact that a) this verification email was itself canned as spam by MY spam filter, and b) there is no guarantee that this isn't in itself some fancy system to verify email address by a spammer.

So, delete goes the verification email. I guess the recruiter won't get my email, and I guess I don't really care.

The easiest way to solve this problem is to a) have the user of the software still get messages, but indicate that they are going to be automatically classified as spam, and b) to have the verifier also have an SMTP server that reads outgoing messages and automatically treats outgoing messages as valid users.

Incidentally, that's one thing that really bugs me about a lot of spam filters. If someone is listed in my address book, by definition they should NOT be treated as spam. That's a VERY simple algorithm, one that takes a LOT less CPU power than fancy textual analysis.

I guess sometimes you just miss the obvious.