A no-soliciting flag is not consent

Answer A no-soliciting flag is not consent. RFC 3865 defines an SMTP service extension for carrying a no-soliciting signal. A server can advertise classes of solicitation it does not want to receive. A client can mark a message with a solicitation class. The signal is for programs on the path. Consent is a person deciding to hear from a sender. The extension does not record that decision, and it does not replace it.

The note that started this: RFC 3865, A No Soliciting SMTP Service Extension, RFC 3865.

Consent is the word solo ad pages work hardest to blur. Opt in, co-reg, partner list, vetted buyers. Some of those are real joins. Some are a flag in a database nobody can show. If you buy solo ads for affiliate marketing, the affiliate terms still expect a person who can be mailed. A machine keyword will not satisfy a person, a provider, or a picky affiliate manager. Ask for the join.

The document is old, and this note will not pretend to know how many servers advertise the extension today. Inventing an adoption rate would be a fiction. Fiction is how the flag gets sold as either a universal law or a dead letter. It is a specified signal. Where it is implemented, it means what the specification says. Where it is not, silence means silence. Silence is not a yes from the reader.

What is the No Soliciting SMTP extension?

RFC 3865 defines a way for an SMTP server to advertise classes of solicitation it does not want, and a way for a client to mark a message. It is a machine-readable flag. It is not a record that a person asked for the mail.

Classes matter, and this note will not invent the class names as a shopping list. The idea is that solicitation is not one blob. A server might be willing to accept some kinds of notices and unwilling to accept others. A client that tells the truth about the class gives the server a chance to refuse early. A client that marks everything as harmless has lied in a header. Lying in a header is a bad habit even when no server is checking, because the lie is now in the message you may have to defend.

Early refusal is useful for the sender who is paying attention. It is not a forgiveness mechanism for the sender who mailed strangers and hopes a missing flag will launder the list. The list is still the list. The flag is still a flag. Write both in the order if you write either.

• The join path is a sentence a stranger can understand.
• Any solicitation mark is described as a mark.
• The seller does not call the mark a permission.
• Nobody quotes an adoption rate for this extension from this note.

Does the flag prove a solo ad had permission?

No. Permission is a fact about a person and a list. A flag on a session is a fact about what the software declared. One does not create the other. Ask for the join path.

The join path is where the address entered. A form, a checkout box, a paper slip, a partner page with a name you can visit. You want the words the person saw, the year, and what they were told they would receive. A path you cannot visit is a story. Stories can be true and still be incomplete. The flag does not complete them. If the seller's only exhibit is that their software set a keyword, you have learned what the software does, which is the smaller mystery.

Permission can also be absent in a clean technical send. Authenticated, flagged, beautifully formed, and still unwelcome. Unwelcome is the reader's vote. You will see it in complaints, in silence, and in the refund you should have negotiated before the silence. The flag will not cast that vote for you.

Do mailbox providers enforce this extension?

This note will not claim that they do. The extension exists. Adoption is a separate question, and it is not a number to invent. Absence of the flag is not a finding that the mail was wanted, and presence of the flag is not placement.

Enforcement is a strong word. A provider can ignore an extension, implement a piece of it, or do something similar under a different name. Unless you have their current documentation in front of you, say you do not know. A seller who knows should show the page. A seller who shrugs should stop featuring the flag in the pitch. Featuring an obscure extension is a way to sound technical without being checkable. Checkable beats technical.

RFC 3865 let machines announce a boundary. The reader's boundary is older and simpler. They asked, or they did not. A no-soliciting flag is not consent. Consent is a record you can tell in a sentence, or it is not consent.