customer email lists done right

Got this email today:

BMW Motorcycles would like to send you our monthly BMW Motorrad USA email newsletter. This newsletter features video links and exclusive content showcasing our motorcycles, race events, and more!

We acquired your email address via a BMW Motorrad contest entry form or on-line BMW registration within the last 36 months. However, we value your privacy and are writing now to ask your permission before we add you to our e-list. Be assured that at any time you can easily remove yourself from the list via click links at the bottom of every email. Thanks in advance for your interest in BMW. Please click one of these two links:
Add me to the list No thanks, please remove me

Nicely handled, Bay-em-vay. I opted in.

Spamgourmet outage

I have used Spamgourmet for a couple of years to protect my real email address[es] from spam. It works remarkably well:

* you can generate new spamgourment addresses on-the-fly without visiting the site
* you can expire any address at any time (mail gets devnull'ed)
* the wanted email can be forwardeded to any underlying address, and changed at any time
* when you reply to forwarded mail it is smart enough to Reply-To from the correct spamgourmet address.
* you can use an email address in public then expire it when its usefulness is done (or when spambots find it). Example: this is a real email address --> mbtrtdemo.fratermus@spamgourmet.net

So why am I blue today? Spamgourmet suffers through DOS attacks from time to time, intentional and unintentional. Now is such a time. No email for about 12 hrs. :-(

All the mail will eventually come through, but it really puts a crimp in my morning activities.