What is spam? Spam is nothing more than unwanted email that you did not request.
As an online marketer, I’d like to make one distinction very clear: if you requested the email, it is not spam, even if you later decide that you do not want it. Let’s take, for example, this website. You can sign up to receive a short email every time I post to this blog, telling you that I’ve updated it. Of course, you *WANT* those emails, so you eagerly sign up (go ahead, give it a try!).
Let’s say later that you decide that you no longer want these emails. That alone does not make them spam because you requested them. However, under the CAN-SPAM Act (which, as a US-based businessperson, I comply with), I have to provide you with an opt-out mechanism. Some people allow you to simply reply to an email and they’ll unsubscribe you (if no other method is offered, try that one. Any legitimate marketer will gladly unsubscribe you, including me). Others will have a link in each email they send you that you can click on to instantly unsubscribe.
So let’s say that you decide to report me for spamming anyway. What’s going to happen? In short, your claim is going to fall on deaf ears, and should you manage to get my site shut down for even a few hours, we’ll have some issues to discuss. Let’s talk about that for a moment.
When you put your name and email into that little box in the corner and click the “Subscribe” button, that information is sent to a special company that handles my mailing lists. That company is going to make a record of your email address, your IP address (look a couple of posts south to learn more about that), and the date and time. At the same time, they are going to send you an email. One email.
That email will contain a link that you must click if you really want to receive emails from me. It’s called a double opt-in procedure and is recommended by most people, including me. What that means is that you logged in to your email account and under the assumption that only you have access to that account (which, according to the Terms of Service of most email providers, is the case), specifically asked for those emails. So if you later report me for spam and cost me money in terms of downtime and lost revenue, you’ve done so by making a false report and false accusations. I won’t like that very much.
So if you’ve requested email from somebody, it isn’t spam, even if you later decide that you don’t want it, so don’t report it as such. Thanks.
Now, how do you deal with the deluge of spam in your Inbox? While ISPs do a good job of filtering this email and some clients have basic filtering in place, I’m going to once again recommend a Sunbelt Software product, I Hate Spam. It gives you a lot of control over your Inbox and, in my opinion, does a great job of learning what you consider spam, then protecting you from it (currently for Outlook only).
And one last thing: NEVER, EVER, EVER reward a spammer. Don’t click on a link in a spam email, don’t go to a website that they recommend, don’t open an attachment in a spam email. Just delete it and move on. If you want, you can also forward it to spam@uce.gov, where it will be entered into the U.S. government’s database of known spam email. Your spam report just might be the one that gives them enough to go after a spammer and take them off the Internet forever.
Thanks for listening,
Tom
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