“CQ Engage” bulk mail service provider enters my global kill file

Recently, I wrote about what prompted me to add Blue State Digital to my global kill file. Today, CQ Engage, a service offered by CQ Roll Call, joins in that dubious honor.

The things you need to do to be a reputable bulk mail service provider are actually very simple and straightforward:

1. Publish an anti-spam policy somewhere that’s easy for people to find.
2. Publish a mechanism for people to complain to you about spam that’s easy for people to find.
3. Prohibit your customers from sending email to people who haven’t opted in.
4. Prevent your customers from continuing to email people who have unsubscribed through your platform.
5. Investigate complaints and fire customers with substantiated spam complaints.

CQRC has done none of these things for CQ Engage. They have no anti-spam policy. They have no published mechanism for complaining about spam. There is no abuse contact address in their whois records. There are no complaint instructions in the headers of the emails they send out. When I complained to them that one of their customers, Mothers Against Drunk Driving, spammed me in July 2018 after I clicked the CQ Engage unsubscribe link in one of their prior emails in November 2017, CQRC blamed MADD, indicating that they do not consider it CQRC’s responsibility to enforce unsubscribes (which it absolutely is), and gave no indication that MADD emailing me after I had unsubscribed violates CQRC’s policies or that they would further investigate my complaint.

That makes CQRC a spammer, which means that as of today, all emails I receive through their platform will be reported to SpamCop automatically as spam and deleted unread.