Is this something new?

[COLOR="Blue"]I sent an email to the seller and the response was:[/COLOR]

[SIZE="Small"]Re: ASTROMART - Response to ad #680850þ
From: ******
You may not know this sender. Mark as safe|Mark as junk
Sent: April 28, 2010 6:02:16 AM
To: *****@***mail.com

I apologize for this automatic reply to your email.


To control spam, I now allow incoming messages only from senders I have approved beforehand.


If you would like to be added to my list of approved senders, please fill out the short request form (see link below). Once I approve you, I will receive your original message in my inbox. You do not need to resend your message. I apologize for this one-time inconvenience.


Click the link below to fill out the request:


**Link here**[/SIZE]

[COLOR="Blue"]I've never seen this before. Normal??[/COLOR]

Well, it depends on your defnition of "normal", I guess. But I've seen this before; it's a way for the recipient of the message to screen incoming mail and build up a "whitelist" of allowed correspondents. I use a whitelist myself, manually maintained, and I've probably missed some messages I would really rather have accepted. This is an attempt to solve that problem.

It makes contacting someone the first time kind of a PITA, for sure, but in a day and age when you can get *hundreds* of spam messages every day, there really are no ideal solutions.

In the end, you just have to decide whether your desire to contact this person outweighs your aversion to filling out forms (I have a pretty *high* aversion to filling out forms, myself, but I have a lot of sympathy for those who are trying to rid their lives of spam, too).

I use a spam filter also. It does NOT mean that your message did not go through to the addressee. Your message just got diverted into a separate spam folder, which the recipient has access to.

I opted out of sending that automatic outgoing message you got, because it is unnecessary and irritating to legitimate senders who are not in my address book. All my Astromart responses go to my spam file, which I check religiously if I just placed an ad. I check it as often as I check my inbox. It is just a tool to keep most of the spam out of my inbox.

Michael Greenham said:

[COLOR="Blue"]I sent an email to the seller and the response was:[/COLOR]

[SIZE="Small"]Re: ASTROMART - Response to ad #680850þ
From: ******
You may not know this sender. Mark as safe|Mark as junk
Sent: April 28, 2010 6:02:16 AM
To: *****@***mail.com

I apologize for this automatic reply to your email.


To control spam, I now allow incoming messages only from senders I have approved beforehand.


If you would like to be added to my list of approved senders, please fill out the short request form (see link below). Once I approve you, I will receive your original message in my inbox. You do not need to resend your message. I apologize for this one-time inconvenience.

No, this "feature" has been available for a while for some ISPs. My reaction? You must not want email from me, so I'm not a-gonna bother with you. It's especially infuriating to be emailed a request for help, questions, asked a favor, etc., and get this in response. Short and sweet for me (most of the time, anyhow)...the good, ol' KER-PLUNK. LOL!