My Biggest Complaint About Making Me Fill Out An Allowed Sender Form To Reply To Email

If you send me email, I better damn well be in your list of allowed senders if you have one because I’m not going to fill out some form just to be added. Remember, YOU sent ME the first email, I’m only replying to your email.

The approved sender list email form thingy that some people use is one of the most annoying spam protection guards around. Why can’t email providers like Earthlink just match everything up to the messages in your outgoing mail for you?

The whole idea is to cut down on the amount of unwanted emails in the first place. Earthlink and other providers send me an unwanted email asking me to complete a form so that you can receive an email and approve me to send you email that responds to email you originally sent me asking me to reply to your email.

Yes, it really is as ridiculous as what I just typed.

The process adds at least 2 extra emails, 1 to each of us. Instead of you getting my email right of the bat, we both have to jump through hoops to communicate with each other because you forgot to add me to your list or you just don’t know how to add me to your list in the first place.

The best part about this whole thing? It’s completely unnecessary. Desktop email clients like Apple Mail don’t have any problem creating a rule to match senders with my address book. I really think it’s just an opportunity for email providers like Earthlink to seem like they are doing more to protect users.

If users could use the system it might work. It would still be unnecessary, but it might work. Obviously the people using these system can’t use them correctly because as I said, I am only trying to reply to an original email.