Re: Does this not make "Capturing Email Addresses" worthless??

> Nope. Sorry. It all depends on if the owner of the email address gave it
> to you with informed consent to the purpose you'd be using it for.

By golly, ya might wanna run those words of wisdom past all the gurus who have stuff to sell showing us how to get rich with everything from ebay to ebook writing...to affiliate marketing, etc. Folks like Willie Crawford, Marcia Yudkin and Jim Straw.
If you “opt in” for just one of their “offers”, free or otherwise, you can make book that you will begin receiving bunches of sales pitches from them. That’s how they earn their living, ya see.
Their privacy thing-y tells us they won’t give, rent or sell our email addresses to others. But there’s nothing even implied indicating they don’t intend to keep sending us “notices” about all the neat and “profitable” stuff we can buy from them - or from someone with whom they have a joint venture deal.
I see nothing wrong with this...since folks like Willie and Marcia include a spot in each of their emails that permits you to OPT OUT. The experience I had with Mr Straw, however, proved he did NOT. Perhaps he does now.
What it boils down to, really, is that many of the folks who made their “millions” in cyberspace did so in the beginning...when broadcast emails were not against the rules and the word “spam” referred simply to some rather unappetizing canned meat.

Jim G

> Depends.

> Depends.

> Depends.

> Certainly not acceptable to email these addresses, since they could not
> have given their informed concent since you didn't tell them before they
> contacted you what you would do with their address.

> Exactly! And you also have to run a closed loop confirmation process to
> make sure the OWNER of the address is the one who submitted it to your web
> form (if that's how you collect addresses) and it's not a prank.

> This is all explained quite well here:

> http://www.mail-abuse.com/an_listmgntgdlines.html

> Exactly. An email address is a thing of value. You have to explain to what
> use you're going to put it AT THE TIME OF COLLECTION. You can't change
> your mind later and send ads for widgets, for instance, if they originally
> signed up for a newsletter about froofroo.

> The term for this sort of address list abuse is RE-PURPOSING.

> Exactly. Unless your posted policy, they they agreed to and confirmed, was
> that you could do it later. Then you have proof that they agreed.

> Nobody should have to take action to get off a list they didn't agree to
> be on in the first place. The only acceptable way is to send a single
> email - "we will add you to this other list ONLY IF you click here to
> confirm. If you do nothing, you will not be added to this list for this
> other purpose."

> You got it. It's HARD to do ethical email marketing nowadays.

> 1) Only if you also confirm the address with a closed loop process.

> 2) It's considered better (informed consent, not trickery) if the box is
> NOT checked. The victim ... I mean the owner of the email address ...
> needs to take positive action, not simply fail through distraction or
> laziness or bad eyesight to UNCHECK a pre-checked box. Pre-checked boxes
> are considered evidence of black-hat marketing nowadays.

> I have no ideas. I certainly don't cough up my address if the privacy
> policy says they can misuse it any way they feel like, now or in the
> future.

> And so's the Roadie's wrath. :-)

> You're not worrying too much. Ethical marketers wrestle with these issues
> every day.

> I've tracked some spam back to people who automatically snag EVERY inbound
> "from" address in their inbox, not caring (or knowing) that a
> lot of spam and viruses use forged "from" addresses. Since some
> of my addresses sometimes end up forged into spam runs by the sleazeballs,
> you can imagine these sorts of inbox address harvesters get my goat.