Anti-spam groups and network administrators are charging that too large a portion of RealNetworks massive email campaigns are sent to faked email addresses.
Critics consider it "spam by negligence" and are imploring the company to clean up the 60-million-address database. They speculate that it could contain hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of phony addresses.
And RealNetworks repeatedly sends email to each of those addresses, critics claim.
"Their big mistake comes from not confirming that they have permission to add an address to their list before they add one," said network administrator Richard Johnson, who runs a small Internet service in Colorado.
The company counters that though the list may contain bogus addresses, it sends its messages only to people that have elected to receive it.
Spam-fighting organizations are trying to convince RealNetworks to use only confirmed email addresses for mailings. "We've been working with them and we hope the situation is resolved soon." said Kelly Thompson, official spokesperson for the Forum for Responsible and Ethical Email.
Nick Nicholas, executive director of the Mail Abuse Prevention System, is meeting with RealNetworks next week to try to solve the problem. Nicholas couldn't be reached for comment.
The Mail Abuse Prevention System runs the Realtime Blackhole List, an email blacklist service. The service lets mail administrators easily block incoming email from addresses and domains known to be problematic sources of unsolicited email.
Johnson, who subscribes his network to the Realtime Blackhole List, said that RealNetworks has been on the list several times. The company admits the fact, but contends that at least one listing was a mistake that the Blackhole List acknowledged.
The RealNetworks mailing list is built from email addresses required by the streaming media download page. The company claims that 60 million media player downloads have been performed.
Johnson said that email logs on his small network are littered with examples of RealNetworks' email sent to "junk" addresses -- addresses that don't represent actual accounts on the network.
Since his domain name, River.com, contains a common word, users who don't want to give their actual addresses often use it to fill in registration forms.
Logs from his mail server show attempts to send mail to nonexistent names such as goober@river.com, trout@river.com, bignuts@river.com, henry_hudson@river.com, jblow@river.com.
Johnson said that he averaged six illegitimate emails per day for nine months.
