Frankly, I'd say no. If they're someone you really want to have in the room, you could do it and then send them an email letting them know that, in general, people won't be bothered with this. However, if it's just a stranger, I'd say you don't have an obligation. They want something from you; they should not be making your life difficult in providing them what they asked for.

Absolutely not - this "mandatory registration" crap has gotten completely out of hand. Anti-spam is all well and good as a goal, but they have forgotten the fifteenth law of Systems Administration.
Any sufficiently secure system, will be avoided, because of the difficulty of access.

It might be a kindness to put a note on the Dealer's Page that if they have a spam-blocker, they need to add you to their "approved" list (which is essentially what that automated message is asking you to do) or they may not receive the response you send.

I doubt they're making your life difficult intentionally. In fact, a lot of e-mail providers (earthlink, for example) have the blocker on as the default setting, in which case you get the automated message when you send something, even if it is in response to something you received.

Are you obligated? No. But it might very well be inadvertent rather than inconsiderate.

After registering 3 times for a friend's anti-spam system ("Oh it looses the list every few months.") I decided that they are not worth fighting through anymore.


If you have one in place and you want to recieve email from me, YOU put me in the list. I wont do the work for you.

A. no, no obligation whatsoever. Unless you want to, so that you can send them an sternly worded email for putting you in that situation.

B. Have applications gone out to dealers in general? Haven't seen one yet.

Those types of anti-spam systems are at best ineffective and at worst, the root of all evil.

No, you have absolutely no obligation to waste time on any idiot who would _ask_ you to send them something in email and then expect you jump through hoops in order to do so.

ick. I hate stuff like this. Maybe 'they' need to set up some spam folder(s) and they can look at it at their leisure.

No you are not obligated to go thru the hoops. However, you might send the forms to Cap's webmaster so they can provide the forms as downloads on the site. Then you could point anyone to the site and not worry about spam blockers.

No. In fact, these challenge-response systems are a Really Bad Idea.

These articles go into better detail than I could:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Challenge-response_spam_filtering#Criticisms
http://www.politechbot.com/p-04746.html

Also, just from a philosophical standpoint, I hate having to jump through hoops to communicate with someone who originally contacted me. People act like these challenge-response systems are just "fire and forget". They don't seem to understand that regular maintenance is required. (whitelisting people you send to, etc.)


Incidentally, ConClave uses a challenge-response system on their mailserver. I was quite Not Amused when I tried contacting their hotel person and had to jump through hoops...