Mickey, ran this article today on the definitions of spam (as used by various anti-spammers), prompted by an ongoing discussion around the quality of several differnt blocklists being measured by DNSBL.com.
The four clasifications fall into these categories (identified by MickC);
Definition 1: “Mail that comes to my spamtrap addresses which was unasked for”. a.k.a. “unsolicited bulk email”
Definition 2: “mail which violates some legal standard”
Definition 3: “a source most blocklist users would identify as spam-source under the ‘Boulder Pledge’ or a similar notion.”
Definition 4: “mail my users (as a group) do not want.” or “mail that I do not want”.
For the full story and understanding of why these definitions are important to your email campaign read “Multiplying Goalposts“, Posted on November 8th, 2007 by MickC