Re: ARGH! Please make it STOP!

[Scott Klement <klemscot@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

FWIW, Jay, I completely agree with you.

If someone sends me unsolicited e-mail, I don't do business with them.
Period.

If I give them my address, and tell them it's okay to send me promotional
offers, that's different.   But, when they get my address from ANY OTHER
SOURCE, I find it extremely offensive.

To me, unsolicited commercial e-mail is akin to a stranger coming up and
slapping me in the face.   It's true, it gets my attention.   It's true,
it doesn't really hurt me.   Maybe the person who slapped me will promise
never to do it again!   That doesn't make it a legitimate act.

Unlike being slapped, though, a spammer can sell your address as part of a
list and make money.   In fact, it's a "normal practice" that when someone
doesn't want to be on your mailing list, you mark the record as
"inactive", then when a large number of people have accumulated, you sell
that list to someone else.

Unsolcited commercial e-mail costs me a great deal of time and money.
People who consider it a legitimate method of advertising NEED TO BE PUT
OUT OF BUSINESS.


On Fri, 16 May 2003, Jay Maynard wrote:
>
> How many "legitimate companies" are there out there? Hint: It's a large
> number.
>
> Spam simply doesn't scale. If just one percent of the *small* businesses in
> the US sent you just one spam per year, you'd have to opt out of over 700
> emails *a day*!
>
> A spammer is a spammer, regardless of their legitimacy in other areas. Spam
> is theft. I refuse to do business with thieves, or even ask them to
> unsubscribe me - why should I unsubscribe from anything I didn't subscribe
> to in the first place?
>
> > Put the shoe on the other foot. If your company was engaging in some
> > questionable activity, wouldn't you want to know about it and be given the
> > chance to correct it?
>
> They can find out when their ISP terminates their service for spamming.